Nintendo fights Wii modchips with new motherboard, modders claim

UPDATED MARCH 27: Nintendo has changed the design of its Wii games console to combat modchips, modchip developers in China have charged. Several design changes can be seen on new Wii motherboards, in photographs that appear to support these claims.

Some sources allege that the changes make it more likely the Wii could be damaged by modchip installation, we have not been able to verify this, however.

Modchips are small circuit boards that are added to the Wii to enable users to copy games to standard disc formats. Nintendo has charged that they are used for piracy, although manufacturers and users point out that they have legitimate backup purposes.

Small change ups mod risk

The photograph below shows the points where the motherboard has been changed, making it far more difficult to install current modchips, according to the claims from a modchip installer reported on the MyDrivers.Com forum (Chinese language site). The notes are translated from Chinese by Texyt.com

The new positioning of traces on the motherboard reduces the spacing between the limited accessible contact points, making it much more difficult to solder modchip connections into place, the reports say. A key modchip attachment point has been removed from the surface of the board, forcing modchip installers to solder modchips directly to a pin on one of the Wii's chips.

The pins on the chip are less than 1mm apart. Soldering wires onto these closely spaced pins requires great skill. The modchip installer risks shorting out adjacent pins with solder.

This can render the console temporarily inoperable, until the unwanted solder bridge is removed.

It is unclear if shorting out these pins can permanently damage the Wii.

However, in the worst case, an inexperienced modder using the wrong tools or making a clumsily-applied soldering joint could overheat or melt part of the chip - destroying the console.

The photograph above illustrates how attachment points for the popular WiiKey modchip from NeoAsic have changed. Other modchips may also be affected. The second photograph, on the right, compares the critical modchip attachment points on the old and new Wii motherboard layouts.

'Inexperienced modders could damage Wii'

As the old and new motherboards appear almost identical at first glance, the forum poster says, modchip installers have already begun to damage new Wii consoles by using the old installation procedure. Other commenters suggest that this may come as no surprise to Nintendo.

The modchip developers are also concerned that Nintendo may eventually change its chip packaging technique from the current PQFP, in which the chip's metal connections are accessible around its edges, to BGA (Ball Grid Array), where the connections are hidden underneath. With a BGA design, console manufacturers can make suitable modchip connections very hard to access, by not linking them to the top or bottom layer of the multi-layer motherboard.

Correction: We earlier incorrectly described the chip packaging as TSOP, it is PQFP (Plastic Quad Flat Pack).