You realize the Nintendo Wii — you most likely owned one similar to everybody else on the earth. However do you know that Nintendo launched a Wii Mini? It was in the marketplace from 2013 till 2017, so gross sales overlapped with the Wii’s successor, the Wii U. Nintendo didn’t promote many Wii Mini models as a result of it was solely barely smaller than the traditional Wii and lacked lots of its options. The worth distinction wasn’t substantial sufficient to entice many shoppers. However the Wii Mini is considerably helpful to modders right this moment and Evan developed just a few tiny equipment to return a few of the lacking options.
As a way to maintain the dimensions and price down, Nintendo eliminated a handful of options from the traditional Wii to make the Wii Mini. For instance, every thing associated to web connectivity was omitted — the Wii Mini was a purely offline console. Nintendo additionally took out the part video port, leaving solely composite video. And as a slap within the face to Smash Bros. followers everybody, Nintendo even eliminated the GameCube controller ports (and the reminiscence card slots).
Evan needed to reintegrate a few of these options, each for his or her meant functions and for hacks that require them. In his analysis, Evan discovered that Nintendo took the wise strategy and easily eliminated the components of the unique Wii circuits that served the omitted options. This gave him a stable place to begin, as he might use the unique Wii motherboard design as a reference for brand new boards and get some degree of assurance that they’d work.
Evan focused three lacking options: the second USB port, the GameCube controller ports, and the GameCube reminiscence card slot. Utilizing the unique circuits as references, he designed a brand new PCB for every of these options. They aren’t precise copies of the Nintendo circuits, as a result of Evan used completely different parts that have been simpler to amass and implement. However they ought to work with the Wii Mini’s motherboard.
We are saying “ought to” as a result of it seems that Evan has solely carried out restricted testing. It looks as if Evan designed these boards to be used by modders who construct their very own customized consoles with actual {hardware}, quite than for Wii Mini house owners that need the entire Wii function set. That may be a noble endeavor and we’re excited to see how modders will benefit from Evan’s boards.
