Originally Posted by jimenpa

Hi everybody,
First of all I don't dedicate to install or fix consoles, I just did couple of installations for my kids and some friends, recently I installed a wiikey 2 chip and started getting some eject issues. The worst part was that after I removed the chip, the wii still was having eject issues. So I suspected something was wrong with the wii itself and not with the chip. I tried some fixes as alternating ground points, shorter wires, alternate CLK signal, but nothing worked for me. I let my friend to take the wii with the eject issues and with the chip installed and ... bad news, the wii drive died after 20 minutes of playing. I got the wii back and initially I gave up and decided to order a new drive. After a while I decided to trace back on the situation and do some signal tracing with an oscilloscope. I checked every signal on the chipset D2C , included reset, power pins, reference pins, and everything was working as expected, then I checked the CLK signals located on pins 23 and 24, and voila, I found something wrong...the input signal on pin 23 (OSCI) was weak and distorted, and there was no signal on the output pin 24 (OSCO), then I notice the problem...COLD SOLDER. It was noticeable that the solder on the oscillation crystal and some pins on the D2C were darker . I resolder the crystal and pins 1 to 25 (experience has demonstrated that the cold solder appears by areas and not for specific pins), and good news the drive was back fully working, the signals on the pins 23 and 24 were well defined and with good level and defiitely no eject issues. I installed the wiikey 2 again and it worked like a charm. I installed the chip with long wires, using different grounds points always checking the signal on the OSC pins, and the signal never changed or distorted, it was really fixed.
The explanation for the eject issues and some dead drives is not digital interference or defective chips, is just a matter of impedance. The cold solder is creating a higher impedance from the crystal to the chipset. if you use alternate ground points or alternate CLK points, you are just modifying a little bit the impedance and that makes you wii to work better. In other post have you noticed people mentioning better fixes as the ground point is connected nearer the clock sources (point C I guess is better than point A or B). Also I read some infos about wiis that worked with some specific modchips, but gave eject issues with other, again impedance, different chip vendors use different chips and that affects the loading over the oscillator circuitry.
As I mentioned I really blame all this problem to wiis poor quality solder, i guess it is mainly due to the use of non lead solder, and that is the reason why newer consoles are more affected than older ones.


I attached an extract of the wiikey installation guide for the wiikey 2, showing the pins I talked about. Look how the solder on the crystal is darker that in the chipset, that's what I'm talking about.

Sorry for the long post, I hope some of you find a solid solution for your issues on this one that worked for me.