I bought my first Wii in about 2008 for maybe 250 euro's and a bunch of stuff to go with it. The motion controls were only fun for a short while and I mostly used it as a tiny GameCube to play The Windwaker. I did the bannerbomb mod and have an older version of the homebrew channel on it. All of my testing for Batterycheck that I say was done on the real Wii hardware is done on this one. 
Last year I went to a retro gaming market/event and bought a black one including all cables, one black wiimote and one black nunchuck for 40 euro's. I also bought a few extra Wii games there that I did not have...only had Mario kart and Mario galaxy 1 actually
Then a few months later I got my third black wii for only 20 euro's without any cables, just because it was so cheap and as a backup in case I damaged one of the other two during one of my hardware projects I had planned. Not even sure if I ever powered this thing on to see if it even works
And then yesterday I received two more......a super cheap white one that was labeled as making a lot of noise during gameplay. I expect either the DVD drive or fan to be the problem, for only 18 euro I just could not resist trying to fix it!
And finally number five...a Wii mini with red wiimote and red nun-chuck and all cables for 35 euro. I think it's not a bad price considering what the mini is going for normally, over 50 euro in most cases! You might be thinking....with four regular Wii's why the heck did I buy a Wii Mini???
Well...I have recently done some reverse engineering and while it was far from easy I did get an idea of how things can be figured out with the right tools.
From what I have read the Wii Mini is like fort knox! All currently known entry points for homebrew are patched and required hardware like WiFi and SD card slot have been removed! Lot's of requests for a mod with nearly every time the same answer: Go buy a regular Wii since they are cheap, easy to mod and can do much more.
I have found only a few attempts that mention soldering a mess of wires to tiny points to capture the memory or maybe even dumping the nand, forgot what it was. I think they got in as I remember reading about how IOS has all internet WiFi and SD features removed. It might also just be rumors because the hardware is missing and menu items are not there. I don't know.
The overall feeling I get is that either Nintendo actually succeeded in making the Wii Mini 'unhackable' or nobody cares because off all the removed features. And by nobody I mean the ones that have the capability to actually do it. I personally think they don't care because regular wii's are so easy and cheaper than the Wii Mini.
I am not making any promises, statements or claims that I am smarter than those who have already tried....but I sure plan to make an attempt someday and figure out how secure that stupid little red box is!!!
At it's core it has the same Wii hardware with just a little better/different software. I believe I read the DVD drives have console specific encryption but also that popular drive emulators did work with a different pinout.
So i short: I bought a Wii mini to make an attempt at getting homebrew and maybe internet back on to it! Someday...in the distant future
Anyway this is my story of why I have a tower of Wii's and just thought it was cool enough to share a picture of how that looks:
View attachment 164261
I might do a similar blog post about my 3DS collection now that I have all six different models
Last year I went to a retro gaming market/event and bought a black one including all cables, one black wiimote and one black nunchuck for 40 euro's. I also bought a few extra Wii games there that I did not have...only had Mario kart and Mario galaxy 1 actually
Then a few months later I got my third black wii for only 20 euro's without any cables, just because it was so cheap and as a backup in case I damaged one of the other two during one of my hardware projects I had planned. Not even sure if I ever powered this thing on to see if it even works
And then yesterday I received two more......a super cheap white one that was labeled as making a lot of noise during gameplay. I expect either the DVD drive or fan to be the problem, for only 18 euro I just could not resist trying to fix it!
And finally number five...a Wii mini with red wiimote and red nun-chuck and all cables for 35 euro. I think it's not a bad price considering what the mini is going for normally, over 50 euro in most cases! You might be thinking....with four regular Wii's why the heck did I buy a Wii Mini???
Well...I have recently done some reverse engineering and while it was far from easy I did get an idea of how things can be figured out with the right tools.
From what I have read the Wii Mini is like fort knox! All currently known entry points for homebrew are patched and required hardware like WiFi and SD card slot have been removed! Lot's of requests for a mod with nearly every time the same answer: Go buy a regular Wii since they are cheap, easy to mod and can do much more.
I have found only a few attempts that mention soldering a mess of wires to tiny points to capture the memory or maybe even dumping the nand, forgot what it was. I think they got in as I remember reading about how IOS has all internet WiFi and SD features removed. It might also just be rumors because the hardware is missing and menu items are not there. I don't know.
The overall feeling I get is that either Nintendo actually succeeded in making the Wii Mini 'unhackable' or nobody cares because off all the removed features. And by nobody I mean the ones that have the capability to actually do it. I personally think they don't care because regular wii's are so easy and cheaper than the Wii Mini.
I am not making any promises, statements or claims that I am smarter than those who have already tried....but I sure plan to make an attempt someday and figure out how secure that stupid little red box is
!!!At it's core it has the same Wii hardware with just a little better/different software. I believe I read the DVD drives have console specific encryption but also that popular drive emulators did work with a different pinout.
So i short: I bought a Wii mini to make an attempt at getting homebrew and maybe internet back on to it! Someday...in the distant future
Anyway this is my story of why I have a tower of Wii's and just thought it was cool enough to share a picture of how that looks:
View attachment 164261
I might do a similar blog post about my 3DS collection now that I have all six different models
