Wii U Stuck on Logo

[ChefVortivask]

Hello everyone,

First time poster here. I decided to make this post since I am having issues with my Wii U. Currently, my Wii U will not boot up to the main menu. It stays stuck on the Wii U logo indefinitely.

There are a few things to note about my console. The console is the black 32 gb model. I believe it was bought during the 2012 holiday season (release) as we were expecting to play Pikmin 3 before it got delayed. The system has never been modded in any fashion. It was not the most heavily played console, and I can't even give a good estimate of when it was last used (at least more than 3 years).

I have already tried doing the UDPIH, however it does not seem to be working. When using the second recovery menu, I get a white screen with some blue lines (see attached image). I believe this is similar to what @fadafwet described in his post. I was able to get the logs from the system, which I have attached to this post. Any idea what the issue may be and how to fix it? Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[ChefVortivask]

This might be something that'll make more sense once I actually use the oscilloscope, especially since according to my research, there are several different kinds of triggers.

I do have a question though regarding the shapes of the waves. It's already been stated that the CLK wave should be a square wave (which it was), but is there an expected shape for the CMD and DAT waves?

 

[SDIO]

The CMD and dat should also have sharp edges, but they will be irregular, as that is the data getting transferred

 

[ChefVortivask]

You should see activity on CMD. Maybe you have to set a trigger for that. The Wii U will only try twice, if it doesn't get a response it will give up.

I’m just now thinking about this, but is the implication here that the Wii U is looking for a trigger, or are you just saying that if I don’t capture the signal during those two tries, then I have to restart the system since they won’t appear again? I’m guessing the same thing might apply for the DAT lines.

 

[SDIO]

It's a trigger for the oscilloscope so it knows when to capture. It's entirely passive to the Wii U. You pasically tell it to start capturing as soon as it sees activity on the line

 

[ChefVortivask]

That’s what I thought. So I (hopefully) just need the trigger to be set properly so I can see CMD, but I only have a certain amount of time until the Wii U tries twice. After that I have to start again.

 

[SDIO]

You setup the tirgger and the probes before you start the wii u. Else it would happen too fast.
But as the clk stays slow, the problem is probably either with CMD or DAT1, the other DAT lines don't matter at this point

 

[Xytrophico]

Looks like you're probably dealing with a Hynix NAND. A backup and replacement should do the trick.

 

[ChefVortivask]

I’ve been pretty busy these past couple of weeks, hence the lack of updates, but today I was able to set aside a little bit of time to use the oscilloscope. I fiddled with the trigger and was able to see a signal from CMD this time by setting the trigger edge to 0 V. I tried other voltages but always got essentially the same results, so that leads me to believe that perhaps the trigger wasn't activated at all. In any case, CMD immediately goes to about 3 V upon turning the Wii U on and it stays there. Frequency also seems to fluctuate. CLK looks the same as before. I tried probing D1 but I was unable to see a signal from it even after trying several different trigger settings.

I've included a couple of pictures, including the trigger options on the oscilloscope for clarity on what I'm dealing with. Channel 1 (yellow) is CLK, 2 (cyan) is CMD, and DAT1 is 3 (purple).

One thing I do want to mention is that after setting up all the probes and setting the trigger, the first time I turned the Wii U on, CMD was doing some interesting things. It didn't seem to have a defined shape and would shoot up and down in voltage and frequency. It eventually stayed at 3 V. Unfortunately I didn't capture this and was unable to replicate it. I think this goes back to our theory that it works better when cold, thus why it acted this way on my first attempt. I tried letting it cool for several minutes but that didn't work, so perhaps it's really sensitive to temperature, unless maybe there's some capacitors that need to discharge over time?

 

[SDIO]

3V3 is the idle state for CMD. When you saw it changing that's when it was doing something. You would need to trigger in the falling edge.

Maybe there is some fluctuation, while powering up, which causes it to trigger too early.

 

[ChefVortivask]

So what you’re saying is with my first attempt I got lucky and it triggered early, thus why I saw activity, but on my subsequent attempts it wasn’t triggering early and thus I only caught CMD in its idle state?
Perhaps it triggered early due to being cold, or perhaps it was just random.

 

[ChefVortivask]

Update: I went back and tried capturing the CMD and DAT1 signal again. I did a bit more reading on triggering and I think I got a better idea of what I was done and what the purpose was. It looks like the trigger was set to auto all the previous times I did it which could explain why I was having a hard time capturing the signal. Unfortunately, I was unable to capture anything new with either the CMD of DAT1 lines. The same thing happened with CMD last time where upon first starting up, CMD would jump up to a voltage and then go down. It repeated this several times until it eventually reached 3V where it proceeded to stay. After that I could not capture anything noteworthy. If I tried triggering on the rising edge, I would just get a flat line at whatever voltage the trigger was set to as long as it was between 0–3V. As for the falling edge, I was unable to capture the signal as it seems there was no falling edge to capture in the first place. The signal would just stay at 3V. Also, as before, I saw nothing on DAT1 (CLK still looked the same though).

Given the fact that both this latest time and last time I was able to see some sort of interesting activity on CMD upon first starting up that could not be recaptured, I believe this could indicate that temperature is influencing the results to some degree. If additional tests are needed, perhaps there is a version of minute I could run that would help troubleshoot? I’m not sure how everything works, but it seems to me that since CMD is going up to 3V instantly (in other words it’s idle state), something isn’t triggering it to do some kind of activity, at least when it’s warm. I don’t know if the SDIO driver could be connected to this though.

Edit: I forgot to add that I was able to record my first attempt where CMD was showing some activity, at least partially. I can post that on here should anyone want to watch it.

 

[SDIO]

there should be at least something be happening on CMD when IOSU starts.
Are you booting directly to IOSU or do you have defuse or ISFShax?

 

[ChefVortivask]

If booting into IOSU means starting the Wii U as is without de_Fuse or ISFShax, then yes I have been booting directly into IOSU. I haven't used de_Fuse for any of these oscilloscope tests (the SD card containing minute is removed), and I've never messed with ISFShax up to this point.

 

[SDIO]

Did you set the trigger on the falling edge? Maybe you have to enable the trigger just a second after turning on the Wii U (because when turning on there might ba fluctuations). Did that trigger trigger and it recorded something or was that just never triggered?

 

[ChefVortivask]

I tried both falling and rising edge. I initially started with falling edge before messing around with rising edge because the trigger on falling edge never triggered. I suppose it's possible I somehow missed it, but I tried several times and just never could record anything of note. If I brought the trigger above 3 V and then back down I would capture the CMD line stable at 3 V, but that's not really useful for us.

 

[SDIO]

ok, if it never triggered at falling edge, then something is very wrong. You say it just stays at 3V3? So either the controller is dead, or you have a short somwhere pulling it to 3V3. Can you measure the resistance to 3V3? And also measure the voltage with a multimeter, when it is connected to power, but not turned on.

 

[ChefVortivask]

What points should I be putting the multimeter probes on the measure resistance for 3V3 and voltage? I’m assuming one probe on the 3V3 pad, so would the other probe be on GND?

 

[SDIO]

I meant the resistance between 3V3 and CMD.
And for the voltage measurement when it is off, put one probe on the CMD signal and one on and and see if you see any voltage there

 

[ChefVortivask]

I think you forgot to say what the other probe should be on for measuring voltage. Resistance makes sense since we’re looking for a short.

 

[SDIO]

The other on 3v3 on the NAND aid. It doesn't need to be a short but low resistance