So I’ve been looking at used Wii’s and Wii U’s. We have two, but one is in the guest house with our boys and the other is our original launch edition Wii that doesn’t output component. I’ve done enough reading on the subject to understand that the gen 1 Wii’s have an issue with overheating and the AVE chip getting damaged. Apparently this leads to the component video signal no longer being available. They got better with each gen, but made a big step in gen 4 and even bigger in gen 6. A trick to quickly find the motherboard revision is to look in the coin cell compartment for the numbers 10-60 with each increment representing the gen. i.e. 10 = 1st gen, 20 = 2nd gen etc. But the easiest way to know you’re getting a gen 4 or gen 6 is to buy a red or black Wii. I would have fixed my launch edition gen 1, but I had already done a case swap with a different Wii that I had bought used and the case had been trashed (I case swapped the two wiis because the mangled case one could output component and mine couldn’t), plus the disc drive on my original could use a replacement. I had already fixed the disc drive a couple times and it still works, it just isn’t perfect.
So I was browsing the classifieds per usual and came across a red Wii, two controllers, three games and the wii2hdmi all for $100. It looked really good in the pics and so I contacted the seller.
I was a bit stupid again. When I showed up, I saw the console running and it looked good. He booted up games that were both downloaded and from a disc. The condition was pretty close to excellent and the same went for the controllers. Although it did look like they had torn the felt dust guard of the drive probably pulling a stuck object out. But the disc drive sounded fine, So I bought it.
When I got home, I hooked it up with the wii2hdmi to my Marantz and it looked great, way better than the composite Wii that was in there before. The felt bugged me, but that was ok, I thought I could just pull the felt from the white mangled Wii and swap it over.
So the big problem happened when we changed games. I pushed the eject button and the Wii ejected the disc, but the disc eject mechanism just kept going and fully ejected the disc. EEK! I caught the disc, but that was a pretty major issue. However… I was kind of busy and I reasoned that it wasn’t really that big a problem, was it! Then my son came in about a week later and said dad, I just caught the disc when it ejected. So I realized I had to do something about it.
So I opened the Wii to change the felt and see if I could figure out was going on with the disc eject. As I opened it, it was refreshing that it had never been opened before, loved that! (although, they probably should have learned how to open it when they got something stuck in there instead of trying to fish it out) So a couple of things, the disc drive cage was slightly bent. Also, the felt on the faceplate is glued on and wouldn’t be easily removed let alone trying to swap them over. But the good news was that the felt was mangled and not torn. While I was looking at it, I had the idea that if I steamed the felt, I might be able to reshape it, instead of replace it.
So I used my wife’s clothing steamer. Got it hot and moist, and wouldn’t you know it, the felt, became pliable and I was able to reshape the fabric till it went back to factory shape. I then used an air compressor to drive all water out of the faceplate- even though I had used distilled water in the steamer to insure that it was non-conductive, better to be safe!
Next was the disc drive eject. I found the sensors that control the drive intake and eject mechanism. I’m not entirely sure if the Wii shoots a beam off a mirror, and receives it with a sensor, or if one shoots a beam and the other is the sensor. Either way, when the owner went fishing for the thing jammed in the Wii and bent the cage, that threw the sensor and beams out of alignment just enough that the eject mechanism no longer could tell when the disc had passed it. Thus, it continuously ejected. So I tried to fix the slight bend in the cage by pressing it back. I also cleaned the beam emitter and sensors and moved the sensor board around until the eject and intake mechanisms worked properly. Easy enough.
What’s weird, is that I do a fair amount of repairs, work around the house and what not. This was SOOOOO satisfying to me for some reason. I’m not entirely sure why, I mean you’d think I’d get a lot more satisfaction of fixing those expensive fridges, or installing the metal roof over the guest house. No, it was fixing this red Wii back to like new condition. I’m just so happy how well the felt trick worked and also the aligning the sensors!
