A design change which didn't quite make it into the final release only enables the 5V and 3V3 lines on the GameCube controller when the tip-switch on the TRRS jack is activated.
The short-proof approach/strategy would be to use small magnetic pogo connectors, but I really wanted to maintain compatibility with the GC Nano!
That's a very good point to keep in mind. I've seen that go wrong!
There are lots of connectors out there where the pins never short. The tricky thing is finding ones that can be plugged and unplugged often, while still being small. I've misused USB B connectors for this purpose; it's not common enough for someone to have the wrong cable to plug in, yet very easy to solder and to get the parts. There are also some circular connectors (M5, M6) where the connector on the device is decently small and the bulk tends to be on the cable side.
With a small crimper there are even more compact options which still handle many mating cycles, like Samtec's various Tiger Eye product lines.
Because the TRRS plug is part of a custom dongle, you can plug the dongle into the jack first, and then plug the controller into the dongle after, and eliminate that short risk
You can hotplug them, but when plugging them, there's no short risk, as all pins have their individual connectors. A barrel TRRS headphone connector can short, because the first "pin", the tip, goes through every single connector. Imagine this was power, and one of the connectors it went through was ground.
The stock GC controller ports place the contacts next to each other, rather than at different depths, so they won't connect controller pins to the wrong port pins or short pins together when partially plugged. (I do suspect the ground and/or power pins may be longer than data lines, to connect first.)
This was messing with my head for a minute, I thought maybe they had figured out a way to use mini CDs (like the GameCube) to make that tiny disc drive functional, but it appears to just be decorative.
The disc could then just be a caddy for a micro SD memory card, which when inserted on the disc slot would promptly launch a game stored in there.
Selecting games from a virtual library never has the same kick as when you insert a cartridge or a dis[ck] into a machine and have it boot from that.
Edit: I also realized you may as well cut out the memory card and just have each "fake" disc encode (perhaps optically) a little ID which the machine could read (perhaps a cheap camera) and associate to a game already stored in the machine's internal memory.
Mini-CD would be too big for this size, wouldn't they ?
Something similar to a credit card would fit the bill and could look gorgeous.
The issue of course would be that there aren't cards of that format that can store the amount of data required, but maybe with a bit of fantasy a micro-sd card could be embedded in it.
Yeah a minidisc is 64mm, I couldn't find the exact measurement in the README and can only dig so far on my mobile but even just eyeballing it and measuring a deck of cards it would be a lil too big.
Woah. I did not expect someone to gleefully saw the original mainboard in a bunch of fitting parts, the solder the severed links back together. That’s some next level stuff. Amazing!
I wonder if doing this will result in subtle bugs simply because the effective length of the copper traces is being altered, which changes the transmission time.
This is the unspoken secret of all these mods. They’re built to be built, not played, so if there are subtle instabilities introduced which may impact practical gameplay they will likely never be discovered because the final creation just sits unused on a shelf.
How long before someone goes all the way by designing a completely custom motherboard and transplanting the key components onto it I wonder? It's been done for older systems but the BGA parts in the Wii would be a challenge.
As a longtime observer of the scene, no. Creating the smallest board possible while maintaining original game compatibility are about the only metrics to stick to. Usually this boils down to keeping the CPU, GPU, NAND (if exists like the Wii), and most times the RAM.
There are some nuts people out there like Redherring32 with his TinyTendo project that go above and beyond just putting the components on a new board. He designed the TinyTendo which requires cutting down the DIP-packaged CPU and PPU from the NES into a smaller package. These components were only produced for Nintendo systems of the era and are the special sauce for overall game compatiblity.
https://github.com/Redherring32/TinyTendo
It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the Wii's CPU was 32-bit, 729 MHz, and single-core, and its GPU was a 243 MHz SoC. I briefly checked the Samsung Galaxy S lineup as a point of comparison, and it seems like the second one (from 2011) already smoked those specs. As for space, even without doing any modifications to the phone it's already about half the volume of this mini-Wii.
Of course that's really just sidestepping the challenge of "how small can you get an actual Wii".
You could 100% make a smaller fake "wii" by emulating it with a smartphone SoC. Mid-range phones can emulate Wii and Gamecube at 2x resolution.
However, the intention of these miniature builds is to preserve the original device, just in tiny form. No emulation involved. As if it was an official product.
yeah, i find all a incredible work. Right from the design and building, so many moving parts and variables it looks like some kind o "alien" work to me :D, amazing.
The benheck forums are the reason I work in tech. It was a great community. A lot of the people working on these projects today are former members. The most notable was Palmer Luckey who went on to found Oculus.
My Wii has never left the prime location from under the TV since launch day - getting on for 20 years! Despite having switches and gaming PCs my kids now love the Wii, the balance board and wii sports are all that are played now, but they still see regular use.
I regret getting rid of it while moving to a new house. Even though the screen had turned green-ish it still worked. Had the newer Wiimotes, balance board and all that. Miss it terribly. The Switch is good but Switch Sports is not the same. No planes to fly, no mountains, Showdown, etc.
Note: The synthetic rubber feet on that Wii will have turned to goop that stains everything it touches by now. I would get some isopropyl alcohol or turpentine and remove them entirely.
This makes me miss the days when computers were ~12 watts and (basically) passively cooled. This would not be possible on any newer system. I'm also not counting the 1" fan on the back of the wii which was replaced by a heatsink.
Most RPi style single-board computers (SBC) are passively cooled. Some perform better with a heatsink, some heatsinks come with a fan, but (for most use cases) it's not really needed.
Passive cooling went away during the 80s/90s homecomputer -> PC transition. But modern tech has brought it back - provided you choose form factor & performance expectations appropriately (even though modern SBCs are crazy fast compared to Amiga or Atari ST era machines).
What you sir need is a Dell Wyse 5070. Passively cooled, four 64 bit cores, you can put up to 32Gb memory inside, two DP outputs and an M.2 SATA socket. 4-6 watts at idle and around 16 watts at full chat.
Not really sure how it could? It’s just effectively adding ~5” of wire and a differently shaped connector. Unless you’re worried about the fraction of a nanosecond the extra wire will add...
Since the GameCube controller connectors on the original Wii wouldn't fit cleanly on a build of this size, I use TRRS headphone connectors instead.
Word of caution: many electronics are not designed for the shorts between connections which occur if you hot-plug one of those.
A design change which didn't quite make it into the final release only enables the 5V and 3V3 lines on the GameCube controller when the tip-switch on the TRRS jack is activated.
The short-proof approach/strategy would be to use small magnetic pogo connectors, but I really wanted to maintain compatibility with the GC Nano!
Good to know this was already considered!
That's a very good point to keep in mind. I've seen that go wrong!
There are lots of connectors out there where the pins never short. The tricky thing is finding ones that can be plugged and unplugged often, while still being small. I've misused USB B connectors for this purpose; it's not common enough for someone to have the wrong cable to plug in, yet very easy to solder and to get the parts. There are also some circular connectors (M5, M6) where the connector on the device is decently small and the bulk tends to be on the cable side.
With a small crimper there are even more compact options which still handle many mating cycles, like Samtec's various Tiger Eye product lines.
Because the TRRS plug is part of a custom dongle, you can plug the dongle into the jack first, and then plug the controller into the dongle after, and eliminate that short risk
Haven't touched a GameCube or a Wii in a long time, but didn't those things not support hot plugging GC controllers in general?
You can hotplug them, but when plugging them, there's no short risk, as all pins have their individual connectors. A barrel TRRS headphone connector can short, because the first "pin", the tip, goes through every single connector. Imagine this was power, and one of the connectors it went through was ground.
The stock GC controller ports place the contacts next to each other, rather than at different depths, so they won't connect controller pins to the wrong port pins or short pins together when partially plugged. (I do suspect the ground and/or power pins may be longer than data lines, to connect first.)
This was messing with my head for a minute, I thought maybe they had figured out a way to use mini CDs (like the GameCube) to make that tiny disc drive functional, but it appears to just be decorative.
Purely for aesthetics! It wouldn’t be the same without that iconic glowing disc slot.
It's a lost opportunity that you didn't repurpose the CD drive opening as a full-size SD card slot!
Nicely done regardless.
That would have been fun, but the SD card slot is in the same place as on the original Wii (behind the front flap), which also makes sense.
If you were selling these, the "goodies" would surely need a couple minified disks, for purely aesthetic reasons!
Along with an "authentic" mini power "brick" wrapped around the middle of the USB-C cord. :)
Very nice!
The disc could then just be a caddy for a micro SD memory card, which when inserted on the disc slot would promptly launch a game stored in there.
Selecting games from a virtual library never has the same kick as when you insert a cartridge or a dis[ck] into a machine and have it boot from that.
Edit: I also realized you may as well cut out the memory card and just have each "fake" disc encode (perhaps optically) a little ID which the machine could read (perhaps a cheap camera) and associate to a game already stored in the machine's internal memory.
Mini-CD would be too big for this size, wouldn't they ? Something similar to a credit card would fit the bill and could look gorgeous.
The issue of course would be that there aren't cards of that format that can store the amount of data required, but maybe with a bit of fantasy a micro-sd card could be embedded in it.
Yeah a minidisc is 64mm, I couldn't find the exact measurement in the README and can only dig so far on my mobile but even just eyeballing it and measuring a deck of cards it would be a lil too big.
That would be amazing, someone has to do this in the future.
ok phew I was super confused.
This is damn impressive. There's also a slightly more detailed build log in this forum thread: https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/project-short-...
Here's a similar project with a PlayStation 1 if people like this kind of thing: https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/ps-hanami.6279...
Woah. I did not expect someone to gleefully saw the original mainboard in a bunch of fitting parts, the solder the severed links back together. That’s some next level stuff. Amazing!
I wonder if doing this will result in subtle bugs simply because the effective length of the copper traces is being altered, which changes the transmission time.
This is the unspoken secret of all these mods. They’re built to be built, not played, so if there are subtle instabilities introduced which may impact practical gameplay they will likely never be discovered because the final creation just sits unused on a shelf.
Similar project for an (also portable) xbox 360 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-2dgSjljn4 (in French)
How long before someone goes all the way by designing a completely custom motherboard and transplanting the key components onto it I wonder? It's been done for older systems but the BGA parts in the Wii would be a challenge.
Funny you should mention that! Some members of the BitBuilt community are working on this including the talented YveltalGriffin https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/nintendo-vegas...
Is this seen as any less of a "Wii" than a trimmed board? What if parts were replaced with newer, functionally identical ones?
This is kind of a Wii ship of Theseus.
As a longtime observer of the scene, no. Creating the smallest board possible while maintaining original game compatibility are about the only metrics to stick to. Usually this boils down to keeping the CPU, GPU, NAND (if exists like the Wii), and most times the RAM.
There are some nuts people out there like Redherring32 with his TinyTendo project that go above and beyond just putting the components on a new board. He designed the TinyTendo which requires cutting down the DIP-packaged CPU and PPU from the NES into a smaller package. These components were only produced for Nintendo systems of the era and are the special sauce for overall game compatiblity. https://github.com/Redherring32/TinyTendo
Ship of Wiiseus
How does a typical smartphone SoC compare to the Wii in terms of processing power? Would one of those running an emulator be even smaller?
It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the Wii's CPU was 32-bit, 729 MHz, and single-core, and its GPU was a 243 MHz SoC. I briefly checked the Samsung Galaxy S lineup as a point of comparison, and it seems like the second one (from 2011) already smoked those specs. As for space, even without doing any modifications to the phone it's already about half the volume of this mini-Wii.
Of course that's really just sidestepping the challenge of "how small can you get an actual Wii".
You could 100% make a smaller fake "wii" by emulating it with a smartphone SoC. Mid-range phones can emulate Wii and Gamecube at 2x resolution.
However, the intention of these miniature builds is to preserve the original device, just in tiny form. No emulation involved. As if it was an official product.
Well, the Wii GPU has 12 GFLOPS, while the Mali-G52 MP2 used in the Galaxy A14, the top selling Android phone of 2023, has 418.78 GFLOPS.
People have been running Dolphin on Nvidia Shields since the first one came out in 2015
People already do the strange things, like VSA100 monsters:
https://www.zxc64.com/vsa100_based/0_62911_strange_god_agp_2...
I am always amazed by hardware people. These things are not trivial at all. Way more difficult than software in my experience.
yeah, i find all a incredible work. Right from the design and building, so many moving parts and variables it looks like some kind o "alien" work to me :D, amazing.
This reminds me a lot of BenHeck, back in the day he made all kind of cool custom portable XBox (original) and PS1 consoles
It was his mini Atari 2600 etc that blew me away originally - and his site just felt so 'fun'.
The benheck forums are the reason I work in tech. It was a great community. A lot of the people working on these projects today are former members. The most notable was Palmer Luckey who went on to found Oculus.
Wii was my favorite console. So many fun games that you could play with the whole family! Wii sports resort is one of the best all time games
My Wii has never left the prime location from under the TV since launch day - getting on for 20 years! Despite having switches and gaming PCs my kids now love the Wii, the balance board and wii sports are all that are played now, but they still see regular use.
Just using the UI on the Wii is a simple pleasure even without the games.
I am surprised there is not more HTPC frontends which duplicate the look and feel.
I regret getting rid of it while moving to a new house. Even though the screen had turned green-ish it still worked. Had the newer Wiimotes, balance board and all that. Miss it terribly. The Switch is good but Switch Sports is not the same. No planes to fly, no mountains, Showdown, etc.
Note: The synthetic rubber feet on that Wii will have turned to goop that stains everything it touches by now. I would get some isopropyl alcohol or turpentine and remove them entirely.
Reminds me of this video where someone put a wii into a gameboy form factor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh1vNDcXZbA
It's so cool that you can just chop up the motherboard like that and it still works.
This makes me miss the days when computers were ~12 watts and (basically) passively cooled. This would not be possible on any newer system. I'm also not counting the 1" fan on the back of the wii which was replaced by a heatsink.
Most RPi style single-board computers (SBC) are passively cooled. Some perform better with a heatsink, some heatsinks come with a fan, but (for most use cases) it's not really needed.
Passive cooling went away during the 80s/90s homecomputer -> PC transition. But modern tech has brought it back - provided you choose form factor & performance expectations appropriately (even though modern SBCs are crazy fast compared to Amiga or Atari ST era machines).
M1/2/3 mac minis could have been very well cooled passively. MBA's are.
What you sir need is a Dell Wyse 5070. Passively cooled, four 64 bit cores, you can put up to 32Gb memory inside, two DP outputs and an M.2 SATA socket. 4-6 watts at idle and around 16 watts at full chat.
It was great seeing this in person at MGC this year. Every year the Bitbuilt guys seem to somehow make the Wii smaller and smaller. It's insanity.
If your boss asks why you're reading about short stacks at work, I am delighted to report that it's also a poker term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_poker_terms#S
Code Golf but IRL?
There is this discman that only uses a corner of a disc. By using that tech it could be even smaller..
This Wii build doesn't even have an optical disk. If you read the article, it loads up games over microSD.
Is it really a Wii without the optical disk :)
This one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AowJGns66_4
This YouTuber does similar mods where he shrinks consoles. This video is for Dreamcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJuqtHW2o9w He has also done ps2 and N64
Do the custom controller connectors introduce any amount of input lag? Would love to try and make one of these for Melee tournaments if it doesn't.
Not really sure how it could? It’s just effectively adding ~5” of wire and a differently shaped connector. Unless you’re worried about the fraction of a nanosecond the extra wire will add...
Hey James, glad to see you've been putting all your free time to excellent use :D
This looks amazing, I love all the attention to detail.
The motherboard "trim" is crazy cool.
The Wii proved grossly underpowered consoles can still be a lot of fun. This is the form factor it deserves!
I'm curious, why do you want to make the smallest Nintendo Wii?
I think it's an art following the ancient school of thought named "why not", which pushes innovation since forever.
Because it's wee!
I'm more curious why you (apparently) don't want to.
It's fun to hack something up (quite literally in this case).
Nintendo already salivating at the thought of a cease and desist because well…Nintendo.
Interesting choice of name.
Could have called it a wee wii though.
Aw man I wish I had this when I went in and converted mine to HDMI output.
amazing build and repo. make hardware and software!
Interesting can’t wait to see the worlds smallest Wii.
a wee wii
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