Wii successful repair no: No video output

[Melissarmdlm]

A few years ago my Wii system (2008) bit the dust. And yesterday's release of MarioKart for ios reminded me, hey, I ought to get this thing running. The widely accepted advice is toss the system, and get another used one, which are available. But! There is an issue; downloaded games are tied to the system, Nintendo will allow you to transfer to a newer Wii U, after following a proccess, or maybe not, they shut down the Nintendo server side of all things Wii in January 2019. Regardless a Wii U currently costs 749.98 on Amazon at the moment. On to repairs.


As listed in the title, No video output.
The system started, audio out indicated a successful boot, controllers paired, just no video output, from composite or component.


Suspected culprit, since the video was degrading over time before failure, capacitors.


1. Stripped down to the motherboard
2. Checked the caps adjacent to the CPU, these seem to be used in filtering the video out signal, the are also directly adjacent to the system fan in indicating designers knew they got toasty hot. ESR and Vloss was so high on them some wouldn't identify as caps to my tester.
3. I have identified these caps C69 220 μF (6v), C64 220 μF (6v), C84 220 μF (6v), C91 220 μF (6v), C90 100 μF (16v) surface mounts.  I transferred known good caps from another known good Wii. I had a spare Wii system on on hand acquired from a local game store for a prior disk drive replacement.
4. Be sure and use thermal paste where needed for reassembly.
5. Tested and working.
Another solution might be to transfer the Nand memory to a good Wii. I ought to do that sometime in the future just to see if it is that simple, or if it causes an internal integrity software fault.


Edit added: I damaged a trace from C69 on removal of the old caps attempting the twist and pull method of removing the surface mount caps, that's a no go on this board. Use of wire trace replacements worked okay. Chip Quick was used on the others to aid in damage free removal. The sacrifice board got a lot more damage, though It's just for parts and maybe that Nand transfer trial in the future.

[Paul]

Wii U systems are available on eBay for as little as $20 and up.