Team Discovers Boot Exploit for Software-Bricked Wii U Consoles by Repairing Trashed SD Cards from Nintendo Factory; Posts ‘Paid the Beak’ Exploit to GitHub

Sure thing. Let’s dive into this tangled web of SD card hacking, because why not, right? So, there’s this console hacker, WinCurious, who somehow got their hands on some old SD cards from a Nintendo factory. I mean, who even thinks to do that? Anyway, these cards were part of the setup process for Wii and Wii U systems. And then, there’s DeadlyFoez. They poked around the data — no clue why anyone would bother but thank goodness they did, I guess — and stumbled upon something that can fix software-bricked Wii U consoles. Pretty wild.

The cards were totally borked though, like 25% were just toast, thanks to destroyed memory chips and all that. The remaining 75%? Mostly just a bit bent out of shape. We’re talking soldering and replacing PCBs kind of work. Not my skill set, but hey, some people have the magic touch. Once the repairs were done, it was time to get nosy with the card contents.

Plugging these bad boys into a typical SD reader? Yeah, forget it. Wouldn’t read right thanks to the tech mismatch. They needed some wizardry with a NAND flash reader, but their gadget didn’t jive with the TSOP 48 chips Nintendo used. Classic tech story, I know. It’s kind of like when you try to fit a square peg in a round hole. Or maybe that’s just me and my DIY projects gone wrong.

Then WinCurious, bless their thinking cap, comes up with a workaround. How about grabbing a donor SD card and swapping in the working NAND chip? Brilliant, right? Well, sort of. It’s tough. DeadlyFoez wasn’t shy about saying soldering those clips is like trying to ice-skate uphill — on a hot day. The clips melt and warp if things get too toasty, and they’re so microscopic you almost need superpowers to see what you’re doing.

Anyway, somehow, they pulled it off and saved 14 SD cards. Enter Rairii, the sleuth of the gang. They poked around the data like Sherlock Holmes with a magnifying glass and found an SDBoot1 image. Turns out this is the key to letting your console run custom code every time it fires up. Kinda spooky, right? They put this hack, called “paid the beak,” on GitHub, in case anyone else gets this wild urge to resurrect dead Wii Us.

Now, keep in mind, you’d still need one of those rare Nintendo jigs or a Raspberry Pi Pico, or whatever funky gizmo to make the whole thing work. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack, but if you can do it, you’re golden. There’s also this other thing, de_Fuse, which could fix even tinier issues, but you better be good with your hands for that one.

So there you go, a wild ride in the world of console hacking. It certainly opened up the Wii U to more tinkering without ripping the whole thing apart. Just goes to show, sometimes the tech world finds its quirkiest solutions in the most unexpected places. Who would’ve thought, right?