Breakthrough Wii U Unbricking Exploit Found Using Salvaged SD Cards; “Paid the Beak” Now on GitHub

Ah, you know those days when you stumble onto something that feels like unearthing a digital treasure chest? I mean, kind of like when WinCurious, this console hacker — why do I love that name so much? — grabs some SD cards tossed out by a Nintendo factory. Like they’re just sitting there, filled with mystery or… ancient gaming secrets. Anyway, lore aside, these cards were used to set up Wii and Wii U systems, which, honestly, makes you wonder what else gets chucked away.

Now, picture this: DeadlyFoez, another awesome name (could be an RPG character), finds these cards have a boot image for the Wii U factory setup. So, they dig into it, hoping to revive some software-bricked consoles. But here’s the kicker, the SD cards aren’t in the best shape. About a quarter of them? Completely kaput. Yet the rest, mostly PCB issues — minor surgery by geek standards, right? So a little resoldering, and tada, they can finally be read.

But reading them? Not like popping them into your everyday card reader. Oh no, life isn’t that easy. Enter the problem of needing an external programmer compatible with these quirky TSOP 48 chips. Without this, the data they’d get would be, how to say, nonsensical. It’s like trying to read a book with half the pages missing.

But WinCurious — our hero of the day — has a lightbulb moment. How about swapping out the NAND chips onto a donor card and, you know, see what’s hidden inside? Sounds straightforward, except, soldering these TSOP 48 clips? Ugh, mission impossible. They melt too easily, like my patience during a slow wifi day. Seriously, those pads are as tiny as they get, and it’s a miracle anyone could place a clip on them precisely.

Yet, somehow, a miracle worker emerges. They manage to salvage 14 cards. Then comes Rairii, on tiptoes, sneaking through the data like a digital detective. Boom, they find the SDBoot1 image. A long-lost vulnerability from back when Wii U was still a newborn in the factory world. Think of it like getting the cheat codes to run whatever you please when the console powers up. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

This discovery leads to the creation of “paid the beak” – not my idea, but trust me, I love the name. They upload this gem on GitHub, and it’s like opening a vault. Now, even with blank flash memories, almost any Wii U could rise again, unless you’re dealing with serious hardware hiccups like Seeprom issues. For such rescues, you’d still need specific tools like a Nintendo jig or a Raspberry Pi Pico. Or maybe magic dust?

So, once you’ve got your hands on all that gear, plug the card into the Wii U, use the jig, and voilà, you get to toy around with stuff you probably never imagined on your good ol’ console. Oh, and for those up for a challenge, de_Fuse is another mod chip to explore. It’s a tad more complex, like solving a Rubik’s Cube in the dark, but hey, it’s there for the brave souls.

And, if this whole thing got you curious (no pun), following Tom’s Hardware on Google News might just keep your gadget knowledge topped up. I’ll probably be doing that as I wait for my own adventures to unfold.