I'll start by saying hi to my massive list of subscribers... I'm expecting my subscriber list to increase by 100%......... as soon as i subscribe on my other pc!
My first post is basically going to look at whether its worth putting a modchip in your Nintendo Wii.
Now before you all start saying its illegal, well its not in the land of Oz. In Oz as long as the modchip defeats region protection then its legal. This is because in Oz, the kind rulers have declared that if ozzies can get games cheaper by importing them, they aren't going to get in the way of fair competition. They probably decided to do this because in Oz, you can expect to pay as much as $110 aud for a new release console game. Buying online at almost half the price just makes more sense.
So.... what are the benefits and what are the drawbacks?
The benefits are:
Play imported wii games
Play imported gamecube games
Play backups of your original games
Play pirated/downloaded games (highly illegal and should possibly be listed under drawbacks)
Play homebrew games and applications (basically open source or hobbyist designers make games and applications out of pure love and flowers from somewhere over the rainbow.)
Play dvd movies (with the help of a homebrew application
There's more but i think thats enough
Drawbacks? Well there are quite a few wicked witches spreading rumors about all these bad things that will happen to you if you put a modchip in your Nintendo Wii. These range from having a whole house fall on you to ending up with a single brick.... in the size and shape of a Wii.
The truth is, there are a few drawbacks, but not many.
You may not be able to play online
You need to keep your console up to date with the latest nintendo update from your region. (If you update with an imported game, you may end up with that brick after all. Your console will always ask you if you want to update... so if its an imported game... dont update... update either online or with a game from your region and you are fine)
Your warranty is voided.... Now there are some little munchkins that have returned their consoles on warranty after removing a modchip and gotten replacements, but this is illegal and not recommended. You just need to weigh up the risks against the potential benefits.. How many imports will it take to cover the cost of a replacement wii? In saying all that, the Wii is highly reliable... unlike other competing consoles which i wont mention....Yes you know who you are!
Now if you fancy yourself as a technical wizard (had enough of the bad jokes yet?) like i do, then you will be installing the modchip yourself.
With this in mind the first question is, "Which Wii modchip?"
After looking for a good 30 minutes, you will realise that is the second question. The first question is actually, "which wii is witch?" Or "What version Wii do i have?"
There's more than one version? Yes.
The newer ones need a different modchip from the older ones.
If you go to this site: Wii version tracker
you can see what version you have. There is dms, d2a d2b and d2c.
I have 2 Wii's. One is d2b and one is d2c.
Armed with that information, you can move on to the next step....
Which Wii Modchip?
The important part here is that the dms d2a and d2b all work with the same modchip, but the d2c needs a different modchip.
For my d2b, i decided to use a Yowii modchip which uses Yaosm open source code.
Why?
Well its from Oz and so am I...
But also, its feature list rivals the more expensive chips.
It uses Yaosm code. Its an open source modchip code that rivals the commercial codes and is updated much quicker.
It uses a better microchip than some of the other modchips.. this is important, because the latest yaosm updates dont all fit on these other modchips.
I like the fact that the guys from Yowii actually spent extra to get a higher quality microchip before it was needed rather than waiting until it was needed and bringing out a new version.
I sent an email to the guys at Yowii about this and they told me that they would rather have happy customers than customers that had to buy their chips twice. They also said it was obvious the extra space would be needed because the older microchips only had room for a few extra lines of code. They wouldn't say anything bad about the other modchip companies, but it seems pretty obvious to me that some of them were planning on double sales from all the customers needing to upgrade to a newer modchip.
Ok, what other reasons? Well Yaosm, being open source, can be continued by anyone even if the current team loses interest. When other commercial modchips stop manufacturing chips for the dms, d2a and d2b, i really cant imagine that they will continue to release updates. They are following the yellow brick road, but i dont see any love, flowers or rainbows from them.
(sorry its been a while and its embedded into my nature)
Well thats about it.
For my d2c version Wii, i discovered i only had 2 choices.
D2ckey or Argon modchip.
I decided to go for Argon for 2 simple reasons.....
1. Argon is a 13 wire install... d2ckey is approx 30 wires!!
2. Argon is upgradeable and reminds me alot of Yowii even though its a different company.
I have installed my Yowii modchip but i have to wait a week or two for the Argon modchip because its very new.
Installing the Yowii chip was probably one of the easiest soldering jobs i've ever done.
Mostly thanks to the tutorials on the Yowii website. I dont think i've been more impressed by something as simple as a set of tutorials.... except maybe the modchip itself....
I have done a decent amount of soldering, but cant imagine anyone having a great deal of difficulty with this. The Wii is working flawlessly. It plays movies better than my cheap dvd player and much better than my xbox360 which is giving me the 3 red lights of death (3 rlod)
I ordered my Yowii modchip from TechSick.com (One of the official resellers) a week ago. I received the Yowii modchip the very next day.
Because of that, I also ordered my Argon chip from TechSick too just this morning. I'm considering a professional install for that one.
This blog post is probably long enough already without adding everything else that i did after installing my yowii modchip, but suffice it to say that im well past over the moon and possibly somewhere over the rainbow!
P.S. The good thing about having no subscribers is that no-one can flame me for my bad jokes.
If you feel i deserve flaming... why not subscribe so you can do it all the time.
