Wii U Kiosk WIS-001 and WIS-003 teardown

Interesting. My kiosk console's power light goes orange when booting with eject and power held in, but no video comes out either HDMI or the AV multiout.

Do you have a Bluray or HDD model kiosk console?

 

Wow what a great find! Perhaps someone with knowledge or ownership of Wii U dev hardware can tell us what the console type means and what retail/dev hardware have for that value. Perhaps it might even be possible to convert it to a devkit like I've always suspected!

By the way what is the "CATI-CTRL" board?

-doulomb

 

CAT-I seems to be what they call the kiosk model (like CAT-R, CAT-DEV, etc). The CATI-CTRL board lives at the back of the kiosk console, seen here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/aspectag/nintendo/wiiukiosk/cati-ctrl-board-sm.jpg

 

That is very very interesting. What else is that board hooked up to though? If its hooked up to the front panel and can get the power/eject button info, how does it tell the console to boot into that mode? I wonder if its possible to hook it up to a retail unit.

Perhaps the CTRL board is able to take control of the entire system and if we can get control of it, we have our foot in the door. I would compare it to the Communications Processor found on the PS3 TOOL units. (http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Communication_Processor) By rooting the linux kernel running on that board, hackers were able to do all sorts of neat stuff with the system.

-doulomb

 

I'm not sure it's the CATI-CTRL board telling the console to enter that mode. CATI-CTRL has four wires which leads to CATI-RELAY. CATI-RELAY sits between the front panel and the motherboard. I believe this is passive board which instructs CATI-CTRL to power the gamepad connected to it when the console powers on.

The eject / power combination would be part of the OS on these kiosk models, I assume.

You can see CATI-RELAY here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/aspectag/nintendo/wiiukiosk/cati-relay-board.jpg. It's not complex, it just taps some of those front-panel signals off to a cable leading back to CATI-CTRL.

 

Yes the menu is probably part of the OS but it looks like the OS gets that info via these proprietary daughterboards.

By the way where can I find the rest of those pics?

-doulomb

 

I'm not sure the CATI boards have much to do with it. Their connection to the motherboard is very minimal (four wires tapping the front-panel signals).

All of the pictures are in the first post.

 

I have the Bluray kiosk console (Was really hoping to get the HDD model though!)

Maybe your TV doesnt support this modes resolution? My kiosk Wii U is connected by HDMI and my TV says the 'orange mode' signal is 720x480 60Hz. It just seems strange that my kiosk console appears identical to yours, and yet you cant display this mode. (If you would like any pictures of my console let me know)

doulomb, I may have been oversimplfying in my previous message - I havent actually confirmed that any of the 4 wires between the CATI-RELAY and CATI-CTRL boards are the power/eject button signals (I just had a hunch and decided to mess about!) Dont forget that the kiosk console has a different motherboard to the retail console.

An interesting test would be to connect a retail Wii U front panel directly to the kiosk motherboard bypassing the CATI-RELAY board, and then seeing if its still possible to access this mode - this should tell us if the daughterboards play any part in accessing 'orange mode'. Maybe when I have some free time...

 

That would be really cool if you could try to do that on a retail board.

-doulomb

 

with magic SD CARD, you can navigate on console menu

 

In english please? You're saying there is a special SD card? Do you have one? Are you able to share a dump off it?

-doulomb

 

yep, special card !
don't have it anymore

 

Do you have anymore information about this special/magic SD Card? (Pictures, Model Code etc)
Also might you have any info about how to sync the kiosk GamePad?

 

this is a normal SD card with something inside (i don't know what)
when you put it in console & reboot, the console open up menu.
you can sync the gamepad, log extract , change region, change language, time, ...
I had a 2Gb SD card

 

I had no idea such a hidden mode existed.
Would like to learn more about it.

 

with good dvd, you can turn your kiosk console in debug console (like RVT-R)

 

Really?! Thats exactly the sort of thing that I was predicting might be possible. I'm very excited at the possibility. Do you mind sharing what you mean a bit? If you want to keep it private feel free to PM me! Thanks!

-doulomb

 

I do not know much unfortunately
having seen him do, I know it's possible.

 

Who is "he"? What did he do?

-doulomb

 

Nintendo's guy, i can't say more