Wiikey ATMEGA8L-8AU

sure, go ahead. Just disconnect VCC, and not GND.

 

depends, but even if the chip doesnt get power through vcc,
the i/o logic may respond randomly to any inputs.
i'm not too sure if that'd work.

i'm not too educated on that chip and the wiis drive controller, but i assume its using some kind of serial bus and you'd be better off disconnecting the wiikeys data output line.

try asking tmbinc, hes an expert on the matter.

 

Instead of turning off the chip, just don't put the affected import game in your console. Turning off the chip would just prevent you from running the game.

japanese games install japanese updates, us games install us update & eu versions install eu updates.

I haven't heard of any bricking when running a game with your consoles region.

Quite cleverly for Nintendo they release the firmware updates in the same order they release the games. So you can't update your firmware to the correct version for your territory first.

smf

 

If you really want to disable the chip, use the RESET line. VCC (or GND) wouldn't work because of the clamp diodes (when IO levels are >VCC, then will feed IO to VCC to prevent latch-up damage, essentially powering the chip .. more or less).

 

If I were doing it, as I don't know anything about that particular microcontroller, would just use one of those quad microswitches and just switch off all of the IO lines (possibly attach them to GND via a resistor?), but keep VCC/GND connected.

My digital logic learnings aren't what I would like them to be. I'm used to big fat chips that have nice Chip Enable legs that I can use.