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How long before someone goes all the way by designing a completely custom motherboard and transplanting the key components onto it I wonder? It's been done for

How long before someone goes all the way by designing a completely custom motherboard and transplanting the key components onto it I wonder? It's been done for older systems but the BGA parts in the Wii would be a challenge.

loopj 3y ago
Funny you should mention that! Some members of the BitBuilt community are working on this including the talented YveltalGriffin https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/nintendo-vegas.5052/ https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/nintendo-vegas...
- xcdzvyn 3y ago
  Is this seen as any less of a "Wii" than a trimmed board? What if parts were replaced with newer, functionally identical ones? This is kind of a Wii ship of Theseus.
  - bloopernova 3y ago
    Ship of Wiiseus
  - pathartl 3y ago
    As a longtime observer of the scene, no. Creating the smallest board possible while maintaining original game compatibility are about the only metrics to stick to. Usually this boils down to keeping the CPU, GPU, NAND (if exists like the Wii), and most times the RAM. There are some nuts people out there like Redherring32 with his TinyTendo project that go above and beyond just putting the components on a new board. He designed the TinyTendo which requires cutting down the DIP-packaged CPU and PPU from the NES into a smaller package. These components were only produced for Nintendo systems of the era and are the special sauce for overall game compatiblity. https://github.com/Redherring32/TinyTendo https://github.com/Redherring32/TinyTendo
userbinator 3y ago
How does a typical smartphone SoC compare to the Wii in terms of processing power? Would one of those running an emulator be even smaller?
- delecti 3y ago
  It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the Wii's CPU was 32-bit, 729 MHz, and single-core, and its GPU was a 243 MHz SoC. I briefly checked the Samsung Galaxy S lineup as a point of comparison, and it seems like the second one (from 2011) already smoked those specs. As for space, even without doing any modifications to the phone it's already about half the volume of this mini-Wii. Of course that's really just sidestepping the challenge of "how small can you get an actual Wii".
- rawbot 3y ago
  You could 100% make a smaller fake "wii" by emulating it with a smartphone SoC. Mid-range phones can emulate Wii and Gamecube at 2x resolution. However, the intention of these miniature builds is to preserve the original device, just in tiny form. No emulation involved. As if it was an official product.
- pcwalton 3y ago
  Well, the Wii GPU has 12 GFLOPS, while the Mali-G52 MP2 used in the Galaxy A14, the top selling Android phone of 2023, has 418.78 GFLOPS.
- wizardwes 3y ago
  People have been running Dolphin on Nvidia Shields since the first one came out in 2015
justsomehnguy 3y ago
People already do the strange things, like VSA100 monsters: https://www.zxc64.com/vsa100_based/0_62911_strange_god_agp_256mb_matte_black_voodoo_5_6000_alike/ https://www.zxc64.com/vsa100_based/0_62911_strange_god_agp_2...

loopj 3y ago

Funny you should mention that! Some members of the BitBuilt community are working on this including the talented YveltalGriffin https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/nintendo-vegas.5052/ https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/nintendo-vegas...

xcdzvyn 3y ago
Is this seen as any less of a "Wii" than a trimmed board? What if parts were replaced with newer, functionally identical ones? This is kind of a Wii ship of Theseus.
- bloopernova 3y ago
  Ship of Wiiseus
- pathartl 3y ago
  As a longtime observer of the scene, no. Creating the smallest board possible while maintaining original game compatibility are about the only metrics to stick to. Usually this boils down to keeping the CPU, GPU, NAND (if exists like the Wii), and most times the RAM. There are some nuts people out there like Redherring32 with his TinyTendo project that go above and beyond just putting the components on a new board. He designed the TinyTendo which requires cutting down the DIP-packaged CPU and PPU from the NES into a smaller package. These components were only produced for Nintendo systems of the era and are the special sauce for overall game compatiblity. https://github.com/Redherring32/TinyTendo https://github.com/Redherring32/TinyTendo

userbinator 3y ago

How does a typical smartphone SoC compare to the Wii in terms of processing power? Would one of those running an emulator be even smaller?

delecti 3y ago
It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the Wii's CPU was 32-bit, 729 MHz, and single-core, and its GPU was a 243 MHz SoC. I briefly checked the Samsung Galaxy S lineup as a point of comparison, and it seems like the second one (from 2011) already smoked those specs. As for space, even without doing any modifications to the phone it's already about half the volume of this mini-Wii. Of course that's really just sidestepping the challenge of "how small can you get an actual Wii".
rawbot 3y ago
You could 100% make a smaller fake "wii" by emulating it with a smartphone SoC. Mid-range phones can emulate Wii and Gamecube at 2x resolution. However, the intention of these miniature builds is to preserve the original device, just in tiny form. No emulation involved. As if it was an official product.
pcwalton 3y ago
Well, the Wii GPU has 12 GFLOPS, while the Mali-G52 MP2 used in the Galaxy A14, the top selling Android phone of 2023, has 418.78 GFLOPS.
wizardwes 3y ago
People have been running Dolphin on Nvidia Shields since the first one came out in 2015

justsomehnguy 3y ago

People already do the strange things, like VSA100 monsters: https://www.zxc64.com/vsa100_based/0_62911_strange_god_agp_256mb_matte_black_voodoo_5_6000_alike/ https://www.zxc64.com/vsa100_based/0_62911_strange_god_agp_2...