So, you got your new Nintendo Wii and you are just dying to know what is inside. But you don’t want to void your warranty and risk breaking your Wii. Well, someone has done the work for you. Here it is, the Nintendo Wii disassembly, performed by Nikkei Electronics. There are three parts, and they are all in order below.
Remember kids, don’t try this at home. Unless, of course, you have a Wii you don’t care about. And a great system for keeping track of where the thousands of tiny screws in the Wii go.
Many of you are probably disappointed that the blue light around the Wii disc slot does not light up all the time. And many of you have probably not seen the light do anything more than flash briefly at startup. Fear not, for the light just operates differently than expected. If you have the WiiConnect24, Standby Connection, and Slot Illumination options all turned on in the WiiConnect24 settings, and you have your Wii configured to connect to the internet, your disc slot will light up when you get data from WiiConnect24. The easiest way to do this is to send an e-mail to yourself and then log in to your e-mail account and reply to the e-mail you just received from your Wii.
For maximum spiffiness factor, change the Slot Illumination setting to “bright” and leave your console off. I am not sure if the light will light up if you have the console on and you get data from WiiConnect24, but I do know that if your console is off and you receive data from WiiConnect24, the disc slot light stays on until you turn on your Wii.
I was browsing the usual video game news sites when I came across this informative 2.5 minute video:
I thought that there must be something unexpected about the Wii Sensor Bar when I found out it was only $10 US on the Nintendo Store. Just for the hell of it, I tried this out myself. My method was a little different; I used my One For All URC-9910 and its RF Link box, and It worked rather nicely. I just put my remote and the RF Link box side by side, aimed my Wii remote between the two, held down the CH+ button, and I got a shaky but workable cursor. This is a great thing for those of you who have a broken sensor bar. With some games that don’t depend on the cursor, such as Wii Sports, once you get past the Wii menu, you don’t need the Sensor Bar at all. Still, do get Nintendo to replace your Sensor Bar if it is broken, but use this trick while you are waiting for Nintendo to send you a replacement, and you won’t have to suffer through Wii withdrawal.
One extra little note for those of you who don’t have a deep understanding of how infrared technology works. Any remote should work. (TV, VCR, stereo, etc.) Just make sure it has a little bulb on the front of the remote, and that bulb is facing the Wii Remote. If you don’t hold down buttons that repeat on your remotes, you will have to rapidly press the buttons you are holding on the remotes for the Wii Remote to recognize your remotes. For most remotes, the best buttons to use are the channel +/- and the Vol +/- keys. There are two ways to tell if a button repeats. If your remote has a LED that glows when you hold down a button, try holding down a key. If the LED on your remote glows until you release that button, then you should be pressing a button that repeats. Another way is to use the remote with the device it works with. Press and hold down a button on the remote. If the operation that button triggers keeps occurring as you hold down the button (i.e. holding down the next track button, and your CD player keeps skipping tracks), then you have found a button that repeats.
As the video says, for those of you who are tech savvy, it shouldn’t be hard to create your own Sensor Bar.
Posted by Chris S 
Posted by Chris S 
Posted by Chris S 
