A few years ago I attempted a homebrew exploit on my Wii U but never finished it. I believe I backed up some files at the time but no longer have them. I am not sure exactly what state I left the console in but after that it never turned on again. The disk drive would not spin and the console would only show a blinking blue light that went red. I assumed it was bricked and went straight for defuse.
I soldered a Raspberry Pi Pico W to the Wii U motherboard following the defuse wiring diagram.
Here is where things get interesting:
When I loaded isfshax onto a FAT32 formatted 1 GB SD card I heard the disk drive spin and got a solid purple light. During this attempt the Pico was not connected to my PC, only to the Wii U motherboard, so I had no monitoring output to my computer. I had assumed I would get video output into the minute menu via HDMI but got nothing on screen.
After researching further I realized I needed to use boot1.img and fw.img from the official defuse repo instead. I flashed boot1.img using dd to the SD card and copied fw.img and the wiiu folder to the root of the FAT32 partition.
Current situation:
I am now getting a blinking purple light instead of solid purple. From the README I understand this means fw.img is not being found on the SD card root. I have confirmed fw.img is at the root of the partition.
Serial output via minicom is attached. I can see defuse completing successfully with the correct 01 02 03 sequence and Winner output, however I cannot get solid purple or access the minute menu to dump otp.bin.
My goal is to dump otp.bin via PRSHhax so I can boot IOS and fully recover the console?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Did you do the following before formatting to FAT32?
QuoteThe first thing you will need to do is flash boot1.img to your 1GB or 2GB SD Card. As a reminder it must be a standard SD Card SDHC or SDHX will not work. Since the boot1.img has a MBR header you may need to format as FAT32 after flashing. I recommend using balenaEtcher (https://etcher.balena.io/) to do this. Also I recommend checking out my video on this section to help clarify any confusion. The link to that specific part of my video is here (https://youtu.be/3s_soLCeB5Q?t=435)
thank you tzirf. Somehow I ordered a 1 GB micro sdhc card off amazon. :'(
I have since ordered a new 1 GB mico sd standard. Will test as soon as it arrives and follow up on this thread.
Quote from: tonygsunshine on Jul 05, 2026, 07:15 PMthank you tzirf. Somehow I ordered a 1 GB micro sdhc card off amazon. :'(
I have since ordered a new 1 GB mico sd standard. Will test as soon as it arrives and follow up on this thread.
You will need a 2GB card to rebuild the MLC. 1GB Card isn't large enough to do that. As a reference my guide is located here (https://www.tzirf.com/nintendo-consoles-handhelds/how-to-use-wii-u-defuse-guide/) which has further information on the full process of using Defuse.