Team Discovers Boot Exploit for Software-Bricked Wii U Consoles by Recovering Damaged Nintendo SD Cards; ‘Paid the Beak’ Exploit Now on GitHub

Alright, so picture this: WinCurious, this console modding genius, snagged some old, tossed-out SD cards from a Nintendo factory. Yeah, these aren’t just any SD cards—they were used in setting up Wii and Wii U systems at the factory. So, here comes DeadlyFoez, part of the crew, talking about these cards packed with some kinda boot image magic. They discovered these gems could fix software-bricked Wii U consoles. You gotta love when treasure’s found in the trash.

Now, they didn’t exactly have it easy. Imagine staring at a pile of broken gadgets—25% were basically junk, and the rest? They needed a little TLC. Some had their circuit boards (that’s PCB for you techies) bent out of shape, but not beyond repair. A bit of resoldering here, a nudge there, and they were good to go. That’s like repairing a vintage car or something. Once they fixed these bad boys, it was time to dig into the data.

Ah, but wait! It’s not just sticking those cards into a reader like you would with your vacation photos. Nope, they had to get creative. DeadlyFoez didn’t have the right gear to read these Nintendo chips directly. Crazy, right? So, their first genius move wasn’t gonna fly.

But, enter WinCurious with this wild idea. They used a donor SD card—think organ donation but for tech—and swapped its NAND chip with a TSOP 48 clip. They juggled these little chips onto a working card, getting the data out. Imagine trying to solder something that melts just by looking at it wrong. Seriously, these clips are so delicate! Tinning pads, reflowing solder—sounds like wizardry, but it’s more like a frustrating dance with a hot glue gun, hoping not to melt the whole plastic mess.

Anyway, they pulled it off! Unbelievable, but they got 14 cards working. Then, Rairii, another brainiac in the crew, starts poking around and finds this SDBoot1 thingy. Now, this nugget lets you run custom code on the Wii U. They call their exploit “paid the beak”—don’t ask me why. It’s up on GitHub if you’re curious.

This SDBoot1 magic can revive almost any bricked Wii U unless it’s got the worst kind of problems like real-deal hardware failures. But there’s a catch: you still need some special doodads—like a rare Nintendo jig or a Raspberry Pi Pico—to get your console to boot from the SD card. It’s like needing a special key to unlock a secret menu.

Once you’ve got the setup right, you can pretty much do what you want with the Wii U. And if you’re feeling super adventurous, there’s this mod chip, de_Fuse, that can even save Seeprom failures. Although, fair warning—it’s not for the faint-hearted tinkerer. This makes dabbling with Wii U hardware a whole lot less scary.

So, if you ever spot tossed electronics, who knows? You might just stumble upon your own little pot of gaming gold. Isn’t that a wild thought?