Test Wiisilon

05/12/2008 Wiisilon review by Neutral – Wii Mods (France)

Today the review of the brand new Wii modchip solderless adapter, the Wiisilon.

Wiisilon comes packed in a smart little white box:

Out of the box, the Wiisilon kit wrapped in a Ziploc transparent plastic bag:

The kit is composed of:

The Wiisilon adapter , one generic PCB with connector, one fast welding sheet (FWS) for Wasabi, one FWS for D2pro and a flat cable to connect the Wiisilon to the modchip.

The Wiisilon adapter in detail:

We can notice in the inner side the thin walls that prevent the contacts from shorts between them, and not only between the Wiisilon contacts, but also all around the adapter.

Let’s have a detailed look now on the contacts:

It’s quite difficult to capture the tiny contacts, so I had to put the Wiisilon under a magnifying lens to be able to zoom in correctly. We can see the good molding job that was done to produce the thin walls of the cap, keeping in mind that the pitch of the drive IC (distance between two legs) is only 0,5mm (about 0.02”).

That means the wall thickness must be not more than 0.2mm (0.008”) or even less !

Let’s take some measurements to check how this cap can fit the drive chip:

The distance between the wall tips is about 14mm (0.551”)

The distance between the chip legs is about 15mm (0.591”)

And the size of the drive chip case is a little bit less than 14mm (0.549”).

So, that means that the thin walls will perfectly separate each leg of the chip from the others, up to the plastic case of the IC. Thus, every Wiisilon contact will be tightly remain trapped between two isolation walls and the leg of the chip that must be contacted. There is no way then for one contact pin to short two legs of the drive chip!

OK, we’ll see how the cap will fit the chip, but before that, let’s prepare the modchip.

I don’t have a Wasbi available, so I’ll use a D2pro V3 modchip on a D2C drive.

So, then let’s solder the modchip and the FWS together :

There is no particular difficulty for that job, and I guess every one could do it easily with a suitable solder iron. What we just have to do is align the FWS holes with the modchip pads and solder each point.

Ready now for connecting the modchip to the Wiisilon adapter, just taking care of the orientation of the cable:

Well, everything is ready to clip the Wiisilon on the drive:

What we just have to do is to place the Wiisilon on the chip (respecting orientation), then press slightly to totally clip it on the IC (no excessive force required). When just placed on the chip, we can feel that the adapter is perfectly adjusted. We can then press on it without any risk to damage the Wiisilon contacts.

Personally, I didn’t use the plastic bag to isolate the modchip. Instead, I put a chunk of double sided adhesive tape under the modchip to fix it onto the drive.

Now ready for the test!

In order to show the result lively, I took a video with my camera…

Nothing else to say but… It just works.

In conclusion :

The Wiisilon solderless adapter is well designed and proposes high quality components.

The installation is very easy and secure (no way to harm the drive IC legs, no possibility of shorts).

The concept of providing a set of several PCB for compatibility with different modchip offers flexibility. It will be even much more versatile when more FWS will be supplied (a FWS for Wiikey2 should be available shortly in the package).

For the ones who doesn’t want to solder in their Wii, Wiisilon should probably be the best choice of solderless solution.