Yowii Drivechip review

By CorteX

Specifications (from www.yowii.net)

· New adapter plug install!! (tutorial)

· Quick solder install

· Optional Wire install

· Mount internally or externally!

· Easily reflashable PIC 12f683 (superior to the PIC 12f629 and PIC 12f675)

· Status LEDs

· TRUE Quick solder- Precisely engineered to make installation a 30 second solder job

This chip was very appealing to me, because it’s able to be mounted externally thus making the flashing extremely easy.

I decided to buy one (20€ + shipping) and the package came at my door several days later.

And this is what’s inside:

From left to the right: Yowii connector cables, Yowii programmer and the Yowii chip.

Installation

The chip comes with the soldering wire included, the nice thing about it is that the wires each have a different color and the install diagrams refer to them.

It took me about 20 minutes to install the chip, 5 solder points. I like how the wires are really thin and match the solder points.

A picture of my Yowii install.

Altho the installation looked perfect I glued it down with a glue gun just to be safe and I reassembled my Wii with the connector cable on the outside of the USB ports.

Appearance

Time to do the testing, I plugged the Yowii chip into the cable and tried to boot Super Mario Galaxy.

Both the original and the backup loaded MUCH faster than on a Wii without a drivechip. I think this is because they come preflashed with YAOSM 1.9.

I won’t talk about software-specific features because it varies for the software you write to the chip.

My Wii with the Yowii chip sticking out from the back :-)

Wii60 FTW!

Close-up of the Yowii chip in action, altho I couldn’t capture the cool blue flashing LED on my camera for some reason.

Pro’s

- External mount option for easy reflashing of the chip

- Optional Quicksolder

- Colored installation wires/diagram

- Nice design, cool LED

- Cheap

Cons

- The programmer can’t flash normal PICs, just the Yowii chip.

Conclusion

A very decent chip with all the nice features I needed.

The external mount makes it easy to reflash the chip and the LED looks cool as well.

It’s cheaper than the Wii-Boss and kinda works the same way.

There’s a quicksolder option for this chip too, but you won’t be able to mount it externally unfortunately.

Every backup worked, no problems whatsoever.