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.
