As i have just purchased a second hand GameCube. I have decided i am going to modify it to the maximum the using the latest mods form 2022 for my 2001 machine
Picoboot modification
So first up I have decided to look modifying one using the Raspberry pico method. There are some options to softmod but they are more costly as can only get the modified memory cards or action replay discs from the states. there are other methods but the cost of these are well over £170 i wont be doing this the methods i have chosen is £14 for a complete Raspberry Pico wires thermal pads memory card and heat sync. I haven’t accounted for solder and flux as i have them in abundance the SD2SP2 PRO adapters all from aliexpress. £3,99
So why would you want to do this well there are several reasons.
- To preserve your game collection by being able to back them up
- Allow you to play homebrew.
- Allow you to play games from other regions.
- allow you to run DVD-R discs (if you pot tune)
So as I was away relaxing in Florida I was searching eBay for cheap game cubes i brought 2 one that was modified with Picoboot and one standard box.
why 2 well sniped them both by mistake so will be making them the same and then shifting one back on eBay as need to rase founds for a fiber laser. please donate if you like my posts.
What you will need to teardown you GC
you will need some special tools to open up a Nintendo product. In this case, you will need special 4.8 mm tool available of amazon
to open up the case you need to remove these 4 security screws from here onwards they are cross-head screws. see the image below.
you can now separate the shell.
Next up will need to remove the fan mechanism with 2 screws and unplug the power cable. as you can see mine is very dirty so out with airgun to blow the dust away. these are second hand boxes after all all built around the 2000s
you will now need to remove the optical drive board from the base board this is done by removing the following screws. there is around 15 of them all the same length so as long as they all go back afterwards wont be a issue. have pictured below locations.
Put the drive mechanism to one side and time to install the picoboot mod
For the pico boot method, you will need the following.
- Raspberry pi pico
- 23 AWG wiring red black blue purple and orange approx 15 cm long lengths of each
- Flux
- Solder
- Soldering iron
- Thermal pads for chips
- 3D printed bracket
- Heat shrink
i brought this kit of ali express for a grand total of £14 with all the parts
Lets start to install the mod so back to the main board.
To do this mod you will need to remove the 6 screws holding the heat sync in place then rock the heat sync carefully as not to damage the board.
if the heat sync is not moving heat the machine up for 15 mins then will come easily with out damaging DA14 which is common if your not delicate with this.
you will now need to solider the wires to the correct place on the lower board. once this is done you will need to route them to the side of the GameCube. see below instructions my board is DOL-001 built in 2001
going to start with black jumping over the 2 pin headers. Next will be the pink and the red wires, To Finish off will do the blue and the orange wires jobs done. Now it add heat shrink and route them through the board now this is done will add some Kapton tape to help protect the wires before re installing the heat sync. montage below
Now to flash the pico you can download the latest firmware here and how to install instructions as if you have dol-101 is different.
Lets get started on flashing plug usb in to pc and then Hold down white button connect via usb drive will mount on pc can let go of white button now. next drag latest version of the firmware picoboot.uf2 over to the folder drive will eject green light will come on your done as simple as that. now disconnect the pico and solder the corresponding pins. make sure you don’t have too much or too little wire
Me being a perfectionist i found this bracket by zedlabz to install the Pico on my machine. as 2 mm 2 screws and bottom bolts to machine for a nice clean install
so over to prusa slicer to make it going to take a wapping12 mins To produce
time to reassemble the machine and make sure it boots.
Format your SD card to FAT32 or exFAT. Download the latest Swiss release from here and grab swiss_rXXXX.dol file, rename it to ipl.dol and copy to the root of your SD card. it works nice and simple.
SD2SP2 & SD2SP2 PRO 2022 AND SD MEMORY CARDS
There are 3 current options on market for the GC depending on method of modifying will be how you if you were using a mod chip you would need dvd media to boot in to swiss. In the case of the picoboot you wont need the optical drive unless your booting games off it.
So will need a front end to boot in were as modchip will still mainly read from the drive and then boot off the sd.
so your my options are the followng
SD2SP2 micro sd card reader that hides behind behid the expattion port on the front of the machine willhave to remove port cover to access it easily.
SD2SP2 PRO this is simulare but had an exstention board so it can be accessed from the side of the game cube (this is the one i am going to use.)
Memory card SD reader in standard and Micro sd verisons
all pictured below.
Formatting SD Card (Important)
it has to be fat32 if you want some of the apps to work especialy home brew cheats saves etc. it gave me a headache for a few days till i did some testing. i am using a 256GB micro SD in the SD2SP2 card port the system will support bigger and when the prices drop will put a 1tb drive in there. I know were as the front loading memory cards can be a bit different.
Card structure
Download the latest version swiss and then copy the .dol in to root folder you will need to renamed the to swiss_rXXX.dol to IPL.dol this will allow the system to boot in to swiss you can also launch other systems by naming them a, b, y and x .dol not tried this yet good for the homebrewer.
Using homebrew software
This is primarily why I built this machine as have a love for old school gaming
So have added the following SNES, NES, N64, Sega master system and Mega drive, PC Engine and colecovision. there some others like PSX and scummMV that i will try come back to later
Key points:
You will need to install emulator.dol for each system in the correct Name folders
with in each folder you will need a roms folder and saves folder this will then
the SD Card needs to be formatted fat32
So far i have working the following systems.
- N64
- Sega master system
- Sega mega drive
- SNES
- NES
- Gameboy and Gameboy colour
- Gameboy advance
- PC Engine
Backing up your games
This is done with very easily using CleanRip insert disc in drive turn GameCube launch app and follow on screen instructions about 30 mins later you will have a full back up on the sd card of your disc ready to launch through swiss.
its not illegal o own back ups of your own games. its is how ever illegal to download them off the internet. unless the are now public domain for historical reasons. like a lot of old games are.
Pot tuning for burnt media
This step will need to be done for all methods methods if your going to use burnt media as most GameCube wont allow you to use DVD-r or +.
to do this you will need need a multimeter set to 2k ohms.
Deepening on model will depend on what figures you should see GC is on. DOL-001 units are usually set somewhere between 450 – 600Ω while DOL-101 units will be a bit lower at around 150 – 250Ω so if the disc is not reading try raising it a bit. and try media again till it boots correctly. as show below.
fist you will need to take the shield off the media drive
just been probing my pot with multimeter and i am getting readings that are very off I have a DOL-001 unit i think it running a 101 drive as I am read 163 ohms so in theory I should be seeing between 450 and 600 ohms were as the model number with DOL-101 should see between 150 and 250 ohms
i know its not a DOL-101 machine as i have digital output.
so i am going to tune it up to 200ohms and see what happens.
Still not reading dvd-r could be my media I’m using does not matter as still reads original games so will do some experimenting with secondary unit.
Adding HDMI Support
there are a few different ways of doing this from cheap to really relay eye wateringly expensive. the holly grail would be the av out component cable costing around £200 followed by the eon HDMI output again around the £170 mark now as i doing this build on a budget I decided go cheap with a £5 cable from AliExpress this was less than impressive as was a cheap upscale washes out the screen hard to play with but good to get me started whilst i waited for more bits to arrieve
I also invested in a £59.99 GC2HDMI Kaico Gamecube GC HDMI this is a AV plug in and play just doubled the scan lines this gave me true 521p output. the difference is incomparable but see below the images from both files. well worth medium outlay
Cheap cable image below on left hand image kaico on the right much better image.
Gameboy Card Cartridge reader addon
these are getting hard to find but as i found on sub £60 without software box or anything else I thought why not as I am going the full hog on this project i also invested in a multi game cart for fun. will also invest in a multi card for GBA as well for fun if it works.
But there’s no software with well homebrew will take care of this with GBI homebrew interface which works like a charm perfect addition for my game cube.
Broadband adapter
So this was only used for one game in total but can now be used for uploading to the game cube remotely thought this might aid with the project well when i can find one for reasonable money.
i have put this hear to talk about the theory of what it can do till i have my hands on one think i will be going to some retro games shows.
