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The Gamecube aspect is particularly poignant to me. Splayed across my workbench right this very moment is a Gamecube that has a failing optical drive. I am cu

The Gamecube aspect is particularly poignant to me. Splayed across my workbench right this very moment is a Gamecube that has a failing optical drive. I am currently trying to resurrect it with a RP2350 so I can load roms from an SD card. It was a pretty great console, in its own way.

krs_ 8mo ago
Not that you shouldn't put a picoboot or whatever in there anyway, but it's getting increasingly common for the caps on the drive board to fail at this point, causing the disc drive to fail.
- stackghost 8mo ago
  Yeah I suspect that you're right and it's a capacitor issue because if I leave the Cube running in its cute little BIOS-like thing for about 15 minutes then the optical drive starts working again. I suspect the caps or maybe the laser itself just needs to physically warm up.
pezezin 8mo ago
I recently restored my old GameCube. Back in the day I installed a ViperGC (the first modchip for the GameCube) to play "backups", but the optical drive has died. But thanks to the community, after reflashing it with Gekkoboot it can load Swiss from a SP2SD2, and from there load ROMs from the SD card! Reflashing the modchip was a pain in the ass though, the programmer required a parallel port and the software only runs on Windows XP, but in the end it worked and I am pretty happy with the results.
- stackghost 8mo ago
  I'm also printing a new bracket to put a larger fan in, replacing the battle worn 20 year old stock fan
  - pezezin 8mo ago
    The fan is a bit loud, but it seems to work correctly, so I don't plan to touch it. However, the GC has a CR2032 battery to save the time and a few settings, and that battery was dead. But in Nintendo's infinite wisdom, the battery is soldered, not socketed, and the space around it is quite tight so a normal socket will not fit. Removing it and soldering a battery socket was quite a chore, I needed to try different models until I found one that fits, but in the end I managed to do it. When the new battery dies in 10~20 years it will be much easier to replace it.

krs_ 8mo ago

Not that you shouldn't put a picoboot or whatever in there anyway, but it's getting increasingly common for the caps on the drive board to fail at this point, causing the disc drive to fail.

stackghost 8mo ago
Yeah I suspect that you're right and it's a capacitor issue because if I leave the Cube running in its cute little BIOS-like thing for about 15 minutes then the optical drive starts working again. I suspect the caps or maybe the laser itself just needs to physically warm up.

pezezin 8mo ago

I recently restored my old GameCube. Back in the day I installed a ViperGC (the first modchip for the GameCube) to play "backups", but the optical drive has died. But thanks to the community, after reflashing it with Gekkoboot it can load Swiss from a SP2SD2, and from there load ROMs from the SD card! Reflashing the modchip was a pain in the ass though, the programmer required a parallel port and the software only runs on Windows XP, but in the end it worked and I am pretty happy with the results.

stackghost 8mo ago
I'm also printing a new bracket to put a larger fan in, replacing the battle worn 20 year old stock fan
- pezezin 8mo ago
  The fan is a bit loud, but it seems to work correctly, so I don't plan to touch it. However, the GC has a CR2032 battery to save the time and a few settings, and that battery was dead. But in Nintendo's infinite wisdom, the battery is soldered, not socketed, and the space around it is quite tight so a normal socket will not fit. Removing it and soldering a battery socket was quite a chore, I needed to try different models until I found one that fits, but in the end I managed to do it. When the new battery dies in 10~20 years it will be much easier to replace it.