Sunday, August 6, 2017

Boxed- and Cubed- In

So yeah, that mod chip I installed in my GameCube? It's not doing me a damn bit of good. I know the Cube recognizes it, because this screen appears when I hold down the start button on boot-up.



Yet when I try to run burned discs, this is what I get.



That's despite using the Ritek discs recommended by other modders, cleaning the laser lens with isopropyl alcohol, and adjusting the laser pot that Nintendo so thoughtfully buried under a dense mass of circuitry and metal shielding. So this is probably what my GameCube will look like in another fifteen minutes.


image from Game Podunk. I have no
idea what that is, but the pic was useful.
Did I mention that I have a Game Boy Player coming in the mail tomorrow? It didn't come with the start-up disc, but I didn't think I'd need it, because I could just burn a copy of the Game Boy Interface and pop it into my modded GameCube! Heh. Heh heh. Screw me sideways with a sequoia.

Speaking of dumb ideas, I just ordered a classic Xbox from ShopGoodwill, in the hope that I could mod it. You know, because the last mod I attempted worked so well for me. On the plus side, it was just thirty dollars with shipping (just ten dollars more than the GameCube stand I'll be getting in the mail soon), and it comes with OutRun 2. If the system works at all, it'll be worth the price. If I can make the mod stick (and I've successfully done this one in the past), it'll be worth a lot more, because you can do a ton of things with the old tank once you've convinced it of its full potential. Pop in a high capacity hard drive and cram it with Xbox games, play hundreds of old arcade and console titles with emulators... the sky's the limit, as long as the sky is only 64 megabytes high.

Wish me luck. Boy could I use it.

4 comments:

  1. Good luck, Jess! And sorry for your current modding troubles. Hopefully things improve in that regard during your next go-round.

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    1. I found a stopgap solution... there's a way to install the Game Boy Interface to a GameCube memory card, along with an exploit that turns an official disc into a backdoor for homebrew. It's messy, but it works.

      (By the way, did you know that a 59 block memory card is only 512K in size? That's like, maybe a third of what can be put on a floppy disk. It's SMALL is my point. It's a wonder anything fits on it.)

      The problem I'm having NOW is that GBA games look kind of crummy with composite cables. My gutter GameCube doesn't have a digital A/V port, so the best I'm gonna get out of it is S-video. Hopefully it'll be enough.

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  2. I'm all thumbs when it comes to modding so I'm currently using the Gamecube SD Media Launcher to run the Gameboy Interface software:

    https://www.codejunkies.com/Products/SD-Media-Launcher__EF000580V.aspx

    I haven't tried burning discs yet, but homebrew through the SD card is pretty cool.

    Best of luck with the Xbox!

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    Replies
    1. Like I was telling Ochalla, I used GCMM to install an exploit on a GameCube memory card. The only memory cards I've got for my Cube are stupidly tiny (512K?!?), but there's just enough storage available for the exploit and the Game Boy Interface.

      It works, but I have to use my copy of Smash Bros Melee to use it. Considering its value (fifteen years later, people just will not move on from Melee!), I'd prefer to put as little wear and tear on it as possible. I'm going to try the Agent Under Fire exploit instead, once that game arrives.

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