shrinking the GC disc drive

Post by **Triton** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 8:45 pm

yea aside from the fact that the disc drive would add an inch or better to the whole thing and you cant play gamecube without it.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 12:13 am

Oh, oh oh oh!

Idea! If we (hardware hackers) can get it working with a hard drive, then would if we cut out the hard drive altogether to save space, and instead got one of those IDE to SD card adapters!? Then we could store each of our games on SD cards!

The would be SO awesome! I'm twitching with excitement here! I can't get control myself! Ahhhhhh!!!!! *runs down the street flailing arms*

Edit: *tries to find GC hard drive mod thingy with Google* *can't find GC hard drive mod thingy with Google* Gah! Where is it where is it where is it!?

Anyone have a link? Please!? *understands he's probably being very annoying* *doesn't care*

TheOnlyOneHeFears · Post by **TheOnlyOneHeFears** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 1:15 am

I think an IDE to SD card interface has been discussed, but it won't work, as the memory card port has too slow an interface. The hard drive would act as a replacement for the disk drive. I'll upload the schematic today, so people can have a look. Trust me, its incredibly complicated!

EnterTheHatrix · Post by **EnterTheHatrix** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 1:29 am

Crazy Nations mod..

http://www.crazynation.org/GC/GC_DD_INT ... erface.htm

USB / ATA mod.. You'll need to write your own loader though AFAIK.

If you want to slim down the DVD drive.. the DVD part stays stock, the assembly underneath changes. Cut out the lens sliding bay, remove the metal base, grind down everything until the laser is about a mill from the boards crap. This should reduce the board by around 2cm...

You could also do what I did for gamecube Micro and take down the heatsink and solder the DVD to the board too

TheOnlyOneHeFears · Post by **TheOnlyOneHeFears** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 12:04 pm

For the schematic, just use the link Hatrix found. If anyone's willing to produce a prototype, I'll be the first in line to buy one

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 4:36 pm

Hmm... it doesn't really look THAT difficult. I've read and understood more complicated schematics before. The hardest thing would be designing a PCB. From there, I know I can solder on all of the parts with no problem. Especially once I build my DIY hot air soldering gun.

Anyway... I'm still pretty confused about the whole thing. I need documentation. Did i miss something? Is there a thread on some forum somewhere that talks about this? It's just like... some pictures, code, programs, a schematic and a brief description about the thing... there seems to be no real... text about it. Anyone know what I mean? Also, how is there no prototype yet? There's pictures of the thing hooked up with a hard drive and a USB cable... that guy hasn't tested it yet? I don't understand.

Edit: Oh, and about the SD card thing. I meant using an SD card in place of the hard drive by using an IDE to SD card adapter. Not one of those memory slot SD card adapter things...

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:03 pm

Electric Rain wrote:It's just like... some pictures, code, programs, a schematic and a brief description about the thing... there seems to be no real... text about it. Anyone know what I mean? Also, how is there no prototype yet? There's pictures of the thing hooked up with a hard drive and a USB cable... that guy hasn't tested it yet? I don't understand.

Thats what I thought, shouldn't people actually be doing this, instead of this one guy that doesn't even show it working?

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:05 pm

Well, I was going to email the guy that made the interface... but it got bounced back.

To the awesome IDE GC interface guy, I wrote:Hello,

My name is Donald. I saw your Gamecube USB/ATA
interface page, and I'm very interested in it. To make
a long story short and prevent myself from ranting
about how awesome I think this is, I will get straight
to the point. That page is very confusing to me. I
really have no idea the kind of progress you've made
on it.

People over at my forums are talking about how nobody
has made a prototype yet, although there are
schematics. I've seen the pictures you have up of the
thing running through USB and ATA... I don't
understand what happened here. Did you actually get it
running successfully? The information on this project
seems to be very incomplete. There's no real structure
to it, and it really should be better known and better
documented than it is. Have you made a prototype yet?

I can read schematics, I can design PCBs, I can
fabricate PCBs, I can solder and I can design you a
nice, information-rich webpage if you like. I don't
know if you've lost interest in this project, or if
you just don't have time for it, but I would love to
help in any way I can. I want to make this better
known to people, and I want all necessary information
to be complete and accessible.

What exactly needs to be done past actually building
the circuit and wiring it into a Gamecube? How are the
games supposed to be stored on the hard drive? As
ISOs? Should they be in specific directories or
something? Are there only certain hard drives that can
be used? Size limits? Can you put multiple games on
one drive? If so, how are you supposed to select which
game or program to load? Is it through a bootloader
program youâ€™ve written or something? What type of boot
information is needed on the hard drive to tell the
Gamecube to boot the boot loader? Do you need a
modchip? If so, a specific one? What file system does
the drive need to be formatted in? Details like this
are unclear to myself and people I've talked to about
this.

Again, this is an amazing project, and it needs more
documentation. I want to help in any way I can. So
please, email me back ASAP and tell me if I can help.
I apologize greatly if there are some rude-sounding
parts of this email, Iâ€™m not trying to be rude, but
reading it back thatâ€™s kinda how it comes out. I just
really want to get this thing out there and I'm trying
to contain my excitement.

Don

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:51 pm

Electric Rain wrote:Well, I was going to email the guy that made the interface... but it got bounced back.

Did you try again, and then with a different email with a different domain? Maybe his email just hates the one you used *crosses fingers*.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:24 pm

vskid wrote:
Electric Rain wrote:Well, I was going to email the guy that made the interface... but it got bounced back.
Did you try again, and then with a different email with a different domain?

Uhh... *doesn't have another email address other than his Yahoo! one* *creates Gmail account for the sole purpose of sending this message* *tries to send message through new Gmail account* *fails at life* WHAAAAAAAA!!!!

That didn't work either! It's his email address I guess...

mailer-daemon@googlemail.com wrote:Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 550-"The recipient cannot be verified. Please check all recipients of this
550 message to verify they are valid."

Does anyone actually know who this guy is? Is he registered on some forum or something?

Edit: Hmm... I think I just had a good idea. I just did a whois lookup on that guy's website. As I was hoping, it has the email address he used to sign up with his domain listed there. It looks like it went through, so everyone cross your fingers that he actually checks that email address... it doesn't seem like one he would.

Added to the bottom of my original message, I wrote:P.S. I tried to send this to the address listed on your site (mail@crazynation.org), but it got bounced back to me twice... I couldn't figure out how else to get in contact with you, so I did a whois lookup on your site and used the email address listed there. I hope you don't mind.

Edit: *looks up the host of the other email address* Um... this isn't promising.

TheOnlyOneHeFears · Post by **TheOnlyOneHeFears** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 1:09 am

Wow...the guy seems to have made a prototype of something incredibly interesting, then disappeared off the face of the earth...good luck finding him, I hope he replies, this could be an awesome new thing to try.
I see what you mean about the SD card, Electric Rain. They're basically being used as mini hard-drives, right? Oh, and if the schematic doesn't look too hard for you, that's good, because there's no way I would have been able to solder it

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 2:59 am

Yeah, I really hope he gets back with me... I'll be sure to let you guys know as soon as he does (if he does).

Wow... SD cards have gone WAY down in price last I checked! Check this out! If this works, our Gamecube games can be on SD cards for only $12.99 each!

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 6:07 am

Why sd? Why not CF?

However, If you do get this thing working, I want YOU to write out a full tutorial.

Or else.

To back up the gc games, would I need to buy a new cd drive or what?

SS

TheOnlyOneHeFears · Post by **TheOnlyOneHeFears** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 10:57 am

ShockSlayer wrote:Why sd? Why not CF?

However, If you do get this thing working, I want YOU to write out a full tutorial.

Or else.

To back up the gc games, would I need to buy a new cd drive or what?

SS

SD is probably cheaper and easier to get to work. No pressure on Electric Rain then

For backup guides/general GC info, http://modthatcube.pxn-os.com/main.htm has everything you need.

Post by **Triton** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 11:40 am

most CF cards work like an IDE hdd by default tho as opposed to SD. but furthermore i dont care about all this GC hdd stuff i only care about the title, MAKING THE DRIVE SMALLER, not replacing it with a harddrive. back on subject? (if you all want i can split the hdd related posts i think)