Official Gamecube IDE/USB interface thread (PROJECT BEGUN!)

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 4:38 pm

A discussion about the possibility of adding a hard drive to the Gamecube (in place of the DVD drive) ended up hi-jacking Triton's "shrinking the GC disc drive" thread. I'm creating a separate thread for it now, mostly because I just found an amazing thread about this over at a different forum. It's 12 pages of TONS of info and other people (including our very own "peppers" it seems) that have attempted the IDE/USB interface. There are even some useful posts in there from the creator himself, known as "Destop." However, it has completely died off. Everyone working on it has stopped posting, even though some have gotten as far as having a completed (populated), custom designed PCB. I think they got caught at the programming or something.

I know there are a handful of people here that have programming and extended electronics knowledge who may be able to continue this project and FINALLY get some prototypes made. Marshall comes to mind first, but I know there are others. So I'm asking all of you here that may be able to pick up where others left off, for help. There's very little I can do, unfortunately. I plain and simply lack the funds required to complete, let alone start this project. So, will you guys help revive this amazing project?

The thread can be found here. I hope it helps.
The original webpage is here.

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 4:42 pm

Ah, dextrose. There used to be lots of info posted there back in '03 or so.

TheOnlyOneHeFears · Post by **TheOnlyOneHeFears** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 12:08 am

Good, I'm glad we have our own thread. Sorry again triton for hi-jacking the other one

Did you ever get my PM Electric Rain? I never got a reply...basically, I'm willing to help in any way I can.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 1:40 am

Oh, wow... yeah, I did. And I read it... I totally just forgot to reply... slipped my mind I guess.

Sorry about that... I ALWAYS reply to PMs... odd. >.>

So, you're willing to help any way you can... got any money?

What do you think of that thread? Can you make much sense of the technical details?

I think what we should do is get in contact with peppers... he's on this forum, and he seemed to have put the a lot of effort into this project on Dextrose... hmm... Maybe I'll PM him. I haven't seen him around lately though. *checks for his latest post*

Umm... his last post here was Aug 24, 2005... his last post in that other thread was Mar 27, 2005. That's not good... he dropped off the internet! (I hope he's not dead or something...) Alright, I've got to PM him now...

Edit: PM sent. Everyone cross your fingers that he responds and is willing to help us out.

TheOnlyOneHeFears · Post by **TheOnlyOneHeFears** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 4:45 am

Heh yeah, it's weird that anyone who seems to be connected to this project has disappeared off the face of the earth...maybe Nintendo had them assassinated...they do like to protect their intellectual property, after all

I'm getting money this month...its not much, but I'd be willing to spend it on this. I'll have a look at the Dextrose stuff, I'll try and make some sense out of it.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 10:37 pm

TheOnlyOneHeFears wrote:Heh yeah, it's weird that anyone who seems to be connected to this project has disappeared off the face of the earth...maybe Nintendo had them assassinated...they do like to protect their intellectual property, after all

Yeah, Nintendo probably has their own ninjas.

... *shifts eyes from side to side* ... *whips head around* Hehheh... yeah... like that would ever happen... >.>

TheOnlyOneHeFears wrote:I'm getting money this month...its not much, but I'd be willing to spend it on this. I'll have a look at the Dextrose stuff, I'll try and make some sense out of it.

Alright, cool. How good are your soldering skills? It would be awesome if you could pick up this project... I haven't heard back from peppers yet... the message is still in my outbox, which means he hasn't even read it yet.

Maybe you can be the next person to get assassinated by the NNN (Nintendo Ninja Nazis).

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Fri Mar 30, 2007 3:31 pm

Peppers said in his sig "Im done here". So he apparently got a real life in the real world.

Too bad, he was cool, like nos_slived. I'd say e-mailing him would be much better, assuming he still uses the same email address.

So is there any good info on the forum that fills in the cracks on that site? I'm too lazy to read through something that is useless to me, since I don't have a GC.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Fri Mar 30, 2007 6:38 pm

Oh, yep. He did leave. He even made an "I'm leaving" thread.

Didn't know that. It seems as though he is one of the only people to "officially resign" and not come back. But... I hope he's willing to come back to help us...

Alright, I'm gonna email him now to see what's up. Wish me luck guys.

Edit: Email sent.

Turbo Tax 1.0 · Post by **Turbo Tax 1.0** » Fri Mar 30, 2007 9:16 pm

Electric Rain wrote:Oh, yep. He did leave. He even made an "I'm leaving" thread. Didn't know that. It seems as though he is one of the only people to "officially resign" and not come back. But... I hope he's willing to come back to help us... Alright, I'm gonna email him now to see what's up. Wish me luck guys.

Edit: Email sent.

he is a member over at the maxconsole.net forums i think

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 4:00 am

Okay, this isn't working. Peppers hasn't responded yet, and I've completely put my GC portable on hold because of this project. (I'm not going to **** around trying to fit the 20 foot tall disk drive into my portable if I can get my cube booting games off SD/CF cards.

) I guess we've got to forget about ALL OF THE PROGRESS that's been made on this already by peppers and take matters into our own hands. Problem: My hands have no money in them. I feel so helpless... I'm basically asking you guys to pay to build a working prototype out of your own pockets, so I can be sure it works before I figure out a way to buy the parts myself. I can't do this. If none of you guys are willing to take in this project, well, I guess I'm on my own then. Fine. I was hoping one of our master programmers here (again, Marshall comes to mind...) might decide join in the fun and make some more sense of the software end of this thing.

I have a feeling I'm on the wrong forum. There are better hardware hacking forums out there for this type of stuff aren't there...? I just didn't want to "leave" you guys. I've already created all of the drama here, I didn't want to have to start it all up on a different forum... I don't know what to do now... what do you guys think? WHAT SHOULD I DO!?

Turbo Tax 1.0 · Post by **Turbo Tax 1.0** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:34 am

did you go to the maxconsole forums to try and contact him yet?

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Tue Apr 03, 2007 2:50 pm

I can't figure out how to search for a member there... >.>

Edit: Okay, figured it out...

I found him, (he's got 968 posts there!) but I'll have to sign up there to get in contact with him. It's worth it, though. So, here I go again!

Edit 2: Ah, looks like his last post was only March 29th. He's still active there, so I've got a good chance of getting in touch with him.

R3ason · Post by **R3ason** » Tue May 01, 2007 7:36 pm

Hey, y'all can count me in on this one! Don't know how much I can help, but I'm a programmer and average with a soldering iron, not to mention I have no fear of completely messing something up (it pays off.... most of the time!). I've got a bit of money as well, if it's needed. Actually, it'd be great if someone could send a GameCube my way so I don't have to rip mine apart (notice not-so-subtle hint....).

So what happened to the supposed "GC Loader" that was in the final stages of development? Seems like everyone has gotten pretty far with the project, and then suddenly hit a stopping point that they never share with us.... Well, I'm going to go read up on the past progress to see where we stand.

@Electric Rain, any luck contacting anyone else yet??

R3ason

-Path of Neo Music Extractor-
|- http://hackedout.jconserv.net/

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Tue May 01, 2007 10:13 pm

Hey, sweet! More help!

It would be GREAT if you could help us out... all we need to do is build a working prototype, then I can draw up a PCB, and start mass producing these babies!

Dunno quite how that's gonna work, though... I can't profit off it, because I'd be stealing the guy's entire project, and taking advantage of anyone who has/might helped/help with it... I'd have to split the profit so many ways.

Anyway, I haven't had any luck contacting peppers... he's either not getting my PMs/emails or he's ignoring me... or he's dead... >.> But if you can get this thing working... it would be SO amazing...

But enough talking about how awesome it would be... let's see what we can do to actually get going...

What kind of cash do you have? What would be your max budget for this project? I might be willing to send you my GC I bought for portablizing, but I'm not a very trusting person. I'd need... insurance, of some kind... I got my GC "broken" (disk read error; took 5 minutes to fix) off of eBay for $20.50 shipped, so if you've got like... $100 to spend, you can get a Gamecube, parts, AND new tools.

Another question... did you read over that Dextrose thread and/or look over the (lightly documented) website about it? If so, how much sense, as a programmer, does it make to you? Here's the MAIN question: Looking things over, do you think you can do it? That's what I really want to know.

Welcome to the forums, by the way.

P.S. Excuse the enthusiasm, if you will. It's technically considered a good thing, but it can be annoying to some people if taken over the top.

R3ason · Post by **R3ason** » Tue May 01, 2007 11:02 pm

Don't apologize for the enthusiasm, it's good for a project like this!

I'm just finishing up my current contract, so as of next week I'm jobless for a month or so

I'll sit down and sift through everything at that point and see if I can make any sense out of it. In the mean time, maybe we can compile a list of links to useful info on this project?? That way anyone who wants to help need not dig around to get caught up.... Just a thought!

I'll let you know if I need your GC or not sometime next week.

I dunno, something inside of me says that we are gonna succeed where everyone else has failed!