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

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:26 am

Electric Rain wrote:
Triton wrote:so will the hdd be using a regular filesystem for dumping games onto etc, something that will be recognized by a pc or will it be formatted for the gamecube in some weird way and have to interface with the pc via the board you are making?
Kinda both. As I understand it, the loader program that I compiled writes a proprietary file system to any hard drive you tell it to. I know this because I accidentally destroyed my hard drive's MBR while I was messing around with it. This is all I know. So yes, it uses a proprietary file system, and it can be written to by your PC (ONLY with the loader program), but I don't actually know if games can be loaded onto the drive over USB, though I assume they can be... somehow...

so should any PC be able to do this, or do you need Windows/OSX/Linux?

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 4:44 am

The actual program is provided in C source, so chances are it can be compiled for anything, but the one I compiled, which is available on my server, (check back a few pages) is for Windows.

Metroid fan · Post by **Metroid fan** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 10:54 am

If you can make this for cheap then I'm pretty sure that almost anyone would be interested in it... It isn't every day that something this complex comes out for a console!

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:38 pm

I just hope everyone hasn't already moved on to the Wii scene.

Unfortunately, it can not be made very cheap. All three chips are pretty expensive. The FPGA is $12.85, the FX2 is $14.40, and the PROM is $3.15. That alone over $30 just for the chips. Then you add in all the passives and connectors, and you're at about $60 for parts with shipping. Then add another $30 or so for the PCB... Though, that's including shipping and processing for one order. Multiple PCBs can be ordered at once, I suppose. If I'm really lucky, I'll be able to keep the PCB under 5 square inches, so it will only cost $12.50 per board and then $15-$20 for one shipment of boards; regardless of how many I order.

Anyway, you see how it all racks up. Maybe I can find some parts a little bit cheaper, maybe I can cut out the FX2 entirely... that will save a lot of money. Destop said the only thing the FPGA (HDD portion of the circuit) uses from the FX2 is the clock. So, a simple (and much cheaper) clock circuit can be built in place of the FX2, since most people probably won't use the USB feature anyway... I'll be designing the first board as close to the original as possible, though. I.E. With the FX2 in place.

As you can see, Marshall was right; it's going to cost about $100 for parts. But, who knows, maybe with the right cost-cutting techniques we can get it down to $50...?

Metroid fan · Post by **Metroid fan** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:58 pm

I've got a wii with homebrew but I want a gamecube portable with all my games on a hdd... That would be super nice. But I would probably pay 100 $ for it, it's worth it for something that cool and it shrinks the gamecube sooo much!

WhatULive4 · Post by **WhatULive4** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 6:42 am

I really hope this dream becomes a reality. It was so disappointing when all the other projects like this one fell through.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 5:01 pm

Hey, so I know that at least 10 people have viewed my schematic; I have a tracker on it... why hasn't anyone told me what they thought yet?

Just thought you all might like to know, I've been routing the board for the past few days now, but I ran into a small problem I couldn't fix in Eagle, so I PMed Marshall about it last night. I can't go any further until I get it resolved, and Marshall hasn't gotten back with me yet, but I know he read my message. He's a busy man.

Hopefully I'll have the board fully routed for you all to look at in a couple weeks or so, but it takes time... a LOT of time...

At least when you're not using an autorouter...

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:07 pm

Yeah, The majority of people i know who did a lot of homebrew with the gamecube have moved to the wii.

I've gone through the topic in these recent pages, and you seem to be making good progress. Remember this?:

There's very little I can do, unfortunately. I plain and simply lack the funds required to complete, let alone start this project.

Things have changed.

SS

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 12:20 am

Yes, I very much remember that; it's the story of my life.

Don't get your hopes up TOO high, I'm 99% sure that EVENTUALLY I'll get my money, but it's not in my hands quite yet, and we all know that anything can happen.

But, that's certainly not the way to be looking at things at the moment. I'm making progress with what I can do right now (PCB), so I'll just concentrate on that.

Good to see you back in this thread, SS. Hey, do you know how to read schematics? (Help me verify mine!) I've already started designing the PCB, but until I send it off to SparkFun, I can still fix any errors you guys come across. Like I said, I'm pretty sure everything's accurate (Why would I start designing the PCB if I wasn't...?), but the more eyes, the better... maybe I missed something the half-a-dozen times I scanned over it...

Hey, I've got a question for you guys... I don't know anything about the Wii scene, but from what any of you guys know, how long do you suppose it will be before the Wii has a games-on-a-harddrive mod like this one? If ever?

soundwave · Post by **soundwave** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 5:29 am

Could be a week, could be a year. There's a beta-release for USB harddrive support, so hopefully that goes in the direction of an ISOloader, but only time will tell.

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 7:32 am

I cannot read schematics worth a crap

But when it comes to actually soldering pcb's and stuff, I could probably be useful.

Sorry I cant help, but, i'll buy one when it cose time for my handheld gcp.

SS

PS360 · Post by **PS360** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 10:23 am

I've looked at the site and read just about every post in the thread. I've tried to track down people who knew a decent amount but it always lead to died ends, I tried to email the owner of the site to try and get emails that these people signed up with (because its not listed for members to view) so I can ask them to help out.

As for the site I did a little research and found out that it has no infomational ties to the owner and backped up all the data under the GC section.

I'd was poking around in the files and it seemed like they got the gamecube to accept a usb and started working on a loader which they either got suck on or quit (which I doubt because they were so close) either way there isn't much infomation on anything just overlying details that lead in the right direction.

I hope I can find these guys (especially the destop guy and the owner of the site) and possible other groups of techys that have tried this.

Leetsauce · Post by **Leetsauce** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:28 pm

It's great to see this still active. I'm very enthusiastic about GC modding, anf have done allot to my own cube.
Been researching this project, keep us posted m8. PM me if there is anything you have questions on, although i dont have any knowledge on the dev side of things. GL

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 6:36 pm

Okay, here's a good question... Will you guys be more likely to buy unpopulated PCBs for ~$20, or a completely populated board with all of that hard soldering already done for you, for ~$120 (maybe a bit less... we'll see...)?

project_failure · Post by **project_failure** » Sun Jun 08, 2008 12:03 am

120$ board.

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

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