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

R3ason · Post by **R3ason** » Sat May 05, 2007 6:42 pm

marshallh wrote:It's just a plain old PowerPC CPU, same is in most Macs.

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-ppc/
Lucky for you, it's a RISC.

Good. Shouldn't take too long to get up to speed.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Sat May 05, 2007 7:25 pm

Okay, small question. I just found out that the 'cube can read from disks at a rate of 16Mbps to 25Mbps. I can't find a CF card faster than 150X, which is 22.5MBps, so does that mean... wait *comes to a realization* I think I'm an idiot... but I'm not sure... Any references I find to the 'cubes disk read speed are listed in Mbps; note the lowercase "b", indicating bits, not bytes. Anything I see that says 150X = 22.5MBps uses an uppercase "B". So... do you guys think this is a typo, as a lot of people use b and B incorrectly when referring to bits and bytes, or do you think a 150X CF card would actually end up being like... 8X faster (8 bits to a byte) than the (already fast) Gamecube disks? I would have thought the CF cards would be faster, but these measurements threw me... making me think I had to find some kind of 200X CF card in order to actually make it any faster than the disks.

Cartridges, which use ICs as their storage medium, have always been faster than disks, so this obviously makes perfect sense... hmm... what do you guys think?

Edit: By the way, if anyone wants to take a look at the schematics and/or PCB, you can download the P-CAD viewer needed to do so here.

TheOnlyOneHeFears · Post by **TheOnlyOneHeFears** » Sun May 06, 2007 12:59 am

Whoa boy have I missed a lot in the space of two days

But that's good, 2 more pages of info means people are still here! No NNN incidents *touches wood*...at least I hope not *shifty eyes*

I'm glad marshallh has lent his advice, it's good to have someone so experienced looking in once in a while

I still think we can do it. Several people have created working prototypes from Destop's info, so all we're really doing is re-creating it. I read over the whole of the Dextrose thread, and it seems peppers had a hard time getting it to work, but managed, as did someone called GreenGiant, who got the USB part working at least. From the looks of things, we're going for a CF to IDE interface, and cutting out the USB part alltogether. Fine by me

BUT, if this does work and we get more info, I will definitely give it a go, and I'll probably use the USB port, as I'm not really into portabalising the GC, as I've already said.

@Electric Rain
UBER HUGS!!!:D Thanks for the P-Cad viewer, I was just about to ask how I'd view the PCB

Did anyone notice that the PCB was edited a bit to produce pepper's prototype in the dextrose thread? Maybe we should ask the guy who edited the PCB his permission to use that instead?

R3ason · Post by **R3ason** » Sun May 06, 2007 1:13 am

Yeah, Marshall was right on with the advice. I think where the others failed was that they just blindly copied Desktop's work, and when they got stuck, they didn't really know what they were doing and therefore couldn't get un-stuck (just my theory). I'll definitely be reading up on everything to make sure I understand most of it.

@Electric Rain
It doesn't surprise me that CF is faster than the GC drive. It's certainly nice that it is though!

@All
I know that I've been posting pretty regularly, so I don't want you to be surprised if I don't end up posting for a few days every once in a while. Chances are that I'm doing something important (like reading up on the project

). Don't worry, I won't have disappeared! With that said, I'll still try and post regularly!

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Sun May 06, 2007 5:10 am

And ub3r hugs to you too TOOHF! No... I don't think that nickname works...

How about just... "Fear"?

R3ason, I agree with your theory. It sounds about right... and just make sure you post back every couple of days at least so we know the NNN hasn't gotten you.

By the way... should I stop prying about what you do? Do you not want to tell us? It's bugging the crap out of me now.

Alright... I'm gonna go to bed now... as it's 6:00AM. (I do that a lot.) But first, I'm going to practice playing Zeal's theme from Chrono Trigger on my guitar a little bit. (I love you, Yasunori Mitsuda!

)

I'll keep up the research as much as I can, trying to help in any way I can. My day tomorrow will probably be filled with video editing for one of my client's website... on my slow 1.2GHz Celeron,

but I'll still find time to sneak off back to here and post a couple times.

jeroen · Post by **jeroen** » Sun May 06, 2007 7:43 am

So did anyone actually made this at some point?

TheOnlyOneHeFears · Post by **TheOnlyOneHeFears** » Sun May 06, 2007 1:31 pm

jeroen wrote:So did anyone actually made this at some point?

Well, from the info I've found, destop made the original prototype, and peppers and someone called GreenGiant over at the Dextrose forums also made prototypes. However, I don't think anyone's made one which could be considered *finished* per se, as there seems to have been problems at the programming stage. Which is hopefully where we come in

@Rain
I think TOOHF is quite catchy actually

Pronounced *tooooooooooooooof*, with a lot of emphasis on the *oooooooooooof* in the middle

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Sun May 06, 2007 4:08 pm

TheOnlyOneHeFears wrote:@Rain
I think TOOHF is quite catchy actually Pronounced *tooooooooooooooof*, with a lot of emphasis on the *oooooooooooof* in the middle

*shrug* Alright then. See? I'm doing stuff to help... I just came up with a nickname for TheOnlyOneHeFears. That helps us by... er... making it take less time to type his name while posting... so that we... um... can spend more time working on the... project itself...?

>.>

R3ason · Post by **R3ason** » Sun May 06, 2007 5:57 pm

@Electric Rain
Oh please, *rolls eyes*.... Naw, just kidding!

This is so awesome to be working with a group of people with a sense of humor. I think we're all going to have a great time on this

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Sun May 06, 2007 6:13 pm

That's what's so great about these forums! Minimal flaming with maximum fun!

(The fact that you're pointing this out makes it seem like you work with boring, stuck-up snobs or something, when you do these... "contracts" you speak of... hmm...

)

(I'm waiting for my video to encode, so I have time to make this quick post.

)

I know this is getting a little (a lot) ahead of the game here, but I was just wondering... if we get this thing working (already ahead of the game), how would we be able to sell it? I won't talk about how profits are split and such, as that will depend on who helps with what how much. But what I'm wondering is, could we actually sell these pre-programmed, or not, since it's technically Destops original code? As I understand it, R3ason is "changing" the code a bit, but will it be enough to justify making a profit off it? Would Destop even care? Or, would we just have to sell them with empty PROMs, and say "Sorry, you'll have to program it yourself... but you can buy this cheap JTAG programmer from us to do it with if you like!"

What do you guys think? I know, this is not something that should be thought too hardly about quite yet... but I can't get it off my mind... Marshall said not to bug Destop with it at all... I mean... should we just... sell them programmed and worry about Destop cussing us out and trying to sue us when (if) that time comes?

R3ason · Post by **R3ason** » Sun May 06, 2007 6:29 pm

Yeah, these forums have to be the best I've seen so far

Sorry, I just keep forgetting to talk about my contract. It was really boring. Ready? *Drum roll* I was working for a company to help process Healthcare medical records.... I hope that wasn't too much of a let down for y'all

I honestly hadn't thought about selling it at this point. If we build it from scratch (everything), then yeah, we'd be able to sell it. If we have to end up using Desktop's code, though, I suppose it could be sold non-programmed. Then, it's up to everyone if they want to download Desktop's code and program the chip with it.... You're right, though, it is a little down the road.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Tue May 08, 2007 12:50 am

Wow... that's funny... This is the longest this thread has gone without a post since your first post, R3ason. After you finally told us all what your contract was for, you actually scared everyone off for fear of literally being bored to death even thinking about how boring your contract was.

J/k, man. It could be worse... you could work in a factory listening to the same rap song over and over again playing over a loud speaker, for 12 hours a day, making $3.00 an hour, and all you have to do for your job is press a single button every 4 minutes and 27 seconds. At least, I think that would be more boring...

Anyway, I don't have any new information, unfortunately. I just got another account for my web design business, so I'll probably be working on that a lot in the next few weeks, plus I've got someone on these forums who I might be building an N64 portable for... but I've got to hurry up and respond to him before he decides to go with one of our more experienced members.

I still haven't gotten any word back from Corscaria about the Gecko datasheet yet, and the message is still in my outbox, so she hasn't even read it yet.

Do we still need it, or is the link Marshall gave enough information?

My message to peppers is still in my outbox too...

Curse you, NNN! Why did you have to assassinate him!? WHY!?

R3ason · Post by **R3ason** » Tue May 08, 2007 1:43 pm

Quick update; Got my GC, which lasted less that 2 minutes in it's natural state before I had it all in pieces.... Now I see why you all want a replacement for that optical drive

Otherwise, haven't had too much time to spend on this recently. I'm trying to centralize all of the documentation we have to date, and will hopefully be posting this sometime soon.

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Tue May 08, 2007 4:08 pm

Been away too long, and missed too many posts. Thats a lot of text. Kinda sucks too, I missed some good stuff! My dad took out the router's cables(lock box

), so I can only get internet on my moms computer, or on my wii.

@ ER, My thoughts on the Dextrose thread were that the files there may help for PCB's. The programming seems really fun....

@ Everyone: Nice work so far, Since I B GON 4 A WILE, I wont be posting about this much, But as I type I'm printing out the pages of this thread to read while I'm at school.

I havent got a chance to study the chips already on the DD.

Edit: Ok, I got a lot of time on my hands and was able to read it. I wasted too much paper...Who cares!

Ok, I havent done much(barely anything at all....) to help, so, as far as programming the fpga(or whatever) Would it be as simple as running a file and waiting for it, or would you have to configure each thing step by step?

Another thing, is there a way to have some type of device connected to the gc to read everything the DD says to the main mobo?

My theoroticicalized plan:
I'll start learning about the optical drive on my own.
Then compare what I've learned to destops documents.
Establish concepts for my own design
Compare to his work
Make needed changes

Basically, I plan to fully understand all his documents.

SS

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Thu May 10, 2007 4:47 pm

Wow, I didn't even see your post until just now, SS. The topic reply notification didn't come into my email, it seems.

Anyway, um... *bump* How are things with everything else guys (R3ason, mostly

)? SS, I don't think it's all as easy as you think it is... I din't even understand what you mean by "running a file". Also, after watching the video linked to in your sig, I've come to the conclusion that you're kind of an @$$. But, that argument's for another day... I don't want to get too far off topic. >.>