gc-forever - Gamecube/Wii Forums

Hi people,

This may seem a stupid question, but I need to be sure about something...

I have 3 gamecubes.
2 of them are purple (older ones) and when I insert a disc game I can hear a little beep comming from the drive when the disc is accepted.
If the disc is not accepted (a non gamecube game) the drive motor stops and there is no beep, of course.

The other gamecube I have is black (newer than the other two), and it makes no beep when a disc is accepted. it just boots up normally like a normal pc dvd drive. I purchase this gamecube in 2nd hand. So I want to ask if this could mean a faulty drive. Could this be related to newer drives not featuring this beep while booting?

I like that beep, as I'm used to it. When I was a kid, I learned this sound indicates the dvd is OK!

Could I change the drive to a older one that makes the beep sound? Or is the drive associated with motherboard revisions?

That noise is purely mechanical and I don't think it's reason for concern either way. If you really want to, you can freely swap drives from one cube to another with no restriction.

It is normal for older model systems and reason for concern.
My guess is it's a system or laser check sound saying everything is good

I don't think it's mechanical, because it's a "bip" comming from a buzzer, like PC on PC mainboards. PC mainboards have a buzzer that makes a bip to report errors on booting.
The most weird is that my 1st gamecube bips everytime it boots a disc. My 2nd gamecube sometimes bips, sometimes desn't!
And my 3rd gamecube never bips at all! It looks like their drives are different, maybe because they were manufactured on different years.

No reason for concern* stupid corrective text.

I'm pretty sure you're correct toxic9

There is no such thing as a buzzer on the drive. Like I said, the noise is purely mechanical, most likely from the controller stabilizing the spindle.

Vertigo on NFGGames says
'The light beeping noise you're hearing is the machine reading the boot code on the disc.
If you listen closely to your PS it does the same thing but in a lower pitch. Most disc systems have an audible boot recognition, I believe this is because it's an audio track, most of the time.'

That's a plausible explanation, the laser goes over the BCA first, which uses a much wider pitch than the rest of the disc, but I'm still skeptical. The part about audio tracks is bullshit.
Edit: It's not the BCA. The laser is right in the middle of the disc when the noise comes out.

Yeah I agree the audio track thing is shit. I own a drive that makes a very loud beep, I can take video of it and upload high resolution pictures of the board.

boredomca wrote:Yeah I agree the audio track thing is shit. I own a drive that makes a very loud beep, I can take video of it and upload high resolution pictures of the board.

Please let me know when you upload them.
I would like to check your video and pictures!

There's no speaker or buzzer, it's a combination of the drive moving the laser sled back quickly after the disc has been accepted and the motor coming up to the required speed. As drives start to fail you can hear this sound become longer in duration as it attempts to focus/maintain the speed at the outer portion of the disc.

https://youtu.be/Yp7KiZ5lFMI
Sorry I take forever to do anything but I finally took a video with my phone of the Drive beep against one without a beep and they are both DOL-001.

Yes, it's misteirous. I think it's related to the optical drive version.
When I have some time I will disassemble bothe and look for differences!