Cause of Gamecube freezes with buzzing sound
Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 10:27 pm
I have a Gamecube I've owned since about 2002. I bought it as an adult and took care of it. It's received light use over the years. I've been using it more the past couple of years.
I've noticed on at least 3 games that it will occasionally lock up and emit a buzzing sound. I noticed this first while playing Ms Pac Man on Namco Museum. I rationalized that there was probably a bug in the emulation code. The disc has a few light scratches but I did not think it was the disc because surely Ms Pac Man has been fully loaded into memory after 30 minutes. It can't be a large game.
Then I noticed it on Star Wars Rogue Leader Rogue Squadron II during the 2nd part of the Hoth battle with the Tie fighters. It took me multiple attempts to get past this part of the game and it froze with the buzzing noise almost every 2nd or 3rd time. This disc is more scratched so that could be a factor here.
After clocking in a total of about 40 hours on Metroid Prime it happened for the first time I can remember playing that game yesterday. This disc is nearly pristine.
So I'm trying to determine if it's my Gamecube or the discs.
My question: Is there a way to verify that an entire Gamecube disc can be read? Preferably on the Gamecube itself? If I could boot Linux on it I could dd the disc to /dev/null which would generate an error if there bits that were unreadable. I saw some Linux distros for Wii but only a Kernel for Gamecube. I found a kernel for GC but I'd have to basically build my own distribution to use it.
Is there a homebrew utility that will try to read/copy a full Gamecube disc? That should verify if the discs have issues.
Is there a way to determine if it's overheating? I can see the fan seems to be running normally.
I'm thinking about blowing compressed air through it. Or maybe taking it apart to clean it, though I don't think it would have accumulated that much dust. It's old but wasn't running that often.
Any ideas? I don't know whether to try to get new discs or a new gamecube.
I've noticed on at least 3 games that it will occasionally lock up and emit a buzzing sound. I noticed this first while playing Ms Pac Man on Namco Museum. I rationalized that there was probably a bug in the emulation code. The disc has a few light scratches but I did not think it was the disc because surely Ms Pac Man has been fully loaded into memory after 30 minutes. It can't be a large game.
Then I noticed it on Star Wars Rogue Leader Rogue Squadron II during the 2nd part of the Hoth battle with the Tie fighters. It took me multiple attempts to get past this part of the game and it froze with the buzzing noise almost every 2nd or 3rd time. This disc is more scratched so that could be a factor here.
After clocking in a total of about 40 hours on Metroid Prime it happened for the first time I can remember playing that game yesterday. This disc is nearly pristine.
So I'm trying to determine if it's my Gamecube or the discs.
My question: Is there a way to verify that an entire Gamecube disc can be read? Preferably on the Gamecube itself? If I could boot Linux on it I could dd the disc to /dev/null which would generate an error if there bits that were unreadable. I saw some Linux distros for Wii but only a Kernel for Gamecube. I found a kernel for GC but I'd have to basically build my own distribution to use it.
Is there a homebrew utility that will try to read/copy a full Gamecube disc? That should verify if the discs have issues.
Is there a way to determine if it's overheating? I can see the fan seems to be running normally.
I'm thinking about blowing compressed air through it. Or maybe taking it apart to clean it, though I don't think it would have accumulated that much dust. It's old but wasn't running that often.
Any ideas? I don't know whether to try to get new discs or a new gamecube.