Best homebrew setup

[Galaxyboy1998]

Hi guys!

I'm new to the Gamecube modding community. I had a Gamecube as a kid and it was my favorite console. I recently purchased a DOL-001 Gamecube from eBay to relive my childhood and have a nostalgia trip. I'm so excited! Of course, though, I'm going to mod it, which is something I didn't do as a kid.

Forgive me ahead of time if this is a question or topic that has been discussed a thousand times on here.. I specifically googled the term "gcforever best homebrew setup" and words like that, and was unable to come across a thread that gave me the exact information I'm looking for. I'm basically just trying to figure out the best way to go about running homebrew on my Gamecube. I've read countless articles, watched tons of videos, and read some threads in here.. and to say that all the information is overwhelming would be an understatement. The only products I've purchased so far is the Gamecube itself, a copy of James Bond: Agent Under Fire, as well as a Kaico Gamecube HDMI Adapter. I've been hesitant to buy anything else because I just don't know what the best route to take is.

I'm planning on going the hacked game save route, which is why I bought the copy of Agent Under Fire. I'm mostly confused about what I should buy to achieve this way of running homebrew. I understand that I'll need to put Swiss on a memory card.. can an SD Gecko be used for that? Does the SD card have to be 2GB or less or can it be a larger size? Can I save games onto that same Swiss card or do I need to have an additional memory card? Can that additional card be an SD Gecko or should it be an actual Gamecube card? Should I get an SD2SP2 for game saves instead? Will that work fine or even better than an SD Gecko? Do I only need one SD Gecko? Two?

Needless to say, I'm left more confused with all the information I've gathered than less. I just don't know what the absolute best route to take in 2023 is when it comes to this. The primary source of my information has come from a YouTuber by the name of AJ ONeal. If anyone can offer me any kind of advice or best products to buy, I'd greatly appreciate it; I'd like to start buying what I need so that way I can run hombrew on my Gamecube sooner rather than later. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read this!

[Papy.G]

Hello and welcome.

I have to say you're quite set up, need one or two memcards, and at least one flash card reader Gecko or SP2 flavour. No need to mod the Cube as you go the hacked save route.

First, you have to understand that the save exploit tries to load a GC executable off a memcard named Boot.gci. This executable can be SWISS or any homebrew converted from its .dol form to .gci. Among homebrews, you can find dedicated boot forwarders (often called DOLaunchers) that are designed to take as less blocks on the memcard as possible, and load and run another homebrew off SDcard in either SD gecko or SD2SP2. There are simple ones that just load autoexec.dol off the root folder, and bigger ones that can load autoexecL.dol if you press L at boot, autoexecA if you press A… So you can update SWISS on the SD card itself.

For the memcards: Getting at least two of them would be nice, at least one with the save exploit, and the other to be able to play 007AUF (hacked save and original save of the same game can't coexist on the same memcard). Keep in mind that with the average size of a game progress, and the max quantity of save files on a memcard (127), 251 or 507 blocks memcards are nice, maybe get one 1019 or 2043 blocks in case you use big needs games (I've read about incompatibilities, never encoutered one in person).

How to choose the SD adapter:

Either way is the same in regard to read/write speeds.

SD2SP2: You'll be able to use the second memcard slot for any accessory such as dance mat, microphone, memcard (importing characters in FFCC…), you won't access easily to the card, especially if you want to use the GBPlayer, unless you get a side-loading version. Some older homebrews don't support it, as they didn't get updates after the SP2 way has been dicovered.

SDGecko: You'll be able to use it on any GC compatible hardware (DOL-101 and RVL-001 included) that don't have an SP2 port. You'll be able to use full-size SD cards, and all the oldest homebrews.

My setup is SDGecko with full size FAT16 2GB SD for homebrews and utilities, SD2SP2 with FAT32 128GB µSD for SWISS and ISOs. I have the 3 kind of GC hardware, and using everything from RF converter up to HDMI adapter on my displays.

Also, SWISS offers memsave emulation, but I don't use that feature, so I won't be able to say anything about this quite cool feature.