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Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 8:53 am
by novenary
I can't help you much more than this. It should behave exactly the same as a real xenogc, so this is what you get. Do try to adjust your pot, that could help a lot.
I'd recommend just burning a Swiss disc and playing your games off of an SD card.

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 2:30 pm
by fodder
Streetwalker wrote:
Sat Jan 12, 2019 8:53 am
I can't help you much more than this. It should behave exactly the same as a real xenogc, so this is what you get. Do try to adjust your pot, that could help a lot.
I'd recommend just burning a Swiss disc and playing your games off of an SD card.
Alright :)
Thanks again, I've managed to work a lot of stuff out, I made an SD adapter and fixed the sound on that system pretty easily.

Also, out of pure curiosity, I tried building the kernel.img but I replaced XenoShell.bin with iplboot_xeno.bin that was included in the zip you sent, and it seemes to work exactly like XenoShell, maybe there are hidden features but I am not sure what they would be triggered by. Did you have plans to do something with iplboot_xeno? I notice it's a lot larger than XenoShell

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 4:30 pm
by novenary
It's just a build of iplboot, if it actually works then it should load ipl.dol from your SD card without needing to use a homebrew disc (it does need a disc in the drive to work though).

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 5:30 pm
by fodder
Streetwalker wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 4:30 pm
It's just a build of iplboot, if it actually works then it should load ipl.dol from your SD card without needing to use a homebrew disc (it does need a disc in the drive to work though).
Ah I see, that sounds like a cool idea. I tried putting swiss on my SD root and renaming it to ipl.dol, didn't seem to load, but that could be something to do with how my stuff is setup up since nothing appears when I hold start (just freezes on a black screen) etc

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 8:15 pm
by novenary
I don't really plan on doing anything with it though, there are better entry points to work on than the drive's debug connector (IPL replacement, ODE).

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 10:13 am
by fodder
Sorry, I know you said you can't help much more, but I was trying to look in to why it doesn't seem to work with retail games, and it looks like it doesnt inject whatever code is normally injected to patch the drive, as 85% when there is a retail game in, the green ACT LED does not turn on, and the disc either spins forever or stops spinning very soon after the system is turned on.

The weird thing is that it sometimes does work fine, and it does inject the code (or whatever the green LED turning on for a few seconds at the end of the GC animation means), and the game loads up perfectly and quickly.

I checked my pot and adjusted it to 199 ohms, and backups load fine, as well as retail games when the code is injected or when I just disable the xenopie by taking the SD card so I dont think it is that. It just seems like it doesn't want to work most of the time when a retail game is detected. In my experience it has worked 100% of the time on backup games.

With all of that being said (sorry lol), could it be the version of Linux being used? I am using the most recent Raspbian stretch lite. I tried some random Arch Arm distro I found, and it seemed to load once, but did not load anything after that first success.

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 12:31 pm
by novenary
Linux is completely out of the equation with xenopie, you only need to install it to your sd card for the GPU boot blobs which are required to load both Linux and bare metal kernels. The only advice I can give you is triple-check your wiring again. It's really weird that it's only misbehaving with originals though. I don't think that'll help, but what version does Swiss tell you your drive is?

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 7:09 pm
by fodder
Ah I see, that makes sense. And yeah I checked my wiring and reflowed the solder joints where I thought it looked iffy and it is doing the same thing. Swiss says:

DVD Drive 06 2001/08 (61)

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2019 10:34 am
by novenary
Well, that's all I can do for you. You said you have a "real" xeno on the way, wait for that and see if that changes anything. It'd be strange but I wouldn't be surprised.

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2019 5:21 pm
by fodder
Well, I have come with something possibly useful for once.

This is a very good alternative to an actual XenoGC IMO if done with a Raspberry Pi Zero. An electronics store called Microcenter near me sells Pi Zero 1.3's (or Pi Zero W's if in stock) for $5 USD. You can pick up a crappy 16GB Microcenter branded SDHC card for around $4 as well if needed. That's only $9 for a possibly highly upgradable GameCube modchip that fits inside of the case. The best part is that you don't need to wait weeks for it to arrive!

I just finished installing a Pi Zero 1.3 in another DOL-101 GameCube that I picked up. It fits right behind the game controller board (insulated with electrical tape of course). Originally I tried having it rest in the serial port slot for super easy accessibility but it didn't work for some reason. It wasn't my wiring or anything, I think it might have been interference or something. I know next to nothing about this stuff, but I'm guessing it was easy to interfere with as I was using 30AWG stranded wire with silicone tubing.

Either way, it being behind the controller ports is still super easy to access if I need to change what's on the SD card etc. I think this is legitimately a very viable alternative to a XenoGC if you have a place to get Pi Zeros for cheap.

Here is what I ended up on for xenopie for the Pi Zero. I think all I had that had to be changed were the things for the LED. It uses the same processor as the original Pi so it's based off of your first xenopie release.

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2019 11:51 am
by novenary
Nice, good job with that. :)

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Thu May 16, 2019 12:44 pm
by RyoHazuki123
Do i need to compile kernel.img or should i just swap it with the raspbian one? If you could send me the compiled file i would be grateful.

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Thu May 16, 2019 5:05 pm
by RyoHazuki123
Just tried this method using rpi 3, i've renamed to kernel7 and when i start a backup it stays on the GameCube startup screen frozen while the disc is spinning.

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2020 2:22 pm
by GKaPL
Hi, can we use rpi 3b+ for that? I read that is unavailble long time ago, but maybe there is some changes?

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2020 4:01 pm
by andre104623
Very nice I’m still using a yet another usb gecko I made when it first came out. But unfortunately mini dvd-r is gone and what you can find is ridiculously expensive 4 dollars a disc so sd gecko/sp2 will have to do but we really need a wasp/wiikey clone and no not the gcloader because 1 it’s scarcely made and 2 it runs on a Spartan-6 which is expensive I believe if we can clone a wasp/wiikey we could get board fully populated and ready to go for the same price as a hyper boot maybe less if we could use a cheaper FPGA/clpd.

I still think this is really cool but I dusted off my qoob pro and viper gc cubes and I could not get any ridata mini dvds they are discontinued I got some 50 pack injet mini dvd-r from amazon which were 75 cents a piece and there hit and miss my qoob isn’t picky but my viper I had to turn down the pot to 0 almost and they just aren’t reliable so I find myself using sp2 almost all the time which sucks because no matter what the video cracks and pops loading sucks.

I have 2 ide-exi but no ide hard drives but from using them years ago still same problems sometimes worst but at least audio stream is working on both sp2, sd gecko, and ide-exi but haven’t tried it myself I also have the first version ide-exi and mega’s design which is a little faster from what I remember. Basically we need a device that loads games and brew from the dvd port or the gba port which from what I understand is just as fast if not faster

Re: Streetwalrus's first GameCube

Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2020 5:18 pm
by Extrems
Try SD Card Adapters with Swiss v0.5r870. The IDE-EXI V2 got a similar enhancement in v0.5r867.