Just bought a new cube. where to start

[Caiuse]

Hey Guys,

I'm a long time cube fan and I regularly get together with friends to hold mini tournaments. We normally play on a Wii and swap discs etc but I felt that there must be a better way so I went and dropped some cash on a GC from eBay. I'm a software engineer/indie developer and tinker with Raspberry Pi's and Arduino boards so I was compelled to try to find a way of making life more streamlined and that's when I came across this community.

Basically it seems like there is a huge wealth of information in this community however its a little overwhelming for a newcomer like myself so I was hoping someone could point me in some right direction based on my requirements. I'm looking for the most up-to-date approach for booting games from external media, which ideally doesn't require any hardware mods. For example is it possible to launch Swiss from a SDGecko and subsequently boot ISO for say 4 - 5 games from one card?

Thanks, C.

[theclaw]

That will work. You need a commercially released boot disc to launch Swiss. (SD Media Launcher, Action Replay, exploitable correct-region game)

[Caiuse]

Awesome, so without hardware modding to force the GC to bypass the disc check I can't use say a burnt boot disc, only a commercial one?

Just to clarify I read on some old topics that the GC didn't read FAT32 filesystem so people could only have 2GB worth of games. Has this limitation been overcome?

[novenary]

FAT32 can be as large as 16TB and supports 4GB files, no problem here. The issue you're referring to is older homebrew and SD media launcher not supporting SDHC, so with those you need a non-HC SD card which can be up to 4GB (rare) or 2GB (a lot more common). SDXC cards are also supported in everything else that supports SDHC for a theoretical max of 2TB, as long as you format it to FAT32 (exFAT won't work).
I recommend that you buy a good quality card if you're going to boot backups with Swiss, as some cheap cards tend to cause issues.

[theclaw]

Awesome, so without hardware modding to force the GC to bypass the disc check I can't use say a burnt boot disc, only a commercial one?

Just to clarify I read on some old topics that the GC didn't read FAT32 filesystem so people could only have 2GB worth of games. Has this limitation been overcome?

Commercial yes. Once Swiss is loaded, then burnt discs may work.
I don't know how difficult it is to find media readable at Nintendo factory laser settings.