gc-forever - Gamecube/Wii Forums

Since I have my Panasonic Q I was under the impression that it is impossible to use a XenoGC because it has a different board layout and no one knew the solder points. But yesterday I came across this: http://www.gamefreax-forum.de/hardware- ... unden.html
My German isn't very good, but what I understand is that he just found the location where you could solder a Xeno, but he didn't try it because he wanted a Qoob.

Now that I know this I am very tempted to try it myself, but before I open my Q I'd like to know if the Xeno even supports the Q. Has anyone tried it before?
Can anyone who is familiar with the Xeno source code tell me if it would work? And if not, how much information is there about the Q drive? Would it be possible to add support for it?

Lol the german post has got a lot of typing mistakes and stuff so anyway even if you're german it's difficult to understand.
Anyway it's just an idea so we don't know if the xeno would work, the drive is different. I'm not really sure but i think the Q has some other patch code in some modchips then the other drives...

Yes that's why I am asking. Opening the Q isn't a fun thing to do, so if the Xeno has no patch code for it I don't even have to try it.

For what i can see, the drive board is very similar and the debug port the same, but you have to do a wired install, because of the nearby solder points, to avoid bridging.
The xeno firmware will just wait for data on the port and respond to inject custom code, so it should be no problem if the Q responds the same way (which it should, because of testing/compatibility).

renanbianchi says here, that he/she got it working wit this setup.

In his first post he claims that it works, but in his second post he says that he never tested it.

I have just checked the XenoGC source code and I can only find drive 04, 06 and 08 so unless the Q is compatible with any of these it probably isn't going to work.

we could probably throw the Q code in there from the Qoob or GCOS

I was thinking about that too. I have already found the Q drive code in libogc/dvd.c, but I don't really understand yet how the Xeno code works. It looks like you can't just copy paste the drive code from libogc.

it's possible but yeah I don't recall how it worked either, has been some time since I've looked at the source too

Emu, do you know where I can find documentation on how the GC drive works?

I have disassembled the drive codes from libogc and when you diff them you can see that all the opcodes are the same, only some values and addresses are different for each drive version. Some of it matches the Xeno code. It seems that most of the code just writes values to certain locations in memory, but without knowing what there is at those memory locations I have no idea how to find out what it's doing. Is there a way to dump the full drive code?

TPSNT, nice work, you're part way there. There are full drivecode dumps, and GCoS 1.x? (I can't remember now), can dump the drive firmware or ask me and I'll dump mine via PM.

You're right though, all the patch codes are the same and the only thing that changes are the locations to patch or jump around in memory. There's some very useful information here: http://tmb.elitedvb.net/dvd-game/index.php/Main_Page

Heeey guys! How are you doing?

I'm new here and I am so sorry if I am bringing an old topic up, I tried registering like a month ago and it took this long to finally resolve the sign-up issue, but I came across this topic because I'm in a very similar situation myself, I've been trying to do this for a very long time and long story short I've had no luck at all, and this seems to be the closest to a solution of the problem.

I was really really wondering, has anyone of you lot had any luck in getting the XenoGC modchip working on the Panasonic Q?

Did you actually inject code from a Qoob into the XenoGC inorder for it to recognize the drive or something??

Please please let me know, i would really appreciate it and I sincerely hope you lot don't mind me posting in here too!

We didn't get anywhere with this as far as I'm aware.

I see, perhaps this may be a good time to renovate the project?

There's not a lot of interest for that, why don't you get a regular GameCube and mod it instead of touching a rare console ?

I am one who is wanting to take that risk and to be determined to make this work.

I couple of other users on forums have claimed to have made this possible, like this topic they probably injected some custom code inorder for it to work.

Does anyone here know if it is possible??

It's definitely possible. I know some stuff about the xeno, do you have a way to reprogram an AVR ?

That sounds good!

Please do excuse my noobish-ness as well, how would one go about to reprogramming the onboard chip i.e. AVR of the modchip itself? Is this where you can insert code and as such as such??

Yeah, you need to flash the chip since the Q requires a different patch to the drive firmware. The wiki (http://www.gc-forever.com/wiki/index.ph ... noGC_Clone) contains some info on making a Xeno. I suppose you already have one ready made but the programming process is the same. You need a modified patch though, I can't check right now but it should be fairly easy to prepare.

Well this is was one of the installations I did, this is also to show which XenoGC modchipo I have.

I don't think it's a clone right?

That a Q ? It sure doesn't look like the bottom of a normal drive.

You need to know/find the offsets of various functions on the drive firmware to get anything done.

https://github.com/emukidid/xenogcfork/ ... asm.c#L579 needs to be filled out for Q if it differs from the other drive that is nearly the same drive code. I have a dump of the Q FW somewhere, if not, I could dump mine. We could probably make this happen.

Streetwalker wrote:That a Q ? It sure doesn't look like the bottom of a normal drive.

I can assure you that this was the bottom of the drive from a Panasonic Q.

Good thing I took good photos of my work

emu_kidid wrote:You need to know/find the offsets of various functions on the drive firmware to get anything done.

https://github.com/emukidid/xenogcfork/ ... asm.c#L579 needs to be filled out for Q if it differs from the other drive that is nearly the same drive code. I have a dump of the Q FW somewhere, if not, I could dump mine. We could probably make this happen.

Let's make this happen emu_kidid! Can the (version of) modchip I have be reprogrammed with new functions?? I could probably dump mine if I have the necessary tools or instructed how to do so.

just because it has a serial port connection similar to a GC DVD drive, has anyone pined out to confirm it goes to the same pin location on the GC-D2 IC
or does panasonic use a different GC DX IC ????

It's the same, they even left it on some initial wii drives just less obviously.

So where do we go from here then emu_kidid?