Gamecube DVD Emulator/Replacement

[HyperIris]

Here is my GameCube DVD Emulator/Replacement finished recently.


The GameCube DVD drive port is P9 on mainboard, the P9 connected to a xilinx Spartan3s400 FPGA board, we can see the board is on the top of GameCube.

A xilinx platform cable usb connected to FPGA board’s JTAG port.

At the right side is a SY2200A ez-usb DK. the chip is Cypress 68013A ez-usb, this board connected to FPGA borad too and a RS232 debug cable to pc.

These mess of hardwares work like this: GameCube send dvd read command (DI command) via P9, FPGA simulate the DVD drive, and a FIFO in FPGA keeps the DI command. PC read DI command vis usb, the ez-usb, read DI command FIFO in fact.

so PC now get the Di command, parse the command, and write data back to ez-usb then to FPGA and finally to P9.


above is the PC server. the main problem is Cypress doesn’t supply the win7 x64 signed driver, so I write a UMDF driver myself.

Here is Chameleon running Metroid Prime (video):

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTkzNzI1NTI0.html

[yamaharacer]

looks realy difficult, but good work.
Besides that the link to the video doesnt work. It doesnt load the video.

[emu_kidid]

Nice work HyperIris

I'll post pictures of the prototype I have shortly. How did you go with the AIS stuff?

[HyperIris]

I'm not implement the AI stuff. I think the easiest way is use another ezusb fx2lp chip to do that, or append a sram chip for AI buffer (128KB is ok? dunno).

the current problem is, if you view my video, you can see the Metriod Prime hangs at MAP switching, that is DISK read error/fail. I really dunno why.
(Zelda:TP hangs at game booting, disk fail too.)

AFAIK, the DI controller in Flipper has two buffers: one is single byte "PIO" and another is 32 bytes for "DMA", may be I need check the DMA buffer FULL flag? I'll rewrite FPGA VHDL code to try this way.

[gtmtnbiker]

Looks like a really neat project. I wish I had the time to do this sort of stuff.

Doesn't the gamecube have some sort of anti-piracy check where it reads the BCA data? How is that handled?

[emu_kidid]

that check is just on the drive itself, so as far as the gamecube is concerned, you just tell it "hey, I have a disc, and it's real".