Gamecube not working

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That dog
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Gamecube not working

Post by That dog » Fri Oct 22, 2021 2:31 am

About 15 years ago I got this Gamecube, used it for maybe a couple years and then it started having problems. the text would look all weird at the startup screen, some games would also have text looking garbled, and others would always freeze at specific parts, some wouldn't even make it past the title screen. So I put it away and got a new one, but recently I got that faulty Gamecube out again out of curiosity to see if it can be fixed, I took a couple pictures of how the text on the screen looks like, and just after that the controller ports stopped working. So I'm posting here to see if anybody has an idea of what the problem might be with the console, It's the model that comes with the digital AV port, it wasn't used much, and it's possible that it fell off a desk once, but I'm not sure if that happened to this one or the newer console.
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emu_kidid
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Re: Gamecube not working

Post by emu_kidid » Fri Oct 22, 2021 5:00 am

Someone might notice a pattern, e.g. type of texture going bad here and know what it could be. Can you try running Swiss on it to see how that looks to give us a rough guide of what's going wrong? If you boot Swiss and all fonts look garbled then maybe there a problem with the MX chip or connections to it that result in some reads failing from the IPL? Does it fail to boot to the bios sometimes or that's generally okay?
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That dog
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Re: Gamecube not working

Post by That dog » Sat Oct 23, 2021 7:52 pm

emu_kidid wrote:
Fri Oct 22, 2021 5:00 am
Someone might notice a pattern, e.g. type of texture going bad here and know what it could be. Can you try running Swiss on it to see how that looks to give us a rough guide of what's going wrong? If you boot Swiss and all fonts look garbled then maybe there a problem with the MX chip or connections to it that result in some reads failing from the IPL? Does it fail to boot to the bios sometimes or that's generally okay?
The console has never failed to boot to the bios, I just ordered an SD to memory card adapter to boot Swiss to check what you mentioned, in case I manage to get the controller ports working again, maybe it's just a loose connection, but I'm thinking this whole thing might turn out to be very complex to troubleshoot and repair, and I' not very knowledgeable with electronics, so I might end up buying a cheap Gamecube that doesn't read discs and just replacing the case and disc drive with the ones from my faulty console.

[EDIT] Turns out the controller port got loose somehow, I opened the console, cleaned it up a bit and reconnected the controller ports' ribbon cable, now the controllers are working but the problem remains with the garbled text and freeze on certain games. Tried a few games, in Mario Sunshine the text when characters speak is legible but looks distorted, Resident Evil 4 appears to work just fine, other games are unplayable, Ninja Turtles hangs before the title screen with a loud beeping noise, and Twilight Princess just goes to a black screen after the Nintendo logo.
vickdu31
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Re: Gamecube not working

Post by vickdu31 » Fri Nov 05, 2021 8:13 am

You could try to dissemble it further and use electronic cleaning tools like alcohol spray stuff and check if any other ribbon stuff is damaged or something is loose.
Otherwise just try to look for a console somewhere can be quite cheap.

Othgerwise on ebay you can find parts quite cheap from japan but you need to identify what exactly is causing this
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