gc-forever - Gamecube/Wii Forums

I have always wanted to find out if there is any possible way to connect a GameCube or Wii dvd drive to a pc for ripping games. Stupid idea, but is it at all possible?
Edit: given the fact that the xenogc, ide exi, and other modchips and adapters exist, I feel like it could be possible using a custom chip or something else that can be used to interface it with a pc

I don't see why bother this much while you just can rip your games on the consoles themselves, and it doesn't even involve the use of any chip!

Why?

Would you cut your own leg just to be able to walk with a wooden leg?

I was actually looking for a proper answer... and yes I have all my games backed up via cleanrip

This is actually a proper answer, as long as there are ways to rip games on the consoles themselves, it's not worth the hassle.
It can be done, for sure, as long as Computer related things have common basis, and there are SD to drive interfaces around.
While it may happen that interfacing a Wii or GC drive to a PC may not be only a hardware concern, for example, you may as well be able to read Wii and GC discs with any PC drive, you'll skip the tricky physical interfacing part.
Take a look there, and see if it matches SASI/SCSI/IDE pinout, that would be a first step to the harwdware interfacing part of the question.

I don't think we could connect an NGC unit to a PC, so easily ...
but I wonder: among these 32 points of the unit, could we pin out the SD card?
I mean, install the SD in place (or with) the reader ...
someone there with more knowledge to suggest the fixing points ...?

Of course it can be done, no one has done it yet. All you would need is to expose the internal command set/registers over USB (or whatever) and then have a program on the PC to call what it needs to just like a GameCube/Wii would.

If you wanted it to appear as a proper disc with the files served to you then it'd be a lot more work but this could again be done purely on the PC if you have the previous part operational.

You can't connect a GC drive to the PC, but you can rip GC/Wii games on PC using one of the few DVD-ROM drives that works with Friidump and Rawdump.

emu_kidid wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 04, 2020 3:04 am

Of course it can be done

So, to make the emulator dolphin recognize the unit?

or just do an eviction?

I would need hardware and code, (divres) I believe ...

Diego borella wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 04, 2020 10:11 pm

So, to make the emulator dolphin recognize the unit?

or just do an eviction?

I would need hardware and code, (divres) I believe ...

You would need many things that don't exist yet, it's not worth the effort.

Registered just to answer your question.
There already exists DVD drives that can be used on PC to rip Wii and GameCube games.
Have a look here: https://github.com/bradenmcd/friidump and see if you have a drive that's supported.

However consider a used Wii is about 20$. Not sure if you want to go through the trouble purchasing a drive that's probably more expensive.

CorteX wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 13, 2020 1:10 pm

Registered just to answer your question.
There already exists DVD drives that can be used on PC to rip Wii and GameCube games.
Have a look here: https://github.com/bradenmcd/friidump and see if you have a drive that's supported.

However consider a used Wii is about 20$. Not sure if you want to go through the trouble purchasing a drive that's probably more expensive.

They specifically asked about a GC/Wii drive though. There are certainly other PC drives that can rip GC/Wii games (via friidump/rawdump) but these mostly do it through debug commands that dump the drive memory after a read has failed.

I wasn't aware of the ripping slowness even compared to the GC's performance at it, so it is definitely not worth it.

I remember my eMac with early OSX 10.2's disk backup utility was able to rip and burn some Video DVD's without any copyright disclaimer, I wonder if it would be able to do so with GC disks (unfortunately, I don't have it anymore). Classic's disk utility was well known for its copy ability so in a further past, I have copied some PC disks and CDs for friends that, for any reason, Windows or DOS didn't want or manage to copy correctly. OSX disk copy inherited that, at last in the first ported versions.

Papy.G wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 15, 2020 7:00 am

I remember my eMac with early OSX 10.2's disk backup utility was able to rip and burn some Video DVD's without any copyright disclaimer, I wonder if it would be able to do so with GC disks (unfortunately, I don't have it anymore).

I highly doubt it, disc drives refuse to read GameCube/Wii discs. The only reason those LG drives can work is because they're being fed debug commands to tell them to try and read after the drive believes that it has failed to read it properly. As a result, some of the data ends up in the drive RAM and then that can be dumped, rawdump/friidump then decrypt it too and then finally you have a proper dump. This is pretty slow and you're way better off just having a Wii with CleanRip.

Check into ProDG for GameCube. It's probably your best bet at software, at least a good starting point. But finding anyone who wants to design a board just for that with a minimum order of at least 500 is a little far-fetched.
Even though the games are programmed on a PC equivalent they never seen a disk untill pre-production as dev kits used a plunger style Cartridge to test games.
Although it is an interesting idea it's not worth time, money and effort to fabricate a solution.
Possible = Yes
Practical = Hell to the no

emu_kidid wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 15, 2020 10:27 pm

I highly doubt it, disc drives refuse to read GameCube/Wii discs. The only reason those LG drives can work is because they're being fed debug commands to tell them to try and read after the drive believes that it has failed to read it properly. As a result, some of the data ends up in the drive RAM and then that can be dumped, rawdump/friidump then decrypt it too and then finally you have a proper dump. This is pretty slow and you're way better off just having a Wii with CleanRip.

I thought diskcopy used to work in a straight track dumping way, then assumed the optical drive pendant was doing the same. I wasn't aware the optical drives didn't just have a raw track read ability/command as the floppy drives did.