Update; Please if you want to mod your GameCube use PicoBoot by webhdx. It is cheaper and safer than the old method I used.

So I bought this broken console mainly because I have all the Nintendo consoles except the GameCube and this one looked like I couldn’t possibly damage it any further. It did work except for the controller ports but this was luckily an easy fix. I did find another broken GameCube and used the front, it was all yellowed but nothing Retr0bright can’t fix.

However, I didn’t have any games to play… and wasn’t planning on using my sealed big box of Zelda Four Swords. So let’s see if we can play a backup. Some google-fu and I quickly found and ordered the XenoGC and an sd2sp. The installation was easy and Swiss loaded up nicely. 

So I played some games but it really bothered me I still needed to use the DVD drive. So back to the search engine to find that mod chips are not available anymore and some of them if available sell for way too much. I did find that somebody was working on an IPL replacement (flippyboot) but it isn’t finished yet. But then I found the Shuriken Attack and it seemed like a good fun DIY project. So I quickly draw a PCB and ordered the parts. 

A warning though, you will have to lift a pin on U10. I have repaired broken pins before so I wasn’t too scared but I can imagine if you have never done this you probably shouldn’t try this on your GameCube. 

The rest of this mod chip is easy to build. I programmed the XC9572XL using a Raspberry Pi with xc3sprog. I used version 1_1 because it allows 1MB to be loaded from flash, the updated version runs from an XC9536XL but only allows 128Kb to be loaded from flash.

I used a tl866ii-plus to program the m25p80. And before I knew it… nope it didn’t work 🙁 It seemed I made a mistake creating the PCB but when corrected it did boot. The files provided on the Shuriken Attack website let you lunch GCOS but I’d rather launch Swiss so I hex edited the IPLboot R6 VGC version and my cube is now able to launch Swiss from sd2gecko & sd2sp. Next project is probably adding a GCvideo and a BlueRetro.

*edit* I have modified the last version to load 256kb from flash. This will allow you to use the cheaper XC9536XL to load IPLBOOT with sd2sp support. This is also a nice project to learn about VHDL so I also added a debug LED on pin 39, it will turn on if the content from the flash is successfully loaded.

Anyway, 🍻 and happy gaming!