The (Dead?) Gamecube > IDE mod...

http://nintendo-scene.com/827

Only just found that, both the open-source one and the propietry one sound good.

I'm no good with FPGAs or soldering 100s of pins on them either so I'm not even going to attempt to make one, but the one with network via control port sounds cool (also sounds like it'd never work).

What are your opinions on this?
I'd actually think it'd be quite cool to get that fabricated and buy one.

 

http://www.crazynation.org/GC/
enjoy

 

Yeh that's the open source one on the link I gave.

 

If your wanting to run games off a HD etc on the gamecube wouldn't it be easier to get a Wii and flash it to give you the options on that? Or am I just missing the point here

 

I hate the 'wii'. And the thrill of custom stuff for outdated systems makes me excited.
One day I'll study electronics and be able to actually create some (hopefully) decent stuff!

 

+1 cool project to take on. Just got my first 'cube. Black w/ digi port.. then found a Silver one w/o digiport. First project? Swap motherboard (and sisterboard) into the silver case with the newer dvd-drive and install XenoGC. Nothing compared to the likes of your stuff but was fun

 

Haha, good plan but do you have the digital out cable?

 

not yet ^_^

 

By a parsec.

The Wii can only play back Wii games from the HDD.

GC games run on the GC's IOS in the Wii which does not make provisions for USB peripherals etc.

On the other hand, if you do make a retail cube read off an HDD that would truly be amazing, a blessing considering how sensitive the laser is and how prone to error it will become eventually.

 

Was just looking up prices of xilinx spartan development boards... £60 for the board and £60 for the JTAG cable... Way too pricey for me at the moment! Used to £0.50 PIC's and my el cheapo programmers

 

Apparently there's a noted Wii homebrew developer (Crediar) who got Starfox Assault working on a Wii via a USB loader in his proof-of-concept video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT-4RofyV9I

I think I remember seeing that it used his SNEEK tool plus some custom IOS to get this to work.

Here's a thread where I read about this:

http://gbatemp.net/t236616-dios-mios-gc-iso-loader-proof-of-concept-starfox-assault?

 

Oh well, I just saw the stupid warez site link and didn't even bother looking/deciphering the crap.

 

Just an idea: the coolness factor would be way lower than doing the Crazynation mod, but - is it possible to connect a Wode to the GC? Since AFAIK it simulates an optical drive, in hardware, pretty similar to what the CN guys pioneered...
I'm Wii-less myself so I don't know much about the drive's electronics. Anyone looked into this already?

 

Same sort of idea, if you see on the last video, the about screen has 'FPGA version:'. Only addition is that it's also got an ARM9 CPU and runs a very stipped version of linux!

But because the Wii optical drive interface is very different to the GC (On purpose to prevent GC hacks working) then it's not at all compatible.

 

Hummm...
Looking into this more. A cheap FPGA dev board;
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Cyclone-II-EP...lectrical_Equipment_Tools&hash=item2c53ea7305
Then a JTAG byteblaster is required, clones are £15 on ebay. £40+£15 = £55.

It's got loads of I/O pins, I figure 40 are needed for IDE, 32 are needed for the GC DVD ROM = 72 pins maximum. Could even clone a BIOS replacement on in too with the spare pins...
Only problem now then is I don't bloody know anything about VHDL! Haha =/

 

You are going to want something bigger for development; the ep2c5 is fine for a final design but a real pain to use with signaltap and the other tools because of its limited block RAM and fitting will take longer because of the smaller number of LEs.

I have this and will recommend it:
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=56&No=364

If you have a choice, pick Altera over xilinx as the latter software is a pile of garbage

 

Yeh I was interested in a xilinx chip as we've got a security company here and all their custom PCs and PCI cards have the chips on, but the prices for them are insanely high =/. Humm that's a great price, $79 for academic, think they'd accept a UK academy for that?
Though I'm guessing I'd have to pay VAT on it which would make it darn expensive... =/

Also seeing as I know nothing about VHDL (yet), if I coded something for the cyclone 3, would it be an easy port to the cyclone 2?
Also I don't really see the I/O pins on that dev kit, am I just blind/idiotic? (By that I mean the other I/O pins, there's 2 headers of 40 pins each, meaning that's only 80 of 346 pins)

 

I think something like 74 of the pins are mapped to gpio (each connector fits in IDE connector which you can cut away)

The rest of the IO goes to the onboard components--leds, switches, SDRAM, flash, vga, etc... it's pretty versatile.

Verilog is beginning to be more popular, though some of the older europeans are hanging onto VHDL for dear life. Either will synthesize to any FPGA assuming you have enough available logic, and special features. For example on an Altera device to use a PLL to adjust a clock you would use the ALTPLL megafunction, but with Xilinx you have to use a DCM.

Xilinx parts are generally slightly cheaper than the Altera alternatives, but you pay the price with the software. I can hardly find words to describe how hard it fails.

That DE0 also has the USB blaster hardware integrated, you can run the entire board off just a USB cable. Very convenient. Costs more money but you will save a lot of head banging.

 

I've actually been working on building the crazy nation one recently. The biggest issue I have had is trying to get the board they designed in a state where I can have it fabricated. I had to dig up all sorts of design software to convert the files but it hasn't gone so well. It's not that important to get the board fabricated as I really should test the build first. I'm in the process of getting all the bits to bread board this out. I do need someway of easily dealing with the spartan FPGA. I was hoping to find an old Spartan 2 eval board but no luck. Worst case I might have a board fabricated just to attach the FPGA to for testing.

Putting everything together is not a problem for me. The real issue will be if there are problems with the code. I don't know much about that part of it so if it is buggy (which I am assuming it will be) I won't be able to do much about it. Still worth giving it a go.

If I make any real progress I will be happy to post about it.

 

Yeh the intregrated USB blaster is good, but even at an academic price (I can't get that now as I've quit uni) it'll cost me £85 exclusing tax... Too much =/. Never heard of verilog, shall have a quick look now.

Sounds really cool altrn8, if you get it tested and it's all working, will you be selling the boards?