Welcome to another episode of “I bought some cheap [censored] from Japan!”
I've mentioned this Gamecube before but didn't go into much detail
because I knew I was going to make a video about it eventually.
Well I'm finally getting around to it.
Once again, this Gamecube was considered junk.
It cost me 300 yen, 330 with tax, or less than 3 US dollars
from my favorite store in the world: Hard-Off.
"I just bought a new PC, but what to do with the old one?"
"For times like this, leave it to Hard-Off!"
This ad might be 20 years old, but I mean
who wouldn't get a Hard-Off going to a store like this?
But if there's one thing that turns my hard off into a soft off it's these Harry Potter stickers.
I didn't even know Harry Potter was popular in Japan, but yeah these have definitely gotta go.
But first, let's see if it actually works.
Man another point to Japanese electronics!
Much like the $1 Wii, it's hard to imagine anything that's this functional
being sold for only $3 in the West.
But unlike the $1 Wii, it didn't take long to find the fault.
No controller input on port number one.
All the other ports work, just not the first one.
As in the only one that actually needs to work all of the time.
Immediately I was intrigued and started opening it up.
I got the top shell off before I realized I might be being a bit thick.
I haven't checked the simplest thing.
What if the port is just dirty?
I gave it a delicious alcoholic beverage, which
honestly didn't feel like it was doing much at all.
My q-tip wasn't covered in grime like it usually is.
But I went ahead and tested it out.
Oh my god, what the [censored]...
I thought the $1 Wii was a good deal, but am I seriously supposed
to believe this thing was $3 because no one even
tried to clean the controller port?
Well honestly I was almost a little disappointed.
As frustrating as they can be, I actually enjoy solving the puzzles posed some cheap, faulty tech.
Perhaps the disc drive is broken?
Unfortunately with no Japanese Gamecube games on hand, I can't really test it,
but I do have a solution for that in the form of modchipping.
Yeah, why not?
While it's open, let's go ahead and clean everything out.
This thing is definitely dusty and the plastic is a little dirty.
I even found some bugs sitting at the bottom. Gross.
I ran all the plastic bits under the tap which quickly got rid of the dust and bugs
and after it all dried, I continued scrubbing with some Windex.
This thing was dirtier than I thought.
It was nice to finally be giving this thing some care and attention.
But then came the stickers.
I could already tell these were going to be stuck on pretty well.
I whipped out the WD-40 and sprayed it all over.
Then I left it to sit for about 10 minutes.
Sadly, it didn't end up being much better.
I decided to leave it for longer, letting it really soak this time.
Inadvertently I ended up leaving it for an hour, which was probably way too long, but whatever.
The price sticker peeled off pretty easily, but this Harry Potter shit continued clinging on.
I ended up just painstakingly scraping it off with my fingernail.
Damn you'd have to be a wizard to make an adhesive this strong.
I get the appeal of customizing your stuff with stickers, but for me the Gamecube is such a classic design,
I couldn't bare to cover any of it up.
Finally I got it all off.
For the stickers on the buttons, I didn't even bother with the WD-40.
There was still a bunch of adhesive residue, but that came off with some more alcohol and scrubbing.
It's starting to look pretty good!
But some of these scuffs just wouldn't come off with the Windex or alcohol on its own.
I decided to steal a page from the 8-Bit Guy's playbook: baking soda.
Just to really get some of those last scuffs off.
Now before we close it up, I'm going to install a modchip.
The good old XenoGC.
These are designed so you can solder them directly to the board with no wires,
however since they've been cheaply cloned so many times,
sometimes the one you get may have the alignment just slightly off.
This one certainly looked like everything was lining up so I attempted a wireless install.
Testing it out with a burned disc however...
didn't seem to work.
Whether this means the drive is busted after all, or the modchip just isn’t installed right,
we’re yet to find out.
The modchip actually has status LEDs that we can use to diagnose.
They're hard to see because the drive naturally has to be plugged in to get any power
but what they'll do is light up red if it's starting up,
and then switch to green or orange once the drive has successfully been patched.
From what I could tell, the light was stuck red.
The modchip was failing to patch the drive.
I tried reflowing to no avail.
It looked like I might have to desolder and try again.
Once I got the chip back off, I looked again and noticed that one of the points
may indeed have been misaligned.
I decided to go for a wired approach this time.
Some people just jump straight to wired because it's far more reliable,
and after this I can see why.
Sadly, it looks like a trace also got damaged in the desoldering process,
but luckily I could bridge that with a bit of extra wire.
Testing it again, the LEDs are even harder to see now because it’s
mounted off in the corner, but you can just see that the LED
does switch from red to orange, indicating a successful drive patch.
But did burned discs work?
No, they didn't.
This was... strange.
The modchip was finally reporting a successful patch,
but there was no other evidence that it was actually working.
I tried adjusting the laser pot, which basically adjusts how much power the laser has,
and it did behave slightly differently when I did, but still didn't result in a successful read.
Assuming the modchip is telling the truth, that means either the drive really is dead
or there's just something wrong with these discs.
Luckily, this was pretty easy to rule out.
While sadly I had to leave my Gamecube games behind in a recent move,
a friend of mine was all too happy to let me borrow one of theirs.
And of course it had to be:
”ALL HAIL SHADOW!”
This is a test of both the drive and the modchip because even though it's a genuine printed disc,
the region is wrong since it's a US game on a Japanese system.
Let's try it out...
Yooo look at that!
Everything indeed seems to be working fine with this disc.
Great, I've always wanted to shoot people in a Sonic game.
So it would seem my burned discs are the problem, and looking again at ImgBurn,
which is the software I used to burn it with,
the media ID is CMC MAG AF1.
A fairly common media model that seems to have mixed results for Gamecube backups.
For some people they work perfectly fine, for others not at all,
and it seems like we're in the latter boat.
What I decided to try was burning to a full-size DVD.
Now I can burn with Verbatim media which in my experience is the most reliable by far.
People actually use to do this pretty frequently because even back in the day
it was harder to find good quality mini-DVD media than regular sized ones.
Even though the drive naturally won't read beyond the diameter or a mini-DVD,
it's okay because we didn't write beyond the diameter of a mini-DVD either.
Let's see if this works...
Yep that's all it was.
Looks like this now-modded Gamecube works 100% perfectly.
However, there is a caveat.
While full-size DVDs will technically work, once it's all put back together, they simply won't fit in the top shell
You can 3D print a replacement top shell that will fit a full size DVD.
That would be cool, but as we’ve established I don’t actually have a 3D printer.
Also unless I replaced the top and bottom, I could see myself getting annoyed
if the two pieces don’t match perfectly.
I also seem to remember top shells were fairly easy to buy back in the day,
but they don’t seem to be anymore.
Either I’m misremembering or they are just long gone.
And speaking of long gone,
Seems like mini-DVDs by and large aren't being manufactured anymore.
Outside of a handful of unbranded Chinese discs, which I'm not super optimistic about,
it seems most of what you can buy now is just old stock that never got sold.
And I guess it's true that cameras and DVD singles that used to sell mini-DVDs
are no longer really around.
And it's not like a disc manufacturing operation can survive on the back of a few Gamecube hackers.
Honestly this all sounds kind of bleak, no top shells anymore, no mini-DVDs anymore,
but when you look at the landscape it actually isn't. It simply just evolved.
The Gamecube, Wii, and Wii U can all play Gamecube ISOs straight from USB or SD card with the right mods.
The Wii U with Nintendont,
the Wii with pretty much any ISO loader,
and the Gamecube with the GC Loader - an optical drive emulator that completely replaces
the optical drive with an SD card reader, also without any soldering.
While it's more expensive than a modchip, you do save money and time not having to
buy and burn increasingly rare mini-DVDs,
so I'd say this is kind of the ultimate solution.
While the modchip was useful as far as determining whether the drive
worked or not, it turns out there are just better ways to play Gamecube nowadays.
So maybe one day I’ll install a GC Loader in here in the future.
If you’d like to see me install and review one of those, let me know in the comments down below.
Otherwise, I think we can officially call this Gamecube fully fixed.
While the repair may have been fairly uneventful, it just makes that 300 yen price tag
all the more incredible.
Anyways, thank you guys so much for watching.
I hope you enjoyed this video and I’ll see you all in the next one.
Bye guys!