Modding Overview for Complete Noobs

zack

Well-Known Member
Wanting to build a portable gamecube but are a complete noob?
Do you feel confused by all the bits and pieces of information scattered out there?
If you want some general info on where to get started with portable modding, and an approach to modding with and overview of EVERYTHING, you're reading the right thread. Here I attempt to list all the multiple parts and steps that go into a portable gamecube and explain each one to the best of my knowledge.
DISCLAIMER: For complete noobs!


1. Taking Apart your Gamecube.
Here you have two options. One is to buy a Gamebit screwdriver on eBay. These are screwdrivers or screwdriver bits that fit those funky screws on the bottom of your gamecube. I would recommend this if you plan on taking apart multiple gamecubes, or if you end up frying multiple cubes like I did, in which case you'll wish you made the investment early on.
Option #2 is to go total Macgyver mode and use a Bic pen. Get a plastic pen made out of the harder type plastic (Bic cristal works great). Take out the ink and internals so it's just the plastic, and use either a lighter or a heatgun to melt the plastic on the tip of the pen. Quickly shove the pen into the gamecube's screw hole, and firmly press down for a few seconds until it hardens. Be sure to wait a few minutes so you know it's completely hardened. That's all what she said
The idea here is to form the melted plastic around the screw and create your own custom screwdriver. It can wear out pretty quick though, so you may have to repeat the process a few times.


2. The Motherboard
So you've gotten your gamecube taken apart. Now lets get the necessary parts out - aka, the motherboard. If you're not using the disc drive, and also building your own custom regulator (I'll talk about those later), then the motherboard is the only part you need. Start by removing ports from the board that you don't need. This includes pretty much every port on the bottom of the motherboard (honestly, who has ever used those?), as well as things like memory card slots, the port that connects to the disc drive, and the AV out port(s). You may want to hold off on removing ALL the ports, so you can test things out while you build.
Please take notice of which gamecube model you have. There are DOL-001 gamecubes and DOL-101 gamecubes, and there's two main differences between the two. One is that DOL-001 boards have an analog AV out AND digital out port, while the DOL-101 only has the analog out port. The second difference is that the DOL-001 gamecubes have a separate voltage regulator plugged in underneath the motherboard, while the DOL-101 has its regulator integrated into the motherboard itself. If you're using a DOL-101 board, I would recommend using the built-in regulator and not building a custom one. For beginners, it will be much easier to work with.


3. The Case
Obviously your case is a large part of your portable because it determines the entire look of your GCP. You can get creative with this part and use any kind of enclosure that you see fit. You may have lots of cosmetic work ahead of you though, such as cutting, sanding, molding, painting, sanding.. Personally I haven't been involved in making my own case to such a degree, and instead am using the ZN-40 case from polycase.com. A pre-made enclosure like this one is another option. The ZN-40 and ZN-45 cases are both good choices for a first project, as they wont require much modifying and have plenty of room for components inside.

4. The Custom Regulator
So about the custom regulator.. I had issues with unclear instructions on this, so let me start from the beginning and explain. The gamecube runs off of four voltage lines total, all of which are provided by the gamecube's original regulator. You input 12v to the regulator and it splits it into the four voltages: 1.9v, 3.3v, 5v, and 12v. The purpose of the custom regulator is to replace the original one obviously. So why the heck would you want to do this? There are 3 main reasons:
  • 1. More energy efficient.
    2. More compact to fit in your portable.
    3. You can run the gamecube off a lower voltage! You can bridge the 5v and 12v line, and run both off of only 5v minimum.

With the custom regulator, you only have three voltage lines to worry about; 1.9v, 3.3v, and 5v.
You can get 3 small regulators from Texas Instruments that each provide one of those voltages. Basically you are combining three small regulators into one. They all share the same ground and input voltage, with separate outputs to the gamecube of course. The output voltage of each regulator is determined by the value of resistor you pair with it.

So here's some specifics.
You'll need two PTH08080W regulators (For the 3.3v and 5v line), and one PTR08100W regulator (for the 1.9v line). These can be bought from TI.
Like I said, you'll pair a resistor with each regulator to determine its output voltage. Here's the resistor values and links to the exact ones I've bought.
348ohm: 348XBK-ND
910ohm: 910EBK-ND
1.87k: 1.87KXBK-ND
Note that Zenloc says to use a 903ohm resistor, but those don't appear to be too common, and a 910ohm works just fine for me.

Also you'll need some 100uF capacitors to put on the input and output lines. Adding caps to the output of the 3.3v line and 5v line are optional, so you'll need a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 6 of these.
100uF caps: P10269-ND

If you're feeling confused on how this will all come together, details can be found on the regulator's product page, and diagrams in the data sheet will explain how to wire the regulators up. The only difference between their diagram and the final custom regulator is that you're wiring three of them up in parallel.
Also check out Zenloc's original thread on the custom regulator here.
http://www.made-by-bacteria.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=24


5. Screens
Ah, lovely screens.. Obviously a large part of your portable. A popular choice for screens is the PS1 screen. You can find lots of info and guides on modding/trimming the PS1 screen, however this screen is aging quickly in my opinion. The technology is a bit bulky and old, however you can improve the screen quite a bit. LED modding, for example, will replace the need for the screen's original backlight, cutting down on space and additionally conserving energy. Also a big pro to the PS1 screen is the built-in audio amp and speakers. This means you can wire your Gamecube's audio directly to the screen and have sound and volume control, without a separate audio amp. If you would like to have a better, brighter, more compact and higher resolution screen, however, I would recommend some of the screens on eBay. Here's a seller that I've bought from http://stores.ebay.com/njytouch. You can find some good displays here. More specifically, here's the screen I got. 5" TFT INNOLUX AT050TN22 It's a nice 5" screen that fits nicely in my ZN-40 case. Go ahead and do your own research and make your own choice though. It's hard to screw up buying a screen as long as you make sure that the dimensions work for you and that it has composite input. Component/VGA input can also be used but that process is complex and expensive, so since this is a noob guide I wont go into that here.


6. Batteries
This is where I can't recommend anything specific, because the batteries you choose highly depends on your case or just how much room you have. There's definitely things to keep in mind though. First off, I'd recommend using lithium-ion (li-ion) or lithium-polymer (li-po) cells. Li-ion cells are the cylindrical type, while Li-po come in flat packs. Besides their shape, each type has the same basic chemistry. The lithium cells will have the most capacity for their size, but the downside is that they are more expensive and more dangerous. If improperly charged, discharged, or punctured, your battery could puff up, explode, catch fire, and spew endless inextinguishable flames. But we won't let that happen... Just get a protection circuit and smart charger, which will prevent any charging or discharging mishaps.
If you haven't already, check out this site for information on battery types and how to wire them up http://kyorune.com/modding/showcat.php? ... nformation. I would also recommend checking out the other categories as there's lots of useful stuff there, not just for batteries.
So where should you buy batteries? http://www.batteryspace.com or http://www.all-battery.com/ has a large selection of high quality batteries. Since li-po or li-ion cells come in 3.7v at a time, you could have a 7.4v pack (2 cells), a 11.1v pack (3 cells), or a 14.8v pack (4 cells) Keep in mind that the more voltage you have, the less milliamps you require in order to have good battery life. For example, 7.4v at 4000mAh would give you the same battery life as 14.8v at 2000mAh. Twice the voltage will require half the current, so it all evens out in the end. Just find something with good dimensions for your case and a decent amount of milliamps. I'd recommend something over 5000mAh if you're using 7.4v.
Basically... Get some battery cells. Wire them in series to increase voltage, and in parallel to increase current (More info on that site). Get a protection circuit to protect from over charging or discharging. And also get a compatible charger of course.


7. The Wiikey Fusion/WASP Fusion
Ah yes, the Wiikey Fusion. Basically, it's a modchip originally intended for the Wii. It's a small chip with sockets for a ribbon cable, and an SD card socket. What you would do is take apart your Wii, disconnect the Wii's disc drive cable, and connect the Wiikey Fusion in-between the disc drive and the Wii's motherboard. This replaces the need to use your Wii's disc drive, and you can now instead boot games from an SD card.
Turns out, the Gamecube and Wii are so similar that the Wiikey Fusion can also be used on the Gamecube. It works the same way by replacing the Gamecube's disc drive entirely, allowing you to get rid of all that ugly bulkiness and boot games from an SD card instead. There are two main differences:
1. It's hard to wire up since the Wiikey fusion was not intended to be used on a Gamecube. The Wiikey fusion has a 32-pin ribbon cable which must be wired to the disc drive port of the Gamecube. There are multiple methods of doing so and wiring can get a bit tricky, but basically you just have to get the two connected somehow.
2. The way you boot games. With the Wiikey Fusion and its original firmware, you would have to go to the disc selection on the gamecube's menu, and press a button which is wired to the wiikey. You then press start and load up the wiikey and your list of games. ORRR, install this cool new thing called Swiss onto your Wiikey. This replaces the original firmware and allows the Gamecube to auto-boot to your list of games, without pushing a button.
Anyways there's a lot to learn about wiikey functionality and how to wire it, so here's some good topics to get you started.
http://forum.modretro.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=6003
http://www.made-by-bacteria.com/forum/v ... =40&t=2533
http://www.gc-forever.com/wiki/index.ph ... a_GameCube
Recently the official Wiikey Fusion has gone out of production, but a clone called the WASP fusion has taken its place. It's slightly smaller, has a yellow circuit board instead of a blue one, and has a different shaped SD card case. Besides the cosmetic differences it functions entirely the same, even running the exact same firmware. Any information regarding the wiikey fusion should pertain to the WASP fusion as well. If you're looking for where to buy one, you could buy from fellow Modretro member megalomaniac. As far as I know he's still in business and can give you an awesome deal, just shoot him a message.

8. Fans and Cooling
Ok, let's talk fans. The type of fan you get largely depends on how you plan on positioning your motherboard, fan, and vents in your case. If you want the fan to be sandwiched in the case horizontally, then you'll obviously want a fan that's as thin as possible without huge compromises. Also you'll need to vent that air somewhere, so perhaps that means putting your board upside down with the heatsink/fan directly on a vent on the back of your case. However if you want to position your fan vertically to vent from the side, that means mostly keeping in mind the length/width of the fan, not necessarily the thickness. Go ahead and figure out what your measurement limitations are, and then I would recommend looking through digikey's fan selection and start narrowing down your options based on the dimensions. Here's a link to their DC fans selection. http://www.digikey.com/product-search/e ... ns/1179730
If there's still too many choices, start narrowing your selections based on which fans have the best performance, such as low noise and most airflow.
Also take a look at the cooling documentation here for more info on gamecube temperatures. http://forums.modretro.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=6607


9. Controller and Memory Card Relocation
For the most part, these are fairly straightforward. If you want a memory card to be permanently built in, it's not hard to simply take apart a memory card, extract the board inside, and wire the pins up directly. You'll want to keep in mind some special pins though, as listed in Ashen's memory card relocation guide here viewtopic.php?f=36&t=7994
For controller relocation, it's not hard to guess what needs to be done. Take apart a controller and extract the board. It will most likely have to be trimmed down to fit in your case, then each button is relocated to the button on your internal controls (Assuming you're using internal controls of course). Personally I am using a 3rd party controller because they are cheaper and I don't feel as bad ripping one up or possibly screwing it up and having to start over. Also, 3rd party controllers have visible traces, unlike the original gamecube remote which is completely covered with white paint. That said, there's still lots of info out there on the official controller's traces and relocation points, and I like the analog controls better too.


10. Speakers and Amps
So about those speakers and amps... If you're pretty much using any screen besides the PS1 screen, you will most likely need an audio amp. It's a simple circuit that takes the audio from your Gamecube and amplifies it, or de-amplifies it. Basically it gives you volume control, and in most cases, a headphone jack. You have plenty of options for audio amps. Most people use a pre-built amp salvaged from something like an iPod accessory or small external speakers of any kind. Do some research to find common Gamecube portable audio amps. Remember, Google is your friend. iLuv makes some good audio amps, like the one mentioned here http://kyorune.com/modding/article.php?id=47. The iLuv ISP110 also looks decent, but that's just my opinion from seeing it online.
You could also take on the challenge of building your own audio amp, which shouldn't cost more than $10 in parts. More details here http://kyorune.com/modding/article.php?id=42. I've built this amp myself and it's a great high quality option if you get all the right parts and don't mind building it yourself. Not to mention it has some serious kick to it. With the volume on full, it will annoy everyone around you, even in a noisy environment.
Speakers should come with a pre-built amp, or if you decide to build your own like the one mentioned above, the info on which speakers to buy is listed on the diagram.


I think that covers everything. If there's anything else to add, I'll edit this later. Or if anything is wrong, let me know.
 
Thanks for writing this information up! I saw a similar post from you recently but it's good to see you've taken the time to write it up and expand on things. It's much appreciated.

Regarding batteries, why did you not mention lithium polymer batteries?
 
ghig said:
Thanks for writing this information up! I saw a similar post from you recently but it's good to see you've taken the time to write it up and expand on things. It's much appreciated.

Regarding batteries, why did you not mention lithium polymer batteries?
Whoops, I wrote this at 4am so I just forgot about that. Fixed it now :mrgreen:
 
james, don't bump old threads if you just have a question. The screen will work, but to use the VGA with a gamecube you need a gamecube component cable which is super expensive. If you've started your building, make a worklog and post any more questions there.

Also this guide should be added to the sticky.
 
jamesc4082 said:
will this screen work and what can you recommend for batteries ?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/VGA-2AV-Reversi ... 1075775010

I've bought this exact screen before. It will technically work, but beware that the LCD screen and controller board don't line up properly. Because of the positioning of the ribbon cable, they won't stack up neatly on top of each other. This may or may not be a problem for you, but you might want to check out the 5" LCD offered from that same eBay seller. http://www.ebay.com/itm/VGA-AV-Controll ... 1913032715
 
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