Emulation/SD Gecko

[NeoXerO]

Hey everyone!

I'm nearing the completion of my first n64p, which also happens to be the first time I've ever soldered anything in my life and the first time I've ever picked up a dremel, so as you can imagine it's not gonna be the prettiest thing in the world.
Anyway, I wanted to do either an SnesP or a gamecube portable next, because now I have a much better grasp on how everything works.

I was wondering though, I saw a lot of GCps with "SD Gecko". What exactly is it, and how do you wire it up? I saw some people run homebrew off of it too.

Oh, and would it be possible to have a disc drive AND a wiikey at the same time?
I was thinking of having them both wired up but having a switch that, when it's on one end, sends voltage (5v, 3.3v, 1.9v, etc.) to the disc drive and when its set the other way routes voltage to the wiikey.

 

[bentomo]

An sd gecko is an sd card to gamecube memory card slot adapter. The gamecube hardware can interface with sd cards with special software.

And yes you could have a drive and a wiikey on at the same time, although I can't think of a possible reason why save for luigis mansion. If you're going that route then it would be easier to get a PAL gamecube, pal can handle ntsc signals and you could play the pal luigis mansion in color.

 

[NeoXerO]

Oh, the reason I want both is because I want to be able to use actual CDs. I wouldn't be aiming to make a small portable, just a medium sized one with as much functionality as possible.

Ok, so if I use an SD gecko would i have to mod the gamecube with a chip? Also, could I run backups off of it, etc.?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Noah]

You can run backups if you use Swiss, which you can download and use with the wiikey. Or, you can boot to your SD using SD media launcher, but if you have a wiikey, I wouldn't waste buying it. Swiss works with both backups and SD cards, (emulation, music, movies, etc.) so if you have a wiikey, I'd use swiss.