GameCube Mini (not a portable)

[loudaslife]

Hello all! New user here, starting my first GameCube mod. I've never really been a fan of portablized consoles, but I love modding and wanted to do something neat with my cube. My inspiration came from looking at consoles like the Wii Mini or the Game Boy Micro. I always love seeing smaller redesigned versions of consoles, so I decided to do something similar.

Planned Features:

All unnecessary parts removed
Hard-wired internal memory card
Wasp Fusion instead of disk drive
Custom case

Progress so far:

Motherboard trimmed slightly (even less than the minimalist trim)
Expansion connectors and memory card connectors removed
Fuse replaced (with a much larger glass fuse, the only type my radioshack has)

Bios battery relocated and secured with hot glue
Controller board trimmed

SD card removed from plastic casing. Leads attached and ready to be soldered to the main board

I also mounted the fan directly onto heatsink, using screws that are just wide enough to grip the fins. It's on there rock solid. How everything looks right now:

My current mockup of the case design (the full size GameCube model was made by some random person on sketchup warehouse)

To Do:

Solder the sd card to the main board
Acquire and install MEGAdrive and Wasp Fusion
Mount the heatsink with thermal pads
Solder the fan wires to the main board
Trim DC plug to fit the case
Build and paint the case

 

[watsug]

This look like it will be good!
The SD card, is that for saving games on? AFAIK you can't save gamecube games on a SD card. Also no slot B for homebrews?

 

[loudaslife]

Oh, looks like you're right about not being able to save games on an SD card. That's embarrassing. I had just assumed that an SD Gecko functioned the same as a normal memory card. I've got some extra gamecube memory cards I can just take apart and use instead. Thank you for pointing that out. As for homebrew, I've got a softmodded Wii that satisfies all of my needs.

 

[loudaslife]

Actual GameCube memory card wired and ready.

 

[loudaslife]

I got the MEGAdrive and the Wasp Fusion and soldered everything in, but now I'm having some problems. When I power up the main board, both the red light and the blue light on the Wasp will flash once, then not turn on again. The Gamecube menu will appear, but after about 10 seconds the red box of doom appears saying "An error has occurred.". If I navigate to the disc screen of the menu before the error pops up, it just says "Insert Disc". I've triple checked and all of the solder connections between the MEGAdrive and the board look fine. I did leave out some pins that were particularly troublesome, but those were only the unnecessary extra 5v and GND pins. All of the data pins are good, at least according to Ashen's pinout. What should I do?

 

[megalomaniac]

connect the SD cardslot to the WASP and insert a SD card into the slot
then try again

 

[loudaslife]

I tried it with an SD card every time.

 

[megalomaniac]

pin29 switch?

 

[loudaslife]

Yep, I've got normally closed switches connected to both pin29 and the lid switch.

 

[loudaslife]

Well, I tried two things in order to fix the problem. The first was that I bridged all of the ground pins and all of the 5v pins together on my megadrive. I didn't connect all of them to the board at first, so I figured this might help. It made no difference whatsoever. The other thing was that while probing around with my multimeter I discovered that the pad on my megadrive labeled GND ( the one directly next to the pin 29 switch, which I did use for the pin29 switch) wasn't connected directly to the GC's ground. I read about 1200 ohms of resistance. So I soldered a wire from that pad directly to ground on the GC mobo. This made a small difference. If I turn on the GC with the pin 29 switch held down the LEDs on the wasp no longer flash, they just stay off the entire time. However, I still get the red error box no matter what.

 

[megalomaniac]

so you had a pin 29 switch but failed to determine if it was properly working or properly connected to the solder pads and if those pads were properly connected to their destinations, etc etc

...take this as a learning example...
im sure we have all had something like this happen to us at one point...
i wonder if you accidently lifted that GND pad while trying to solder...


as for your RED led issues, we can only guess what your setup looks like so we can only guess what the solution would be...why not post a pic of your setup as it is right now...
..or even better post a video of your setup showing mainboard/WASP at powerup till the RED LED appears...


it should be a really simple and easy fix because ive seen the RED LED many many times but for different reasons.