Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Gamecube Guts

Posted by michael on from the pg-13 dept.

CamelTrader writes: "I was runnin around the net looking for info on dreamcast controller hacks and I found this sweet site that exposes the guts of a gamecube. The pics are here. Take a gander at the rest of the GamesX site if you are into hardware hacking, its very cool."

4 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The only worry is about pirate games... by Aztech · · Score: 5, Informative

    Remember these 'wee' discs are not the same as the 8mm mini CD's you find now and then, they are truly weird custom 5mm DVD's which I doubt you'll ever find on the market unless some factory in China does a major haul. They are also double-layered, none of the DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD+RW drives handle double-layered discs of any kind.

    I doubt the GC could play games from CDR, given the fact it doesn't read Redbook audio discs this probably indicates it doesn't read CD's at all.

    Also... did you see the custom authentication strips on the innerside of the disc, try and get your DVD-R to burn those!

  2. Lik-sang had gutted Gamecube long ago by Titney · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hong Kong game store Lik-Sang had pics of a dissasembled gamecube quite a while ago, Sep 12 to be exact.
    They have a bunch of other interesting news, such as the portable screen making the gamecube if not exactly portable, at least luggable.

  3. Re:Glad someone has the guts ! by Diamon · · Score: 5, Funny
    The outer shell was tough, impact-resistant plastic. Inside was

    Rich Creamy Nougat.
  4. Re:The only worry is about pirate games... by Aztech · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They are not hardware compatible with standard DVD's, first of all none of the DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW or DVD-RAM drives are able to write two layer discs, then you have the added problem with the protection strips, and as somebody else has indicated the discs spin in an inverse spiral, that's even if you can get hold of the discs since they're a custom size and spec. This isn't like PSX games, it would be very difficult to burn these things with a off the shelf DVD burner.

    As you indicated if a relatively simply operation allows people to play dodgy games then a lot of people will go down that path, Nintendo know this too well, hence all the engineering to make the drive as non-standard as possible, even if this means they have to fab and press non-standard discs at added cost it's still worth it in their eyes.

    I doubt taking the top off the box will let you use standard CDR's as stated before, if it doesn't play RedBook audio disc's then I doubt it plays any ISO9660 discs. They might have gone as far as using a different laser wavelength than standard DVD's.