GC board measurements

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 10:23 am

What are the measurements for the main board? Y'know, down to the mm?

I'm beginning to plan for my next project but I cannot find the exact measurements of the main board.

SS

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 11:01 am

I've been wanting this written down somewhere for a while now... I have to keep measuring it and saying, "Oh yeah... it's about X inches by X inches or so..."

Okay, I might be off my a half a mm somewhere, but it's pretty accurate. Looking at the front of the board (memory card slots), it's 119mm from left to right, and 126mm from front to back. Some "cube," eh?

What's this new project, now?

Edit: Oh, and that's just the board itself, without any protruding connectors.

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 11:45 am

Yayz, It should fit!

Oh, and I dont wanna say untill I know it can be done. Now I just need the height w/no connects but with the stock heatsink in mm.

Thanks ER!

SS

EDIT: Oh, and to give you a hint, the success of this project relies on you!

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 12:46 pm

ShockSlayer wrote:I dont wanna say untill I know it can be done.

Hmm... Gamecube in a Game Gear? ZN-40 Gamecube? Come on, I wanna know! PM me!

I always keep project secrets, don't worry. Even Marshall has trusted me to keep project secrets.

ShockSlayer wrote:Now I just need the height w/no connects but with the stock heatsink in mm.

That one is a little harder for me, as I don't have a caliper. But, plan for ~25mm. It's probably a few mm less, but it's better to have a tiny bit of extra room than not enough. I don't know what you're doing, but are you sure you want to keep the stock heatsink? It's a little tall, and you'll still need a fan. Check out my post in that "gamecube cooling" thread currently near(ish) the top of the PS2, XBox, Gamecube, X360, PS3, Wii forum for the solution I plan to use in my GC laptop.

ShockSlayer wrote:Oh, and to give you a hint, the success of this project relies on you!

I was 99.9% sure that it did.

Once the prototype is up and running, I want to design a CF card version of the board. This should be significantly smaller (CF cards ARE smaller than laptop HDDs, after all), and there are decently priced 32GB CF cards out there. 32GB should be perfect for most people. It should hold about 20 games... maybe a few more. And even if it's not enough, they will be very easily swappable.

Anyway, what I'm saying is, you should probably get the CF version if you're under millimeter-squeezing circumstances.

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 1:23 pm

Yep, I need to get everything as thin as possible.

I checked out what you wrote in the cooling thread. It looks pretty good, but I am going to decide on my plans(what I will be doing with this gamecube) before I start buying parts.

Oh, and can you make "portablizer versions" of your project? Ya know, without the plugs and easy to solder to points?

SS

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:29 pm

I tried to do that as much as I could with the prototype. There aren't that many jacks... just the power jack and the USB jack. I guess the flat flex connector as well, but do you really want to wire that all up individually when you could just use a flat flex ribbon cable? It'd be so much easier.

Portablizers won't need the USB portion of the circuit (for steaming ISOs to the 'cube via a computer), so when I design the CF version, I think I'm going to exclude the FX2 entirely and attempt to replace it with a clock (for the FPGA). Destop stated that the FX2's clock was the only thing the FPGA used. It's the most expensive part, and it's kinda big anyway. Obviously, games won't be able to be loaded directly onto the CF cards via USB without the FX2, but the loader program is capable of loading to any drive letter, (which is how I f'ed up my HDD's MBR, if you remember

) so any retail USB CF card reader can be used instead. I think this slight inconvenience will be more than worth the money saved on excluding the FX2.

The relevance that paragraph has to you? Basically, all I'm saying is that if all goes as planned, the CF version of the board won't feature USB, so that's one less jack for you to worry about.

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:38 pm

Sweet. I PM'd you again.

So, it will be programmed, and then all we have to do is drop games onto the cf card and play em?

SS

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:58 pm

Basically, yes. Note that you won't be able to literally drop (as in drag and drop) games onto the CF card, as Destop's loader program is the only thing that can read or write to a device that has been formatted for this project due to the proprietary "file system" he's using for it. If someone could figure out how to implement FAT16 into this thing, that would be amazing.

And that, technically, WOULD allow simple dragging and dropping of games directly to the CF card in any operating system that can read FAT16 (pretty much any and all).

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:16 pm

Cool. After this, you gotta design us a nice visual interface!

SS

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:29 pm

Who do you think I am?

I'm trying to get Marshall to work on the software, actually... I wouldn't know where to start with it, but I'm thinking Marshall can fix any bugs and bring this out of "beta" form... and maybe pretty it up a bit, like you said.

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:59 pm

Yeah, he had better!

Wow, soooo off topic, but we are the only ones in here!

SS

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 10:06 pm

ShockSlayer wrote:Cool. After this, you gotta design us a nice visual interface!

SS

I'll design the interface, marshall can code it, and rain can build it! There we go! Got a team

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 10:11 pm

Don't joke with me, I WILL put you to work.

Seriously though, do you actually have any ideas on how to improve the visual interface? PM me or respond in the actual thread... let's not clog up SS's thread any more than it already is... though I suppose his question has already been answered.

Hey wait... do you have my chat script installed? Log on to that, if you're still here!

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 11:42 pm

khaag wrote:
ShockSlayer wrote:Cool. After this, you gotta design us a nice visual interface!

SS
I'll design the interface, marshall can code it, and rain can build it! There we go! Got a team

and I can stand on the sidelines with pompoms and cheer.

TheOnlyOneHeFears · Post by **TheOnlyOneHeFears** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 12:04 am

grossaffe wrote:
khaag wrote:
ShockSlayer wrote:Cool. After this, you gotta design us a nice visual interface!

SS
I'll design the interface, marshall can code it, and rain can build it! There we go! Got a team
and I can stand on the sidelines with pompoms and cheer.

Make that two of us with pompoms