I feel I owe it to all on here to tell you what happened when I 'chipped' my cube. Bought a viper gc and the crap to go with it. Gamebit etc. Cracked oopen the game cube. Ripped it open down to the mobo. Why are there so many screws ? Soldered on the wires etc. You can find the guide no worries. Flashed the bios...you know how this works. Now to the interesting bit. No 'backed up' games would run. Done the laser adjust tweak, my cube started at 230 ohms. Not much luck but a massive improvement as they were 'recognised', just kept getting a 'unable to read disk' shite. I adjusted down to 60ohms to get crappy bulkpaq to just about run. They booted up, then failed miserably. Went down to my local shop and bought TDK DVD-R, they were pricey, but WELL WORTH IT. They burned and ran NO PROBLEM. I adjusted my laser back up to 140ohms and they wouldn't run. I lowered it slowly and it settled on 80-85 ohms. EVERYTHING RUNS. From this I have learnt: 1: Viper GC rocks 2. Gamecubes are fussy eaters, they only like the good quality DVDs 3. Laser tweaking WORKS. 4. You can probably leave half the scews out of the cube when you put it back together. Its a long process at first but I reckon I could do one now in an hour, seeing as I got games which I know run. Let the good times roll. Off to play my 'backed up' Killer 7.
Dude...the cool part is that you can now say: I CHIPED MY GAMECUBE BYMYSELF! There's so much pride! lol
Not many people can say they modded it themselves, as not many know how to solder. I suppose with the price people pay some shops to mod, they could take soldering lessons from some local tech shop and then they could mod all their future consoles themselves! (i.e. PS3, Xbox 360, Revolution, etc) I had to hire someone to mod mine. Cost me 45 bucks (plus 50 for Viper). I think I might pay someone to teach me how to do it myself next time.
It isn't that hard to teach yourself,you just have to be willing to learn.I honestly feel that getting someone to install a modchip will not help you out,as a future reference you should probably still learn how to solder.Incase you want to upgrade you will still have to learn how to solder/desolder or if anything happens you could always go back and fix it yourself stuff like that.The best way to learn is just soldering to some useless motherboard or anything electrical laying around your house.Trust me it isn't hard,but you will never learn if you don't have any experience.If you read up on it,you will get tips and stuff like that.I have been looking into the cold heat irons for soldering needs,it hasn't been determined yet to be honest if they can be used or not.Not alot of information is present on them from many users(I tend on looking into it real soon).You will see alot of people use the pen irons,normally located at radioshack or places similiar to it.The best thing to do is get the following tools or a kit that consists of these tools: Soldering Iron-the 15Watt pen irons seem to be the best to use,even heard 30Watt irons are pretty good to use by some people.Also make sure you have a very thin tip,the tip will make it easier for you if it is really thin. Flux-make sure it isn't the plumbing flux which is oil based,make sure it is water soluble Solder-the solder to use is .032 diameter 60/40 light duty rosin-core Wire-30awg kynar insulated wire Optional Tools: Lenline brush-pretty good to use for cleaning the points you plan on soldering to. Desolder Wick-pretty much self explanatory right here,it is used for desoldering. It keeps going on including tips for the irons and stuff like that,but just giving some direction on what to look at.Take pride in your work for the people that do solder there mods in,because I see alot of people mess up there systems jumping into soldering without even trying to learn or even looking up soldering.Soldering lessons,heh it isn't rocket science people but you do have to learn atleast something before attempting it(not meant in an arrogant way,just saying lessons aren't needed unless you can't learn on your own).Windsong you don't need to pay anyone for lessons,unless you are not willing to learn for yourself.The professional installers on sites mentioned,they teach themselves most of the time and come up with different ways by themselves to help them perfect what they do.I have a friend that is a mod intsaller,very cool cat haven't heard from him in awhile(his name is account,if you haven't see him or heard of him)but trust me I can tell he learned on his own.Just take some time and try it out first,you might not need lessons windsong.It doesn't hurt to try,what could be the worse thing that could happen right.You would only be messing up junk am I right,an old electrical appliance that is broken or never used anymore.That is my advice though aswell as alot of other users that solder,try to solder to some electrical device that has a motherboard in it that you never use or is broken.Good luck on soldering whatever way you choose to learn.
I can say I completed the task myself. However, these forums gave me a load of info regarding it. This is why I put the above on the forum. I am over the moon about the cube running these games. I am now looking for the next challenege and may Ebay my effort. Sad I know, but I got a 2 year old to look after and I don't get much time to play games. Anyways I'm blasting on with Killer 7
By the way it really helps if your bro' is a qualified electrician with a few years soldering experience and all the gear you may need to do this sort of thing. NICE
Yeah that definately helps out bamboo2,probably be heading in that direction also in an electrical field or programming.I plan on getting a degree in electrical engineering,so it deals with alot of wiring and so forth.That is why I have some knowledge on soldering,taught myself to be honest.I didn't think it was hard to learn,but I can see it isn't a good idea to just attempt to solder without knowing anything like some people do and end up messing up there systems.My father has some knowledge also on the subject,he used to work on helicopters for the military.You wouldn't believe how many motherboards are in an Apache or Super Cobra etc...He told me every now and then there is a dead board while doing a system check,so he had to pull out every board and check each one until he found the problem using a multi-meter and so forth.My father is retired from the military now,but once you learn it you will never forget it.
I'm having EXACTLY the same problem. I'm afraid of adjusting my laser down that low though.. I've heard it can kill your laser. I ordered some Ritek DVD-Rs, hopefully those will solve the problem XD Spilo: I prefer stranded, as it won't break as easily if the wire needs to be bent alot.
Way I see it is: How long a life does the Gamecube have as a 'current' system. Maybe a year ? The laser won't burn out in 12 months if the ohm resistance is low'ish. Everyone will want to move onto the next gen systems, as early as this November in the UK (XBOX 360). You can get game cubes on ebay for around 30 quid even lower if there's something wrong it. You can use it as spares.
