My impressions: Team Xtender's XCM Viper GC LED Crystal Case

God, that's a long name...

Anyways, this case is great. It arrived in the mail recently, and the case is great. It feels nice and durable and overall like great quality. I didn't notice any warping on the edges.

Putting it on the GameCube, one thing was for sure: it didn't fit as well as the original. I'm guessing this is because of the fan-mounted Viper I have, but for some reason it DID go down quite a ways. I probably mounted my Viper a little differently. I didn't modify the case in any way though - I just pushed it down until there was only a gap of about a millimeter or two, then taped the GCN together. (The case fits perfectly if you can get it all the way down, which I could not.. yet.) I didn't use screws because they didn't quite fit together all the way down like the original case, but more importantly because I knew I would eventually end up opening the GCN up to do the laser tweak whenever I got off my lasy ass (and perhaps modify the case so it would go all the way down). And I don't have a GameBit - with a LOT of trouble, I managed to get the screws off the first time to install the Viper GC. No way in hell I'm doing that again.

So, after that, it worked fine. Full-sized DVDs fit great now, and at first they're a little challenging to take out... I was used to grasping the disc with all five fingertips... now I have to push the center, push it up with one finger, and then pull it out. However, that's not a fault of the case: there's just as much room as is possible, and it gets quite easy very fast. After three tries, I hit upon DVD media that works perfectly (although with the current Cobra BIOS, it only works with the swap method, not direct boot): Philips DVD+R. All in all, it worked out quite well, and while the clear case doesn't go as well as, say, Smoke Black would have on my 'Cube, it still looks cool and I love being able to see all the circuitry inside that thing. And you can sort of tell what game is inside too ;-)

At this point in time, I feel like an idiot. When I got the case and originally wrote this (before editing it), I thought my LEDs weren't working. I actually simply hadn't pulled out the plastic slip blocking one of the batteries, to prevent the lights from flashing while the case was transported. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The lights work perfectly and look pretty damn cool, ESPECIALLY at night, but I rarely use them when actually playing because they're a distraction and it wastes the batteries.

All in all, a great case, and I'm very glad I bought it. I would highly recommend this case. I could have waited for Xecuter, but I don't care now - I unplugged my programmer and flexwire and stowed them away in a safe place, and I plan on updating using the disc. If something happens or I screw up, I could always just find the programmer/flexwire, take apart the 'Cube again (maybe tweak the laser while I'm at it...) and reprogram it that way. I bought it from Divineo, and I suppose I was lucky (since they seem to have a bad rep) - it arrived in just over a week and everything was perfect.

 

Oh, and a little question: Is a fix for direct boot of DVD+R media planned for Cobra BIOS 1.3 or any future releases? Thanks.