Okay, here are my notes on my installation of a QOOB PRO -------------------------------------------------------- QOOB Pro arrived today UPS. Took about 3 hours for disassembly, installation, reassembly, testing. Disassembly: you have do NOT have to remove the heatsink in a Rev C GC, you do, however, have to take the screws out right, because you need the motherboard in hand. Next, how to nicely route the yellow and purple wires on a Rev C install?: I pulled out the aluminum belly pan (sits under the mohterboard), and in the corner where purp/yell wires would come out, I filed that opening to be bigger. I filed to smooth, wrapped the edges with one piece of electricians tape. Soldering: I have done a lot of soldering, and this ranks high in difficulty for the wires: 5V, purple, and yellow. I have a 15/30 watt soldering iron. I went for the 5V first at the alternate spot (on the leg), and still, man, what a pain in the ass. Finally I got a solid, clean bond (15 minutes later). Did the remaining top wires no problem, but they were a cake walk in comparison. Underneath, I began to work on the purple and yellow wires. I had since flipped down from 30W to 15W earlier, as I started on 30W and realized I should work at 15W, for now. Well, another 10 minutes passed, and I could NOT get a good bond on the purple or yellow. Took a ravor, scratched lightly the legs, still no luck. Went back up to 30W, more heat, no problem, got a clean bond. Didn't try to suspend the motherboard from it but it was good enuf that a little nudging didn't knock it loose. Last thing I want to do is open this pig up again later. Soldering novices: take your time, and wiggle the final connection some. If its weakish, it will disconnect. Continue until your connection can take a little abuse and retain connection. Never went after the gold dot 5V spot, btw. Thats asking for trouble. Trust me, I've done similar on a DISH IRD motherboard, and ended up having to re-connection traces with piano wire. Thats another story. Onto re-assembly..... Putting screws back in heatsink: If you worked on cars, the heatsink is like the heads, or a tire on your car... you torque it down gradually, and in a sequence that puts an pressure acrossed the breadth of the heatsink, plus ans even smoosh on the thermal paste these guys use. Don't over tighten! Mid-super snug is where I went, thinking it was mid-super snug was what I had when I broke the screws loose earlier. Cut away the USB connector circuit board from the QOOB board. Interesting no instructions point that out. Probably because it is obvious. FWIW, you could leave the USB intact on the card, if you knew that once you flashed the BIOS, you would never do it again. Doubt many people would do that though. Plug white wire harness plug into QOOB board. Plug will be flush with edge of QOOB circuit board once all the way in. Push no more or less than that. Note on positioning of QOOB PRO circuit board: I noticed that the back of the circuit board touchs (can touch) the aluminum housing. I decided to felt a couple spots in back to avoid electrical issues or shorting. Also, you want the PRO as much forward as possible, as to block as little of the heatsink venting as possible. Routing the USB ribbon cable: as you may notice, if you route towards and into the broadband outlet, your ribbon runs across the aluminum chassis of the disk drive + motherboard belly pan combo. This is an abrasion point you might want to rectify. I placed a strip of adhesive felt (from a hook and felt set) around the edge to avoid abrasion of the USB ribbon cable. Reassembly complete. Boot it up... The default QOOB Bios should come up right away, and the LED light on the WOOB PRO board should illuminate such that you can see it. My screen came up with the BIOS page, so that is your first landmark after the installation. Next landmark is to try a real GC game. I think you have to hold B down to get it to play, maybe hold B down and turn the GC off then back on. Either way, the default QOOB bios sucks, so once I got a real GC game to play, then next step was to get a more current Bios flashed. I went with 1.3A. 1.3C I will try via application first. On Boot, hold A? for application, choose the Bios which is loaded as an application, and machine uses that Bios... I did this inadvertantly trying to get 1.3A installed... at any rate... Yeah, it's easy to flash your Bios once you understand that you FIRST must erase the Bios section before you can write the new one to it. I reccommend backing up the original Bios by using Read first, saving it off, then erase it and plop down 1.3A or C (or C, then go back to A... its all easy at this point). With 1.3A installed, machine boots a real GC game no problem. My daughter is quite happy Dad didn't trash the GC So is Dad BTW, when you hook up the USB to flash your QOOB, the LED light on the QOOB illuminates as well. If you don't have that, recheck all (!) your stuff. Tomorrow I will try a burn of a GC iso. Will post those results here. PS: Special thanks to Venom5880 for taking time to provide enough detail for newbies like myself. Thanks.
Tested a burn of a GC ISO. Worked. Ritek G04 Mini DVD-R. Plextor 716A Bios 1.8. Nero 6.6.0.13 Burn Image, check Finalize CD, Burn... done. Well, my work here is done. Unless I decide to try ripping games, this may be my last post. I'll keep tabs on these threads for a bit in case people have questions of me. Take'r easy. 3 weeks and out. Gotta love it. What to hack next? Hmmmm DVB/FTA? Yeah!!!
Okay, curve ball... anyone speak japanese? Yeah, a couple of my ISOs are apparently japanese, so maybe I'll be ripping sooner than previously thought I am assuming I just need to get a Broadband Adapter, then the rest is software, right? Some program on my PC to rip the GC DVD from a connected-to-the-network GC. What program is the best for those with QOOB Pro? I assume its a PC program, or is there a program you load onto QOOB and run as an application? Reasearching now...
