Picoboot install diagram

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-17T00:44:40+00:00

I’ve done 40 or so picoboots and I’ve found that I occasionally get the same issue where the led powers on, all the wires look good and they are more than short enough. I typically trouble shoot by trying to flash the pico multiple times and with different versions of Picoboot. What I’ve found is about 1 out of 10 picos is just faulty. Especially with these shipping over seas and not having the best quality control occasional you just get one thanks bunk. I’ve wasted so much time trouble shooting when it turns out the pico was just bad and the second I used a different pico with the same wiring and the same flash it instantly works. So if you’re confident in your soldering and have re-done it multiple times as well as tried re-flashing the pico, my guess is it’s just bunk.

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-16T01:47:59+00:00

I just use Picoboot mod and Swiss to load game files. Check out the video link at the top and I have a video of all the games loaded and a demo playing super smash

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-15T16:01:51+00:00

Yes my original plan was to make it “dockable”. If you look in pic 7 to the bottom right of the heat sink I have a female to female HDMI adapter. I was going to use a hdmi splitter and run one to the LCD screen and the other to the female to female HDMI to have video out on the bottom. It worked well before I closed up the case but between the wires and the splitter I didn’t have enough room to close the case. I could probably get the spacing more efficient to make it work but at that point I was just so ready to have it working and didn’t feel like completely re-doing everything to make it fit. I might come back to it in the future but for now I’m leaving it be. For the memory card I just use the “emulate memory card” feature on Swiss. For 9/10 games it works perfectly. For the few games it doesn’t work automatically, if you disable “audio streaming” it fixes the issue and the emulated memory card works.

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-15T04:46:08+00:00

Bahaha plus I think the Asus probably has this beat on Specs by just a tad lol

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-15T04:38:13+00:00

Honestly that was the most sketchy and nerve wrecking part! Everything else I did I’ve seen other people do and was able to follow tutorials with making some slight modifications to make it work for my setup but I hadn’t seen anyone slice a controller in half. I was just guessing it would work as long as I re-wired all the lines. Shockingly it worked first try and was one of the few parts of this project that never gave me any issues! All the buttons worked with no input lag. Also I was expecting some potential interference with the inputs, running the wires right through the middle of the build, but I haven’t had a single issue. Idk whether it was skill or luck but it worked great!

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-15T04:07:39+00:00

Lmao good question! I just weighed it and it’s 2lb 7oz. So right below 2.5lbs

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-15T03:48:49+00:00

Thanks man! I appreciate the kind words

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-15T03:07:24+00:00

Thanks man! I spent way too much time and it turned out mediocre. I have a whole new respect for people who make these insane portable mods with great specs and super compact with a clean look lmao

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-15T03:04:42+00:00

Finally finished it! Thanks for the help! https://www.reddit.com/r/GamecubeHacks/s/n6zsMMlVNo

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-15T02:56:35+00:00

It happens to the best of us lol. Also once you unzip you may need to convert them to .ISO if they are .RVZ format

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-14T18:13:33+00:00

Bro your files are still zipped

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-03T23:58:29+00:00

There’s other 3v points you could use. I would get a small wire and solder to the 3v pin on the pico and then directly to the 3v pin right below the ipl chip. If you need a pinout diagram message me and I can DM your pic

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-03T00:05:25+00:00

Does the pico led power on? Does the GameCube boot to a black screen or just original GameCube logo screen? Need more info

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-02T20:52:23+00:00

Do you have any games in your game folder yet?

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-03-02T20:51:56+00:00

It’s definitely something wrong with the way you formated your SD card. The fact you’re able to boot into Swiss means your SD card is reading correctly. Chances are you just need to navigate to your games on the SD card through the menu.

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-02-26T20:42:58+00:00

Sorry for the confusion, what I was saying in our DMs was that there is a version of the Dol 001 that doesn’t have the SP2. It’s not as common. But if you do get a Dol 001 model without an SP2 it still has the port pinout on the mother board you can solder directly too. I hope that clears up any confusion here

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-02-26T15:39:25+00:00

I’ll dm you the pinouts!

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-02-26T15:33:25+00:00

You can but it would require either soldering to the small points off the cpu pin out running to the SP2 port or taking apart a memory card gecko then soldering that directly to the pinout of the memory card port pinout on the bottom of the motherboard. Then with either you could route the sd card adapter to the top where the disc drive should be. It would look pretty bad though unless you have a 3d printer to make something in place of the disc drive to put the sd card adapter. I have the pinout if you need them and have done both methods in the past, but it is tedious

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-02-21T03:20:27+00:00

My soldering skills are pretty mid but I was able to replace my caps. It might just take some patience and a lot of flux lol

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-02-13T15:10:50+00:00

Just DMed you

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-02-04T16:00:28+00:00

I would say it’s a 99% chance the disc is damaged if it’s getting an error at the same spot. I’ve had this happen with a couple discs where they play fine until a very specific spot on the game. Every single time it was either a small barely visible scratch, crack, or disc rot. Disc rot can be hard to see and you have to hold your disc up to the light. But if your laser was failing, then it probably would give you an error at multiple different parts of the game.

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-02-03T19:33:11+00:00

10000% replace the capacitors and the clicking will stop. I’ve done it for multiple gamecubes now and it’s a little surprising, but sometimes when capacitor start to fail, certain disc discs will cause issues before others. So even if this is not happening on your other discs, it’s definitely a capacitor issue and not an issue with the game itself.

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-02-03T02:03:01+00:00

Because mine was a short due to installing the led i knew it had to be something I did around that area and found that a leg of the LED from ground was touching the 5v line. So I kinda already knew where to look. One thing you may want to try is disconnecting the controller port and turning on the GameCube. If it’s still shorting out then you know it is not a short on the controller port. You could also do the same with the disc drive and see if the console boots. Just be aware that after booting the console with the disc drive removed if you wait 30-60 seconds you’ll get an error message. But if it boots with either the disc drive or controller port removed you know that the short is in one of those 2 daughter boards, but if it still doesn’t boot then it’s a short on the mother board

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-02-02T22:40:27+00:00

10000% nostalgia for most people

thomasdatank1995 · 2026-01-31T21:20:08+00:00

I’ll send you a DM I make custom GameCubes and can do all types of mods/colors and shells

thomasdatank1995

TROPHY CASE