Today I finally got everything I was waiting for to mod my GameCube: GC-Loader, and an SD card extended by Laser Bear Industries.
The GC-Loader is a small PCB that replaces the GameCube's optical drive and loads ISOs from an SD card; as it's just an emulator, it will only load ISOs of the same region as the console; to go region-free you either need an hardware region switch or use bootloader softwares like Swiss. I don't know how the GC-Loader behaves with modchips like Viper, but I've read it has no problems with stuff like SD2SP2; I don't have neither, so my experience is limited to installing the GC-Loader and using Swiss to load ISOs from all regions.
Installation
Installation is easy: it's well within your grasp if you've ever assembled a PC. The GC-Loader comes with a Torx screwdriver to open the console's chassis, but you'll need a Phillips screwdriver to deal with screws inside the console.
The installation is rather uneventful, but there are a couple of tricky spots: you only need to unplug one power plug on the fan assembly, you must pay attention not to damage the ribbon cable connecting the front I/O shield (pad connectors), and when putting the heat spreader/emission shield/metal plate back two screw have to be left out until you place the fan assembly.
The optical drive is held in place by six screws, the GC-Loader only needs three. The spacers on the GC-Loader are very tight, and couldn't fully tighten in the required screws to fix it place: even in this situation, once the GC-Loader snaps where the optical drive was, it sits firmly in place and no screws touch any underlying PCB.
Now, due to the GameCube's shape, the GC-Loader is buried well inside the console, which makes reaching the SD card somewhat difficult. To alleviate this, I got a 3D-printed SD card extender by Laser Bear Industries. After placing the GC-Loader, you first plug the fake SD card coming from the extender into the GC-Loader, and then fix the extender to the same metal plate with leftover optical drive screws.
Once you've done that, you just need to reassemble the console back.
All in all the installation took around 45 minutes, including one screw-up in which I installed the SD card extender with its ribbon cable between a plastic support and the metal plate, so I disassembled it to have the ribbon cable not constrained by anything.
Use
I'm using a 512GB Sandisk SDXC card, formatted in FAT32. I went with FAT32 just to be sure, but the GC-Loader fortunately supports exFAT too. To load a game, you need to copy an ISO to the root of the SD card and rename it "boot.iso". This limits the GC-Loader to load ISOs from the same region of the GameCube.
To load games from other regions, you can use Swiss: download the latest build from Github, choose the ISO matching your console's region, and use it just like I wrote before.
How fast is GC-Loader? On boot, the GameCube doesn't even have time to complete the console's intro animation that games are already running; Swiss's even faster, then introduction doesn't play at all and you're in the main menu, ready to select a game.
If you have a GB Player you can also use GameBoyInterface, a Game Boy emulator way superior to the standard offering included with the GB Player.
The GC-Loader can be purchased from https://www.gc-loader.com/product/gc-loader-pnp/ when available. Mine is from the second batch, the third will be ready by August.
The SD card extender (one of the many, I must say) is available, in different colours and in different configurations (with or without SD card holders) at: https://laserbear.net/
The GC-Loader is a small PCB that replaces the GameCube's optical drive and loads ISOs from an SD card; as it's just an emulator, it will only load ISOs of the same region as the console; to go region-free you either need an hardware region switch or use bootloader softwares like Swiss. I don't know how the GC-Loader behaves with modchips like Viper, but I've read it has no problems with stuff like SD2SP2; I don't have neither, so my experience is limited to installing the GC-Loader and using Swiss to load ISOs from all regions.
Installation
Installation is easy: it's well within your grasp if you've ever assembled a PC. The GC-Loader comes with a Torx screwdriver to open the console's chassis, but you'll need a Phillips screwdriver to deal with screws inside the console.
The installation is rather uneventful, but there are a couple of tricky spots: you only need to unplug one power plug on the fan assembly, you must pay attention not to damage the ribbon cable connecting the front I/O shield (pad connectors), and when putting the heat spreader/emission shield/metal plate back two screw have to be left out until you place the fan assembly.
The optical drive is held in place by six screws, the GC-Loader only needs three. The spacers on the GC-Loader are very tight, and couldn't fully tighten in the required screws to fix it place: even in this situation, once the GC-Loader snaps where the optical drive was, it sits firmly in place and no screws touch any underlying PCB.
Now, due to the GameCube's shape, the GC-Loader is buried well inside the console, which makes reaching the SD card somewhat difficult. To alleviate this, I got a 3D-printed SD card extender by Laser Bear Industries. After placing the GC-Loader, you first plug the fake SD card coming from the extender into the GC-Loader, and then fix the extender to the same metal plate with leftover optical drive screws.
Once you've done that, you just need to reassemble the console back.
All in all the installation took around 45 minutes, including one screw-up in which I installed the SD card extender with its ribbon cable between a plastic support and the metal plate, so I disassembled it to have the ribbon cable not constrained by anything.
Use
I'm using a 512GB Sandisk SDXC card, formatted in FAT32. I went with FAT32 just to be sure, but the GC-Loader fortunately supports exFAT too. To load a game, you need to copy an ISO to the root of the SD card and rename it "boot.iso". This limits the GC-Loader to load ISOs from the same region of the GameCube.
To load games from other regions, you can use Swiss: download the latest build from Github, choose the ISO matching your console's region, and use it just like I wrote before.
How fast is GC-Loader? On boot, the GameCube doesn't even have time to complete the console's intro animation that games are already running; Swiss's even faster, then introduction doesn't play at all and you're in the main menu, ready to select a game.
If you have a GB Player you can also use GameBoyInterface, a Game Boy emulator way superior to the standard offering included with the GB Player.
The GC-Loader can be purchased from https://www.gc-loader.com/product/gc-loader-pnp/ when available. Mine is from the second batch, the third will be ready by August.
The SD card extender (one of the many, I must say) is available, in different colours and in different configurations (with or without SD card holders) at: https://laserbear.net/
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