FlippyDrive FIRST LOOK! Solderless Modchip For GameCube!

[Applause] since the release of web HDX is peo boot mod back in 2022 what was once a dormant and relatively inactive GameCube modding scene is now a flourishing and revitalized space with a ton of new and amazing mods with plenty more coming just on the horizon and today we get to see one of those incredible projects come to life for for the GameCube and it's called the flippy drive a tiny yet powerful allnew optical drive emulator that boasts some truly unique and very cool features both with its hardware and its software so let's take a [Music] look [Music] hey everyone how's it going my name is Tito and welcome to the first episode of retro renew in 2024 and what better way to kick off the new year than checking out an incredible new mod for the Nintendo GameCube this is the flippy drive an allnew optical drive emulator powered by a RP 2040 and ESP 32 microcontroller this tiny PCB allows you to play games directly from a Micro SD card but it does it in a way we haven't seen before while this device is compatible with Swiss the team behind flippy Drive are integrating a new version of cube boot which utilizes existing GameCube menu assets giving you a truly novel and very cool way to load games the user interface looks and feels like it was designed by Nintendo themselves now today we've only had one option option when it comes to optical drive emulators for the GameCube and that was the GC loader which was released a few years ago while the GC loader itself is also an incredible mod that allows you to load games from an SD card one of the main drawbacks in my opinion was the fact that you had to remove the original optical drive in order to install it on the other hand with the flippy drive and it's super easy and solder-free installation you can actually keep and more importantly use the original optical drive and still load games off of an SD card and like I just mentioned this mod is completely solderless and doesn't require any modification to the console which is always a welcome feature in my book this project was created by two extremely talented modders Chris pville who designed the hardware and Trevor Rudolph who designed cuq boot which Works hand inand with flippy drive now I'm actually going to quickly turn it over to both Chris and Trevor to talk about themselves and their journey in developing flippy Drive thanks Tito uh hi I'm Trevor I am a software engineer by trade I do some reverse engineering and uh development for things like the GameCube in the week I'm Chris I'm a computer engineer by trade um I do a lot of Hardware development stuff pcbs circuit design um largely like on the GameCube scene but a little bit with the N64 before that uh so Trevor and I decided to build a disc emulator for the GameCube after having a sequence of attempted projects of being able to load a home Brewer custom software on the GameCube and eventually we landed on the dis interface as the best way to have a solderless uh access to the software on the GameCube without having to like you know uh customize the hardware of the GameCube itself yeah in addition to that we have a lot of software to write for this project uh there's a lot of firmware that runs on the device itself the flippy drive and there's also a lot of software that runs on the GameCube uh in coordination we have our custom menu which is cube boot it's very similar uh uses the original GameCube menu and we also have hidden features like region free game loading Etc and so for more info we're going to pass it back to Tito awesome thank you both so much for sharing that now you all can keep track of Chris and Trevor's work by checking them out on all their various social media accounts which I've linked down below and if you want to follow flippy dries development and stay up to date on all of its progress be sure to sign up for the mailing list or join the flippy Drive Discord server which again I have linked down below all right so in this video I'll be going over all the parts that come with the flippy Drive kit then I'll show you how to install it into your GameCube I'll go over all of its unique features review the pros and cons and of course provide you with my overall thoughts so at the center of this entire mod is the flippy Drive board it's powered by a rp240 microprocessor and also has an esp32 built in with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability It Sports a micro USB port for programming as well as a Micro SD card slot here on the other side this is where we'll be able to load our game backups as well as run custom cube boot software it's honestly crazy just how small this device is especially when you compare it to the GC loader next up we have this custom Flex ribbon which connects the flippy Drive board to the gamecube's optical Drive Port now you may be wondering how on Earth will this connect to this well this is one of the unique and in my opinion really cool features of Flippy boot this ribbon cable not only allows you to connect flippy drive to the GameCube but it also allows you to keep the original optical drive I'll show you how this works during the installation portion of the video but I do have to tell you it's one of the most unique ways I've seen a kit like this be installed it's pretty awesome so be sure to stay tuned anyway the next item included in this kit is this 3D printed connector cap which is only used if you don't have the original optical drive again we'll talk more about this in just a moment and lastly we have this mounting bracket which secures the flippy Drive securely to the interior of the GameCube the one I have here is an early version of the bracket but the final version will look very similar but feature brass inserts and machine screws all right so that's everything included with the flippy drive but before we get to the installation portion of the video let's talk about today's sponsor PCB way if you have an idea for a new mod or want to assemble and open source project PCB way provides you with the tools to make them a reality from 3D printing services in an array of materials all the way to other services like CNC Machining injection molding and of course PCB and flex ribbon fabrication so when it comes to taking your Retro Gaming mods to the next level PCB way is the place to make that happen check out the link in the description for PCB way to get $5 off your first order and again a huge thank you to PCB way for sponsoring this video all right now let's go ahead and install the flippy Drive okay so the first thing we need to do is tear down the GameCube but not all the way we just need to get out the optical drive now it is a lot of screws to get into this thing but it is a pretty straightforward process and thankfully the only tool we need for this entire mod is just a [Music] screwdriver [Music] okay with all the screws removed we can go ahead and pop off the optical drive assembly revealing the motherboard connector below this thing right here well next need to grab our Flex ribbon cable which will require us to do a bit of origami so that we can get it to fit inside the con Conor but don't worry it's super simple and I'll walk you through the whole process to do this just look for this triangle marking and this is the side of the ribbon cable we want facing up next gently crease the cable in between the two rows of gold connector pins as shown and then along this line here right below the gold connectors fold the cable [Music] upwards and here we're going to fold the ribbon cable down along this [Music] line and then repeat the same folds on the other [Music] side and what you should end up with is this sort of w- like shape which will allow us to Nestle the ribbon cable inside the motherboard connector so going back back over to the GameCube place the ribbon cable into the connector as shown it is a bit finicky but what you want to do is have the center crease of the ribbon cable to be placed over the inner contacts of the optical drive [Music] connector and this is what it should look like when it's properly installed you can see here that the long section of the ribbon cable runs alongside the heat sink which means it is properly oriented Ed next while holding the ribbon cable secure to the connector with one finger move the long section of the ribbon over this post here to prep it for reinstallation of the optical drive but before we do that if you don't have an optical drive this will be the time that we're going to be using that connector end cap that's included with the kit this provides a proper clamping Force to ensure that the ribbon cable has good contact with the connector but since I do have the optical drive I won't be needing this now when connec the optical drive we'll need to carefully slip the ribbon Cable in this small slit in the RF shielding this is where the ribbon cable will pass [Music] through once it's properly been put in place we can push down the optical drive firmly until it snaps into place and here you can see where the ribbon is passing through next we'll install the mounting bracket which is positioned over these three screw holes however it is only secured with the two outer [Music] screws now you may be wondering what this little bump is on the mounting bracket well it's actually a really cool feature that allows you to place the extra screw for safekeeping since the mounting bracket covers one of the screw holes this way if you ever wanted to remove the flippy Drive the extra screw won't be lost this is a really cool feature that Chris was able to add to the bracket now we can install the flippy Drive board open the bail on the connector and take note of this triangle marking which will help ensure that we connect the ribbon properly you can see on the ribbon another triangle connect the ribbon cable so that the triangles are both on the same side as shown and then lock the bail on the connector and then with the two included screws secure the flippy drive to the mounting bracket and then insert your SD card with your games loaded all you need to do is place the ISO files into the root of the SD card and that's it once installed you'll want to ensure that the connector is properly seated by simply booting the console on to see if QBE boot launches I already did this off camera so we can go ahead and reassemble the console [Music] and there you have it we successfully installed the flippy Drive the way this kit is installed into the GameCube is honestly one of the coolest things about this mod the fact that it's so simple and just slips in between the optical drive and motherboard connector so seamlessly is absolutely genius this is also one of the easiest kits I've installed for the GameCube and the fact that you can keep the optical drive fully operational is icing on the cake but I'm getting ahead of myself so let's go ahead and dive into all the features that flippy Drive has to offer now one thing I do have to preface is that I have an early Alpha version of the qoot software on my flippy drive so what you'll see will likely change and improve once it's officially released but this will give you a good idea of how everything will work so with that in mind let's go ahead and Power on the GameCube now the scrolling text that you see on screen is again due to the fact that I have an early version of cube boot software running this shouldn't be visible when it's officially released and as you can see we get launched into the GameCube menu screen which then automatically goes into the Q boot game selection screen showcasing all the backup copies of games I have stored on my micro SD card now what I absolutely love about this interface is that it looks and feels like it was completely designed by Nintendo you see we can exit the game selection screen and go to all the other menu settings as if this were a stock GameCube and I think this is just so cool it's just a really clean implementation of Flippy drives capabilities now Trevor has explained that the entire interface utilizes existing GameCube menu assets which exist within the GameCube firmware which is how he achieved the stock look anyway to load a game all you need to do is go over to it and press a then press start and the game loads immediately just as if you were loading a standard game disc from the menu now of course as I've previously mentioned one of the biggest features is that we can also play games using the original optical drive and in order to do that the console first needs to be turned off and a game inserted into the drive then press and hold the L trigger while turning the console on as soon as you hear the optical drive engage and spin up the game disc you can then release the L trigger and your disc based game will start holding the L trigger allows the optical drive to bypass flippy boot as if it wasn't installed making the GameCube work like a stock unit and the console will remain in this stock-like state until it's powered off meaning functions like the reset button will work as they should now of course this mod works on All Region GameCubes for example my orange spice console that I have here is a Japanese unit but with qoot up and running you can see that the menu is actually in English so qoot can actually do some pretty cool things like change the region of the console however when I wanted to test Out Accessories like the Game Boy Player I ran into some issues when I tried to load the Game Boy Player launcher I just got a blank screen I brought this up to the flippy Drive team and it's a no bug that has actually since been resolved and does in fact work now the last feature I want to discuss is Wi-Fi loading with the onboard Wi-Fi capability of the esp32 flippy Drive is able to launch games over your home network this is something that I wasn't able to set up on my particular unit but here's some footage that Chris provided showing how it works which is definitely really neat anyway those are the primary features of Flippy drive but now let's get into the pros and cons starting with the Pros I want to say that the biggest one is ease of installation with basically just a screwdriver you can easily install flippy Drive the fact that it's solderless no cut and completely reversible makes this project all the better additionally we get to keep the optical drive to me this is huge because it gives us flexibility to not only easily load games from an SD card but we can still play our library of physical games now I know to some folks this isn't a big deal but keeping original function functionality is something that's pretty important to me another Pro is the cube boot interface I think it looks fantastic it's clean simple and straightforward the fact that it's so seamlessly integrated into the original GameCube menu really makes this feature stand out now while it may be more limited in features when compared to Swiss Which is far more mature if you're just looking to load games then qoot does the job perfectly I really can't wait to see how this evolves over time and what other features they Implement in the future and the last Pro is price while it has yet to be set in stone the flippy Drive team has told me that it will come in under $40 which is some pretty insane value for its feature set additionally it'll be released in the next couple of months so to stay up to date on everything flippy Drive related you'll want to be sure to sign up for their newsletter and also follow both Chris and Trevor on Twitter again I have links to everything down below in the comments anyway those are the pros but now let's get into the cons so really these are just minor Grievances and I think many of these can be addressed as the project matures the first con has to do with SD card accessibility when the console is fully put together the micro SD card is essentially inaccessible so if you want to add more games or update the unit you'll need to disassemble the console now of course all you need to do is take out four screws on the bottom and that's it but it would be neat if the flippy Drive team sold an accessory that extends the SD card so that it's accessible from the outside not sure how they would do this but it would be nice now another con is for us memcard Pro users one of the great features of this kit is its ability to autod detect games and load specific virtual memory cards for that game this feature has been implemented with Swiss but I'm hoping to see the same game ID feature brought to cube boot now before I wrap up this video I do want to hand it back over to both Chris and Trevor to give us a little more about what they have in store for flippy Drive in the near future so what's next for the flippy Drive is we are going into a testing and review phase we're getting into the hands of some people to get some feedback and make sure that we have game compatibility and tweak it up before we get it into your hands and the flippy Drive Hardware is already at its production version uh with all the features tested out uh pretty successfully so kind of the next steps then are just the software maturity um the gooey application for selecting dis images over network with Wi-Fi and then as soon as we get the units out the door we're going to move on to our ethernet add-on which we already have prototypes for that function which are significantly higher speed than a Wi-Fi approach yeah and more stability there are some other software features that we need to work on that uh could open up some other possibilities with the flippy drive like using Bluetooth or USB game pads but that's about it for what we have planned uh here's Tito to close out the video wow that sounds really awesome I'm really looking forward to what you have in store and I'll definitely be following you both to stay up to date on your projects well folks there you have it the allnew flippy drive a fantastic new optical drive emulator for the Nintendo GameCube now if you enjoyed this video I really think you'll like this one here so check it out and as always thank you so much for watching happy New Year and I'll see you all next Thursday [Music] a

Channel: Macho Nacho Productions

Views: 345,168

Keywords: macho nacho productions, macho nacho, macho nacho tito, tito macho nacho, gamecube optical drive emulator, flippy drive, gamecube flippy drive, flippy drive tutorial, flippy drive gamecube dol 101, flippy drive flex cable, flippy drive gameboy player, flippy drive mod gamecube, flippy drive setup, flippy drive ribbon cable, picoboot, m.2 loader gamecube, picoboot gamecube, flippy drive vs gc loader

Id: YPq48Wm8y-U

Length: 20min 36sec (1236 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 04 2024