I just bought a couple of pirated gamecube discs off the street here in Shanghai today (zelda and mario kart). These seem to be a very new addition to the huge pirate market here, it's the first time I've ever seen pirated gc discs. I never bought my GC to China (I live here), so I have no way of testing them. I tried to place one in my pc's dvd-drive, but windows complained about an incompatible file system (which is what happens if you put in a regular gc disc, I guess). The place i bought them mentioned something about needing a chip. Are there any kind of modchips available that lets me play these bootlegs? (or even copies I can burn myself). Something with easy soldering would be a bonus. There seems to be chips around, but I'm very confused as to which ones are real and which ones are bogus, and not to mention a reliable place to order one. Oh, the discs were 35 RMB a disc, which is about 5 USD.
Most the games they had had Japanese covers, but there were also quite I few with English covers. The two I bought were English, but of course I won't be able to verify which language is on the actual discs until I get them to boot on my GC. I'm sure a bigger selection of discs will appear on the market over the coming months... So Viper GC is the chip to get? Could you direct me to a relable webshop for buying one? Will this allow me to run my own copies (mini-dvd-r) as well?
I got mine from http://www.mrmodchips.co.uk http://www.diveneo.com , is best for international.... Yeah mini dvds and full size as well
The Zelda disc is the four swords one. I just read about using Action Replay and GCOS for booting bootleg/backup discs on the forum... I'm slightly confused though, will this allow me to boot my backup discs without installing a modchip first? I'm assuming that I use the AR to get GCOS on to a memory card, then boot the AR disc, run the GCOS thing, and insert the backup disc... clarification anyone?
You need a BBA, or someone with one to get the memcard image on to the memcard. There are several memcard images with GCOS to be found on MaxConsole. You have to use a Nintendo memcard 59. Then, put the 59 in slot b. Any card in slot a. Boot the 'Cube with the AR disc. Select the game "Action Replay". A message says, "Open the lid". Then another message says, "Close the lid". Then the GCOS menu will appear. Select "Boot backup DVD". Another message says "Press a to start the swap process". You don't need a Viper. This is just as good.
Hmm, so I need a broadband adapter. I assume this means I'll have to get the Phantasy Star Online game as well? I have this memory card: http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=52&products_id=2359& Which is a memory card with a USB plug at the end. Any chance I can use this to get GCOS onto the memory card? I've just downloaded GCOS 1.4, which of the files in there goes on the memory card? (gcos_1.4.vgc, gcos_gci.cgi or gcos_pso.cgi). Is the only way to make a dvd-mini copy of an original GC disc to use the BBA and PSO? Or can I just do disc copy in Nero or clonecd? Sorry for being a newbie... thanks for all the help.
Yes, you do need PSO. The original, not the plus. It can be found on Ebay Not sure if you can use that usb card. The file I downloaded is a full image of a Nintendo 59 block card. So I am not sure which files to use. You should ask here: http://forums.maxconsole.com/forumdisplay.php?s=4b16771cdcbad0da32ab22d2f18faff3&forumid=17 You need a original PSO. You can't use a copy. Also, you can't copy a gc game at all with a pc.
Seeing that I don't really need to rip games myself (I can just get iso files off the net and burn them on mini-dvds), the best solution seems to be to get the action replay and a sd-card adapter. Then use sdloader to prepare a sd-card and put GCOS on it and then boot mini-dvds.