Any way to load homebrew on a Gamecube without any discs?

[cr4zymanz0r]

I hate optical drives, and they will generally be the first component to fail. My Gamecube(s) are mostly used for the Gameboy Player attachment, and I really like the Gameboy Interface homebrew software rather than the stock Gameboy Player disc.

What I'm hoping for is a way to load homebrew that doesn't require a Pro Action Replay disc, burned disc with homebrew if you have a modchip, or any method that requires an actual disc to kick off the homebrew loading process. Does this exist in any reasonable form? I'm not scared to mod, but the only thing I've potentially seen is a pricey hard to find Wii optical drive emulator (WODE) that can be adapted to work on a Gamecube with tedious amount of soldering.

Know of anything like this such as a hacked bios that can be installed to boot off a SD card via memory card adapter, or anything else? I'm not completely against installing an ODE, but the options I've seen (which might not be all of them) do look very ideal.

[Fudoh]

With a modchip you can load the GB player (or anything else) from a memory card/SD card without using a boot disc.

[cr4zymanz0r]

With a modchip you can load the GB player (or anything else) from a memory card/SD card without using a boot disc.

Any modchip or only specific ones? The one that still seems available and plentiful is the Xeno. Will that one work? If so, any special steps to boot from a SD card?

[theclaw]

Any modchip or only specific ones? The one that still seems available and plentiful is the Xeno. Will that one work? If so, any special steps to boot from a SD card?

Xeno only supports discs. I don't know if a solution to that has surfaced.

[roachie]

There's a utility called Swiss that runs from disc & lets you load from SD card, using an SD Gecko

[Guspaz]

Which doesn't help if the OP's goal is to load homebrew/backups with the optical drive completely out of commission...

I believe BadAssConsole's Megadrive series of Gamecube mods can do this, but he's created a mess with six completely different versions with different capabilities for different purposes, and it's very unclear which version does what.