citrus3000psi wrote:Made some progress on the Wii last night. BGA QSB installed.
Looks great! Have you been able to test it?
Is a BGA install possible without specialist equipment?
Also, do you have your own thread where we can learn more about your GC/Wii mods and prices?
I'm not really advertising GC prices or services because I'm still waiting on xilinx chips to arrive. I have wait list of 5 to do right now. I ordered chips back on the first but it seems the postal service has lost them. I made another order about 5 days ago, but I made the order right at the start of Chinese new year.
Each of these people I've offered to get chips from digikey. But that would raise the price 10 dollars. So far everybody has been willing to wait. I'm charging $110 for the parts & install service. There is a charge for shipping the console back to you.
Bobrocks has one from me. He said he was going to post pictures but so far he's been silent.
Sorry! Can't post pictures tonight, but I will give some short impressions at least. Just to reiterate, citruspsi sold me a pre-HDMI modded cube.
Pros:
-Looks and sounds great!
-Scanlines via GCVideo are much more robust than the Gameboy Interface (GBI) scanlines. I can now use a 2.675x zoom with even scanlines, which looks great. Using GBI's built-in scanlines it's an integer zoom or no scanlines. I'll be sure to post pictures of this.
-Citruspsi's install is really clean; I kind of frankensteined my two cubes together because I wanted to use my cube's shell and disc drive, so I got a good look at things
Cons:
-480p isn't working through the component cables any more. Since they work fine when I unplug the ribbon cable to the board, I think it's just signal distance causing corruption. I don't see myself ever needing to use it though (240p works fine, that's the only thing I'd need component for any more).
-Can't notice a quality advantage over the component cables. Again, not a big issue- the whole point is that it's a replacement that doesn't cost $250. People happy with component cables who don't want to sell them probably won't find much here.
-Audio is much quieter through HDMI, but this is most certainly my audio extractor and not GCVideo.
The cons list looks longer, but I don't think anything's near a big problem except audio, which might be other equipment's fault anyway. It's hard to praise things- if you've seen component cables you know the Gamecube looks pretty good, and if you've always been stuck with composite or S-Video you might be blown away. It's a good investment imo, and yeah I'll post pics tomorrow (or some time).
Last edited by bobrocks95 on Sat Jan 28, 2017 4:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
GeneraLight wrote:The only reason I'm considering the HDMI mod is for digital surround sound audio. Is the audio really that bad?
vinnyguy wrote:I've been playing my HDMI cube for about 9 months. To me there is no problem with the audio quality.
I am only using my TV's speakers though.
Audio does not sound bad at all, you misunderstood. It sounds great, it's just quieter for me than the analog audio output and I have to crank my receiver to compensate.
bobrocks95 wrote:-Audio is much quieter through HDMI- this is my biggest complaint really, since I'm waiting for the day that I switch back to another source and blow my eardrums. I have my receiver around 35 for most sources, and put it at 55 for the Gamecube. (Note there's a possibility it's my HDMI audio extractor, but I don't remember this happening with my PSTV. I should check again)
There is a volume option in the "Other settings" submenu, is it set to 255? (yes, I was too lazy to implement a 0-100 data type in the menu system...)
bobrocks95 wrote:
-Citruspsi's install is really clean; I kind of frankensteined my two cubes together because I wanted to use my cube's shell and disc drive, so I got a good look at things [/list]
You swapped disc drives... Yeah you got to see everything
bobrocks95 wrote:-Audio is much quieter through HDMI- this is my biggest complaint really, since I'm waiting for the day that I switch back to another source and blow my eardrums. I have my receiver around 35 for most sources, and put it at 55 for the Gamecube. (Note there's a possibility it's my HDMI audio extractor, but I don't remember this happening with my PSTV. I should check again)
There is a volume option in the "Other settings" submenu, is it set to 255? (yes, I was too lazy to implement a 0-100 data type in the menu system...)
I booted up the PSTV and it seems it's just the audio extractor making things quiet. That'll be gone whenever I get a new receiver with HDMI.
I have a gcvideo dvi question. The documentation says a) not to use line doubler with 480i games because it looks bad and b) not to connect it to a Framemeister. So, what then should I be doing with 480i games? Just leave them at 480i? Seems to me line doubler would look better than interlaced, no?
mario64 wrote:I have a gcvideo dvi question. The documentation says a) not to use line doubler with 480i games because it looks bad and b) not to connect it to a Framemeister. So, what then should I be doing with 480i games? Just leave them at 480i? Seems to me line doubler would look better than interlaced, no?
What's the documentation's reasoning against the Framemeister?
With the built-in linedoubler you're losing half the vertical resolution IIRC, but it's fast. With Framemeister it should be slower but much higher quality.
mario64 wrote:I have a gcvideo dvi question. The documentation says a) not to use line doubler with 480i games because it looks bad and b) not to connect it to a Framemeister. So, what then should I be doing with 480i games? Just leave them at 480i? Seems to me line doubler would look better than interlaced, no?
What's the documentation's reasoning against the Framemeister?
With the built-in linedoubler you're losing half the vertical resolution IIRC, but it's fast. With Framemeister it should be slower but much higher quality.
When connected to the Framemeister the video is shifted to the left with no way to fix it. It lists a few other things too
mario64 wrote:a) not to use line doubler with 480i games because it looks bad
It's a really horrible, but easy-to-implement and RAM-efficient "deinterlacing" method that results in a lot of flickering and also loss of half of the vertical resolution in each field.
So, what then should I be doing with 480i games? Just leave them at 480i?
Sure, why not? Your TV also has a deinterlacer and it uses way better algorithms than the one implemented in GCVideo.
Seems to me line doubler would look better than interlaced, no?
Is there any possibility of a future firmware update that will resolve the Framemeister compatibility issues? Reason I ask is that it's a far better deinterlacer than most TVs and so would be the best option for 480i content
mario64 wrote:Is there any possibility of a future firmware update that will resolve the Framemeister compatibility issues?
No, unless you are talking about a Framemeister firmware update - it's their collection of bugs after all. ;)
I think the halved horizontal resolution misdetection doesn't happen if you enable Enhanced DVI mode in GCVideo, but I don't remember if this also fixes the shifted image.
Reason I ask is that it's a far better deinterlacer than most TVs and so would be the best option for 480i content
I seem to remember that it was generally discouraged to use the HDMI inputs of the Framemeister at all because they had various issues, even with passthrough mode enabled?
In a recent twitch video I was able to ask BadAssConsoles about GCVideo.
Said flex cables had arrived, has GC-TestBed (so he can test each board easily), waiting for one more thing from OSH Park and should be able to get things started.
DIY boards are going out first and then accepting consoles for install. Seems the wait might finally be over.
Last edited by Seraphic on Thu Feb 09, 2017 3:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The testbed was defective, so he's waiting on the redesigned one from oshpark, it is expected to arrive early next week. Once he can validate boards with it, he'll begin shipping them out.
He also said that the plug-and-play version is still planned, although it'll be a while.
Guspaz wrote:The testbed was defective, so he's waiting on the redesigned one from oshpark, it is expected to arrive early next week. Once he can validate boards with it, he'll begin shipping them out.
He also said that the plug-and-play version is still planned, although it'll be a while.
Ah, I see. I am just glad he was able to sort things out. Looking forward to trying some GC games over HDMI with my Crystalio II.
I just finished installing a PlutoIIX, this was my second install. I tested it and found that there is no audio. My first PlutoIIX install provides audio when enhanced DVI mode is turned on, that one has firmware 2.1
The install I just finished has firmware 2.3. I turned on enhanced DVI expecting to have audio but it just wasn't there. Is there a change between the two firmware revisions or did I screw up something with the install? Any ideas, thanks
For this install I removed the digital and the analog out ports to make space for the Pluto. I am planning on installing a 3.5mm 4-pole jack for optional composite video and left/right audio, haven't done that yet though. For my first Pluto install I left the digital and analog out ports intact. Otherwise the installs went just the same, I followed the guide on the gc-video GitHub page.
I got the audio working, i soldered one wire to a wrong point on the Pluto board
Last edited by vinnyguy on Sat Feb 18, 2017 10:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Gunstar wrote:Can't wait to see what sort of picture this will produce!
Hopefully I'll have something running this week. I have all the parts, just need time to assemble and test. I've been pretty swamped the last few weeks with customer work etc.
Einzelherz wrote:I still don't know what it is.
This is for adapting a GC-Video to the Wii. That is the Wii RVL video chip. That qsb makes the soldering easier if you have the right soldering tip.
