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Hello;

I've had a project on my desk for some months now, where the idea was to modify the Gameboy cartridge player for the Gamecube, remove the board and replace it with a Raspberry Pi with RetroPie. This way, not only can the bottom attachment display Gameboy cartridges, it can also emulate NES, SNES, N64, ect with the RetroPie software.

Some Notes:

1. I am trying to keep the original dimensions of the height and widths of the Gameboy player as much as I can. The inside structures, front wall / cartridge slot, and screw posts of the GBA player have been removed with a Dremel, only the 4 posts for the gamebit screws remain.

2. The Pi is a Model 3 B+ with required software installed onto it.

3. I have modeled and printed a custom mount to glue into the clean shell of the attachment, and a front panel will be modeled with slots for USB plugs, extending from where the Pi sits. An SD card slot will also be modeled into the front surface so everything is accessible from the front.

4. The custom printed mount also has it's own wall with holes for the HDMI, audio and micro USB ports. Therefore, a small section of the back wall on the attachment will be cut out later.

So I currently have access to the Micro USB for power and I can just finish it nice and simple; however, I like going above and beyond. I'm sure most of you can understand that. Is there a way for me to power the Raspberry Pi from the Gamecube using a voltage step-down board? I would need to know where to pull a charge and ground from somewhere on the Gamecube (or the part of the GBA player's board) and run that to the step-down board, dropping it to 5v, then from the step-down board to the Pi.

That being said, should it be possible and work, I also don't want the Pi running each time the Gamecube is powered on to play Gamecube. Can I take my project's circuit further and incorporate a switch to turn on the Pi when I want, and if so, how would I do that?

I can post pictures of what I have so far upon request. I'm also trying to figure out a way to get my USB extension cables to fit nicely in the case. It's a close fit, but it can work. All help is much appreciated!
 

cheese

the tallest memer in town
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That's an interesting idea, I'm not sure if someone has pinned out the connector for the gameboy player, but I'm sure it can be found or figured out. That would have the power and ground you would need. You could then put some kind of switch on there to turn it on separate from the gamecube.

Pictures would be nice too :P
 
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I found this a while back, a very detailed documentation on the Gamecube. Section 2.4.1 is the part I looked at for the pinouts of the different ports. There are no pictures of anything, but they do list the pins by number and have what they do in charts:

https://www.gc-forever.com/yagcd/

Sorry for the low-res images, I plan on getting a better phone next month. I'm also putting a screen capture of my conceptual build. I don't have much to show right now because I'm a huge procrastinator but I do have just about everything figured out. The USB ports look more squared than rectangular but I'll adjust those openings when needed. I ordered four male to female cables which turn out to be just too short for the build... The USB ports on the Pi look a little high but they just fit inside of the case. I figured it made sense to put the switch where the hole for the cartridge ejector lever is, just a small bit of sanding to have my current rocker switch fit, or get a rectangular one for aesthetics. As you can see with all the excess plastic removed there is a lot of space inside this little casing, so fitting other components in there should be really easy.
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