Hooking Up Your Xport/XRC/XBC to a Gamecube
Materials needed:
- GBA/Xport
- Gamecube
- Gamecube GBA Player
And, if you're planning on using the XBC/XRC with it:
- Soldering Iron
- 22 or 24 AWG Wire
- Solder sucker/remover
Staring at an old GBA screen all day (due to the fact that you blew up your GBA SP) can wreck havoc on your eyes. So, why not hook it up to a TV out? You can pick up a GBA Player for the Gamecube that will allow you to play Gameboy Advance games on your TV. Using this, you can develop on your xport using a TV (or a TV card in your computer, like I do).
If you're just using the Xport, you're fine with just sticking the Xport in the gamecube and going, assuming you don't have a board connected to the Xport with plugs that won't fit with the GBA player slot. The XRC and XBC have this problem.
The power plug is just a little too large to fit into the Gamecube! So, we'll need to move it out a bit.
Here's a picture of the location of the power plug on the top of the board.
We're going to want to take that connector up off the board, and put wires in between it and the board.
We'll need to desolder the three points on the bottom. All you'll need to do is heat up the solder points until they liquify, then use the solder sucker to take up the solder from the joint. Do this on all three points, and the connector should come free from the board.
Now, solder wires between the plug and the board. Make sure that you connect the wires from the correct holes on the board to the correct pins on the plug, otherwise horrible, horrible things will happen.
After doing connectivity tests to make sure that your joints are solid, plug the board in and make sure the charge lights come on. You now have a board that will fit in a Gamecube!
Assuming you have a decently large power supply, you can now use the Gamecube as the XRC/XBC processor (realize that you'll still be limited to the GBA hardware in the GBA player, so this is a really bad and silly idea).
However, this is useful for taking video of whatever you're doing on your xport, or else using a TV as a debugging screen (assuming the board doesn't need to be mobile).