Resurrect Your Gamecube

Picture this; You wake up in the morning, and you try to turn on your gamecube; you push the button, and you hear a whirring noise, but nothing else happens.  NOOOOOO! the guys are coming over to play Super Smash Bros. in a couple of hours, and the gamecube doesn't work!  Before you launch into a bunch of "that's what you get for buying a gamecube. loser!'", I know, I don't want to hear it.  For those of you who love your cube, though, I hope this helps.

Step 1 What went wrong?

If there has recently been a power surge where you live, that may be responsible for the problem you are having.  The symptoms are as follows: the external power supply functions normally, but when you plug in the cube and push the power button, the fan turns on, but nothing else happens; no light, no video, no spinning disc, nothing.  Nothing you do changes this condition.  So what's wrong? is the gamecube fried?  The Nintendo maintenance procedure for fixing this problem is to replace the entire board, which, obviously, is expensive and wasteful; the only part that's fried, as it turns out, is the fuse, which, for reasons I will never understand, Nintendo went out of its way to hide deep inside the system.  I'm going to tell you how to take the system apart and replace the fuse with a cheap, equivalent fuse from radio shack or another electronic parts supplier.

Comments

[team_nes_1986]

I have noticed that after about 20 minutes my Game Boy Player stops dead, but after the same period of time on, say, Super Smash Bros. Melee, the Cube is just fine. Anyone have suggestions on keeping the Game Boy Player alive for longer than 20 minutes?

[Deutschmann]

If you couldn't guess from the nature of my instructable, I don't know all that much about how gamecubes work. However, I would hazard a guess that, for some reason, running the gameboy player stresses the graphics chip or the CPU more than running the internal system (although that doesn't really make sense based on what I know about computers). Try putting the gamecube in a cool place, such as next to an air conditioning vent, and see if it runs longer. If it does, you probably have a cooling problem, and you could adopt any number of solutions used by computer wizards to make PCs run cooler. Look around on the rest of the site to see if anyone at least knows what causes this problem. I'm just speculating here.

[snowluck2345]

It might run hotter because it is emulating a game boy color which uses alot more power than just running things built for it. For instance, my laptop, with 2.8ghz core i7 and a dedicated nvidia gpu, forgot the model, can barely run Dark Alliance for the gamecube.

[matstermind]

what about when the gamecube shuts off after a few minutes of playing

[cooldudeintown]

ati Graphics are overheating. Re thermal paste or strip the heat syncs .
This may help you http://www.gamesx.com/misctech/gamecube.htm

[cooldudeintown]

Screw Diagram - http://kyorune.com/modding/article.php?id=84

[camintmier]

That sounds like an overheating problem.  Try putting a small fan at it's highest speed in front of the intake fan.  If it's real dusty inside, you might have to open it up and clean the inside with a vacuum and/or compressed air.

[Deutschmann]

Exactly; that has nothing to do with the fuse.  If it turns on at all, the fuse is probably fine.  Try what camintmier suggests.

[junits15]

I LOVE gamecube, wii sucks soo much, a complete letdown!! I broke mine by accident a couple of years ago, I still have TONS of games so eventually ill buy another one of of ebay.