LED glowing green but stock boot #146
Description
| Answer some general questions first | |
|---|---|
| Which firmware version are you using? | all (v.0.1 - v.0.5) |
| Are you using the official Raspberry Pi Pico board? | yes |
I was hoping I can figure this out myself and not annoy anyone but here we are~
I am currently trying to mod 2 gamecubes to use picoboot. Both lead me to the same problem:
Problem:
The LED of the pico pi is glowing green when the gamecubes are turned on but they just boot into the stock menu as if nothing changed.
I am aware this is a common problem and I have scanned the issue board here on github and the troubleshooting page on webhdx as thoroughly as possible to make sure I didn't miss anything - but since this post exists you can tell that I couldn't get it to work. I'll post a list of all the things I tried below.
20260222_173408.mp4
Some more context:
This isn't my first attempt doing this. I have successfully modded 4 gamecubes to use picoboot over the last 2 years and have only once had a problem because of wire length which I was able to fix back then.
That doesn't mean that I couldn't have done a mistake obviously and I'm not gonna boast about how perfect my soldering skills are (I know they aren't) but since I have gotten this mod to work 4 times with much less experience before it just makes this situation more confusing to me and is the reason why I'm looking for help here.
One of the cubes is a DOL-001 and the other a DOL-101. Both are PAL.
My previous cubes are PAL and JPN.
-- Things I've tried so far --
Firmware:
- Started with v.3.1 as all the 4 previous cubes worked fine with it
- Since it didn't here I tried every picoboot version, all the way from v.0.1 to v.0.5 - nothing changed
Wiring:
- The wires are (imo) as short as they can be. There's no way they can get any shorter without risking damage to the board when working on it. My previously modded cubes have longer wires and work fine.
- I desoldered, cleaned the pads and resoldered with new wires on both cubes a total of 3 times to no avail.
- Tried both the thin wires in the attached images but also a thicker 26 AWG wires (which both work on my previous modding attempts), no difference here either
- Feel free to look at my soldering, I don't see anything wrong but I'm not an expert so any hints are appreciated.
Power Source:
- Tried using a USB-C power board, nothing changed
- Used the same stock power unit (PAL) on older modded cubes and they work fine so I don't think it's the power unit.
Shorting out:
- Tried to make sure that there are no shorts by covering the whole soldered area with kapton tape
- Tried booting the cube with no heatsink and disc reader
SD Card:
- The SD card is a simple 2 GB card in the memory card B slot, works on my other cubes so I don't see why it wouldn't here
Pico Pi:
- Tried using one of the already flashed pico boards from the other modded cubes. Doesn't work here.
- The newly flashed picoboards work fine on the older modded gamecubes, so the pico is flashed correctly.
Swiss:
- Only used the same version for swiss (swiss_r1826) that I use on all my other cubes so I doubt that's an issue
EDIT: Video:
- I am using the original AV cables, the images are of a DOL-101 so I cannot use a HDMI plug anyway
And this... is where it ends, I have been tinkering and troubleshooting for 2 full days straight over the weekend and I am almost at the brink of giving up.
I love this mod to no end and am forever grateful that it exists but I for the love of god don't understand what I'm doing wrong, especially considering the previous successful mods and that I have the same problem on 2 different cubes this time.
I'd appreciate if someone could nudge me into the right direction. Is there a way I could more thoroughly debug what exactly is wrong?
Thanks for reading my wall of text, I hope someone can help. Have a nice day!