When faced with the problem of scratching discs one starts to seek the alternatives to wearing out once expensive GameCube games. One solution is making a backup copies of our games and playing (and inevitably scratching) them while the original ones sit safely on the shelf.
Creating and playing backups is not endorsed by Nintendo so we need to somehow fit our GameCube with the possibility to load copies on our own. Popular choices include SD Media Launcher as a non-intrusive solution or the variety of modchips which have to be soldered to the drive control board in order to operate. A few short years ago the XenoGC modchip was amongst the most used chips on the market due to it's low price, relatively easy installation and good compatibility. Unfortunately, nowadays it's quite rare to stumble upon an affordable and available modchip. It seems that the XenoGC authors have ended the production and the few units resellers still have in stock have reached the high price level. Thankfully the authors have also released the full sources of the XenoGC firmware, so with a bit of determination and right tools we can change a small, cheap heap of electronics into a working XenoGC modchip.
All you need now is a hammer
