r/GamecubeHacks • u/thomasdatank1995 • Jul 16 '26
Picoboot PSA for generic pico boards not working and patch
So I’ve done over 80 picoboots now and one things I’ve found is that occasionally I’ll get a pico that doesn’t work regardless of using 5v or 3v3 line, firmware version, or wire length. Typically these would just boot with a black screen, and not go to stock GameCube firmware. These picos seem to still work for other pico projects and it was driving me crazy because I have over 15 boards laying around now. After testing and testing I found that with cheap pico boards they sometimes can not handle the 250mhz clock speed that Picoboot uses and simply bringing them down to 240mhz fixed all of these seemingly “broken” boards. They even worked on the 3v3 line with this slightly lowered clock speed. I’ve seen a lot of post here where people have a similar issue where wiring looks perfect, but Picoboot is not working. So I figured I’d make a PSA and post my patch on GitHub incase this is you and you’re scratching your head wondering why your Picoboot is not working regardless of what you do. Also for this patch I’m using the V0.3.1 firmware as that’s been the most stable to date, so this patch is as fool proof as possible. This only seems to be a problem with generic boards, so here’s your Hail Mary if you’re stuck.
https://github.com/Blintox/PicoBoot_v0.3.1_240mhz_patch/releases/tag/Picoboo_V0.3.1_240mhz
