DIY Gameboy Flash Cart from Scrap Parts? (EPROMs)

[bicostp]

We got some old networking equipment from the company my dad works for because they were throwing it out (mostly for the scrap aluminum), and I pulled some of the boards that looked like they had flash chips on them.

Some are obvious, some take a little more guesswork. I'm just wondering if any of you guys think something fun can be made out of them.

Here's some pictures:


Intel flash storage


Intel and AMI chips, plus an 11 mhz oscillator that may work its way into something.


1 mhz oscillator, which will make a decent AM radio transmitter.
I hate taking pictures of shiny stuff. It kept reflecting all the junk around so you couldn't read it.


Another Amtel chip, and a 33 mhz 68040.



Now as for making a Gameboy flash cart, I found out about it while looking for datasheets. Mostly it's because oif <a href="http://www.reinerziegler.de/readplus.htm">this 1996-looking, disgustingly multicolored webpage</a> where he replaced the ROM in a Mario Land II cart with an EPROM. One of the diagrams includes the AMD AM29F040, which I found a couple of. (Don't know if I took a picture of it or not, sorry.)

I have an extra copy of Wheel of Fortune and some random game a freind gave me with his dismantled GBC. (He said it's "probably Pokemon or something".) Think either of those will work? This setup probably won't do GBC games, but that's fine. I can get a picture of the cartridge board if you want.

What I need to know is how complicated it is to set this up. Since it's basically a glorified EPROM burner, how complicated are we talking, here? I'm pretty sure i can order the computer-side controller off Digikey or Mouser if necessary, but if it's going to be more than $30 or so I might skip it.

Thanks everybody.

EDIT: Here's the cartridge board. it doesn't boot when I put it in the GBC, it just distorts the Nintendo logo a bit. It's almost certainly a Color game.



Maybe the battery's dead?

EDIT 2: Nope. Brutally ripping off the battery didn't fix the problem.

[Jongamer]

I hate to nit pick a mod, but shouldn't this go in our new Handheld section I mean it is about building a GB flashcart out of some eeproms.

[bicostp]

I hate to nit pick a mod, but shouldn't this go in our new Handheld section I mean it is about building a GB flashcart out of some eeproms.

Maybe... I'm also wondering if anything else can be made with these parts, so it's kind of a toss-up.

EDIT: Fine, I'll move it.

[jeroen]

I think this is a good idea.....it could be tedious though (soldering) also you'd need to find the pinouts for both the chips.

edit: just realised something........gb games have mappers I think (at least some of them) this cart would only work for games with THAT mapper thats inside the cart. (I think they had a pretty standard one on gameboy though that most games used)

[nitro2k01]

Google is your friend. I googled some of the chips, and here's what I found:
te28f160 - Flash chip with builtin RAM. This is one is unsuitable for use with a GB(C) since it uses 3.3 V rather than 5 V. You could use a voltage regulator, but all in all I don't think it will be worth the effort for you. This chip coul perhaps be used with a GBA, but it would take some engineering.
The other chips that I see on this picture are other things. (Not memory)
tsc87c52, iot7210 - A microcontroller and some other form of controller chip. Nothing useful for a GB flash cart.
1 MHz clock oscillator - Just as you noticed. Nothing really remarkable about it.
AT27C2048 - This is an OTPROM, which stands for One Time Programmable Read Only Memory. Already filled with something, thus no use for anything for you. Btw, Atmel, not Amtel.

The cartridge - I recognize this as a Pokémon blue or red cart. Which means it might not be GBC double-speed compatible. The MBC3 (Memory mapper) on that cart should be ble to address however big the Pokémon ROM is. (256 or 512 kBytes if I remember it correctly)
If you have a voltmeter you should be able to check the battery status. It should somewhere between 2.7-3.1 V. But that should not prevent the game from booting already at the Nintendo logo stage. At a stretch it might make the game crash after the logo, but probably it would just work without being able to save a game, if it was a battery problem.
Out of curiosity, can you post a picture of the glitched logo? Or at least tell me how it was glitched? (Completely garbled? You could see traces of the logo? Regular pattern of white or black pixels?) If you're going to take a picture, use the macro mode of your camera!

edit: just realised something........gb games have mappers I think (at least some of them) this cart would only work for games with THAT mapper thats inside the cart. (I think they had a pretty standard one on gameboy though that most games used)

Not much of a problem. Most GB mappers are interoperable, except for size limitations. The notable exception is MBC1 based carts using big ROM sizes, but it's not a real problem. If you'd really find such a game, you could probably patch it anyway.
You're probably thinking about NES, which suffers from a real mapper hell.

[bicostp]

1 MHz clock oscillator - Just as you noticed. Nothing really remarkable about it.

Nope, nothing special. However there are some 14, 11, and 25 mhz oscillators floating around. They'll definitely go into the ol' parts bin. (There's even a 66 mhz one on a PowerPC based board.)

Btw, Atmel, not Amtel.

I blame typing lysdexia.

Out of curiosity, can you post a picture of the glitched logo? Or at least tell me how it was glitched? (Completely garbled? You could see traces of the logo? Regular pattern of white or black pixels?) If you're going to take a picture, use the macro mode of your camera!

It's pretty recognizable, but there's a row of single pixels spaced apart evenly over the logo, and it looks like the N has a couple pixels missing.


Did I mention I hate taking pictures of shiny stuff? The lamp probably needed a different filter.

I also found a couple of the <a href="http://parts.digikey.com/1/parts/539621 ... .html">AMD AM29F040-90JC</a> chips, which may be a replacement for one of the chips mentioned in the hideous website. ( He mentions the AM29F040-150JC in one of the diagrams; the ones I have might work, right? (As far as I can tell, the numbers before JC are the response time.) If these are measured in megabits, this should be a 512k chip?

[Kurt_]

He's thinking what I'm thinking, methinks. When you put in a game that is filthy (or in my experience, none at all) the logo at startup gets garbled.

The cartridge just might be filthy, or broken.

[Dr. KillGood]

BLOW THAT CARTRIDGE LIKE A GOOD BOY!

Do it, you know you want to.

[nitro2k01]

He's thinking what I'm thinking, methinks. When you put in a game that is filthy (or in my experience, none at all) the logo at startup gets garbled.

The cartridge just might be filthy, or broken.

Indeed. The problem here is dirt or a loose contact somewhere.

[bicostp]

He's thinking what I'm thinking, methinks. When you put in a game that is filthy (or in my experience, none at all) the logo at startup gets garbled.

The cartridge just might be filthy, or broken.

I cleaned sll of the contacts and it still did the same thing. It's not that GBC because my other Color and the Advance show the same error. Time to take out the soldering iron; maybe fresh connections on the ROM chip will help.

Maybe the ROM chip itself is fried?

EDIT: Somewhere I have a cable that connects between the computer's printer port and the Game Boy's link port, to transfer Game Boy Camera pictures to the PC. I don't think it's possible, but can this be used to program the cartridge (or make a programmer)?

[nitro2k01]

EDIT: Somewhere I have a cable that connects between the computer's printer port and the Game Boy's link port, to transfer Game Boy Camera pictures to the PC. I don't think it's possible, but can this be used to program the cartridge (or make a programmer)?

Not in itself. You still have the problem that the old generation of GB's can't boot over a serial cable. So you need some sort of bootstrap code. (That is still to be written) Serial communication using that adapter is likely possible. I've written software that communicates wih the GB using the parallell port.
There is actually one type of commercial cartridge that did this, namely the PC Linker. What it did was to use a BIOS ROM that could communicate with the PC, program the flash chip or select a ROM image.
Even using a regular flash chip hooked up on a cart, it's normally possible to program the chip from the GB using a special sort of instructions that you access through the normal address and data space. The trouble here is just to find the right instructions to burn the chip, but that should be a slim thing to do compared to the rest of everything.
So it's very much possible in theory.
In fact I have a spare pokémon cartridge too, and at some point I'm planning to do about the same thing, hook up a flash chip to it.

[iHackedit]

This is great but all to confusing for me for now : (me:newb) So you should make me a kit when done :D:D:D

[dragonhead]

This is great but all to confusing for me for now : (me:newb) So you should make me a kit when done :D:D:D

you are an idiot.

[HotDog-Cart]

I have that garbled nintendo logo problem too with one of my games. Its a Japanese game, but GameBoys arent region locked.

It wont boot in a gameboy advance, or in a pocket, or in a regular gameboy. It wont even boot in a SNES super gameboy. I've tried cleaning it to no avail. Ugh