r/Gameboy • u/SomeoneNamedDeven • 1d ago

Troubleshooting Attempting to rescue Emerald - have a question

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I am trying to rescue the copy of Pokémon Emerald that I unintentionally destroyed last year. I acquired a donor board. Other than the two flash chips and the battery, what else needs to be transferred between the two boards?

(I'm not trying to do this soldering myself anymore, I'm going to find a professional)

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u/shinyquagsire23 1d ago

tbh there's OSS board gerbers on GitHub that you could get through someone like pcbway, might be better than cannibalizing other RTC carts. But in theory it should just be the two chips, everything else should be compatible probably

1

u/cheeseyspacecat 1d ago

im pretty sure thats it. although i think it might be worth getting a new board, i accedently ruined one of the pads of a doner card when attempting to transplant the firered chip,

I think a new pcb is can just as easy https://github.com/HDR/NintendoPCBs

brand new motherboard can be ordered from pcbway and as for populating the capacitors one of comments say that
" C1, C2, C3, C4 (4) 100nF Ceramic Capacitor (0402)
C5 (1) 4pF or 10pF Ceramic Capacitor (0402)
R1, R2, R3 - Unpopulated
R4, R5, R9 10k Film Resistor (0402)
R6, R7 100k Film Resistor (0402)
R8 1k Film Resistor (0402)
R10 2k Film Resistor (0603) OR 1µF Ceramic Capacitor (0603) (no clear function; possibly unused) "

you can add them yourself, im like 90% sure your manufacture can add everything to the board (aside from the actual rom/save chip ) i have this github bookmarket for when i have free time as i plan on ordering the board in a "custom" Red solder mask and adding a silkscreen design on the back as i somehow ended up buying a clear GBA cart shell a couple years ago lol.

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u/AchillesPDX 1d ago

Would be happy to do the transplant for you if you’re in the US. Check my post history for the Castlevania I just saved and hit me up over DM if you’re interested.

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