Does my GBA game cartridge have a chip missing?

Harvey-J · 2024-11-21T22:18:31+0000

Hey

Does anyone know if this old GBA game cartridge has a chip missing? (see area highlighted)

I'm relatively new to GBA games and only have 2 so far so can't compare it as the other one I have has a battery in that area instead.

Thanks in advance

LoggerMan · 2024-11-21T22:29:07+0000

I don't know if there should be a chip there, but your cart could fake anyway. Wha game is it meant to be?

4d1xlaan · 2024-11-22T01:14:33+0000

it's the right size for rom chip, but this is fake af and the rom is probably in the glob top instead

Apache Thunder · 2024-11-22T01:28:18+0000

Probably an unused flash chip mount point. Bootleg makers probably populate the PCB differently depending on the game they will be flashing to it or based on what parts are available at the time of manufacture. Probably normal for the PCB to look like that. Had that area been populated, good chance the other chip would be missing instead.

You can also see extra pads where there is a chip so they have designed the PCB to accept a different size chip at that location in some circumstances as well.

SylverReZ · 2024-11-22T01:37:22+0000

Apache Thunder said:
Probably an unused flash chip mount point. Bootleg makers probably populate the PCB differently depending on the game they will be flashing to it or based on what parts are available at the time of manufacture. Probably normal for the PCB to look like that. Had that area been populated, good chance the other chip would be missing instead.

You can also see extra pads where there is a chip so they have designed the PCB to accept a different size chip at that location in some circumstances as well.

Most likely this would be a place for the SRAM chip if the game uses battery saves perhaps, even though there is no battery holder footprint on the circuit board from my point of view. The glob top is some kind of memory controller ASIC.

Some manufacturers back in the early hay days of the GBA use reprogrammable flash cart boards that required the use of a USB/parallel programmer, such as with the case of the Flash2Advance and XG-Flash, just with the firmware overwritten with the ROM. Most, if not all bootlegs from the 2000's used e-waste EEPROMs from old pachinko arcade machines, which is why you have a label with Japanese writing over them.

Jayro · 2024-11-22T06:15:16+0000

It definitely looks like it is setup to fit as many different sizes of flash chip as possible, and that's a good thing, because bootlegs are made using recycled flash chips from broken electronics. Having flexible boards made like this is actually really smart of them.

Does my GBA game cartridge have a chip missing?

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