I recently got some GBA cartridges to mess around with and they were mostly all generic black blob bootlegs, except one of them which I couldn't find a mention of on the internet.
It's a very simple PCB design with a black blob in the back of it that I can't really see a use for other than pulling the chip's reset signal high or doing some address translation magic so I won't bother, but the flash chip inside of this bootleg was an LH28F320BFN which is close to the LH28F320BJE used in one development cart according to FlashGBX. this chip being an intel flash I thought to myself "oh cool this is ancient but can be flashed" and I was kind of wrong.
After examining the PCB for what seemed like 2 hours i finally figured out that the write enable pin of the flash is hooked up to the reset line. Well in that case writing to the flash would be impossible, BUT, any moron (me) with a soldering iron can just run a wire from the write signal on the connector to the write pin on the flash chip because apparently the signals just kinda work out.
Of course I got to work, using the thickest solder wire possible and the worst soldering iron with a tip the thickness of an incredibly dull pencil. After breaking off my bond wire having soldered it in the via for the write pin on the connector, and then subsequently breaking the pin on the flash chip after trying to use thick copper wire as solder wick (highly recommend against) and then having to shave off the plastic of the package to solder to what was left I ended with this monstrosity.
yes I have damaged the PCB mask and absolutely thrashed the chip and connector but it works! and I can send commands to it via gbabf as an intel chip.
all in all this turned out way better than I expected and would like to know if anyone recognizes these bootlegs and dates them as I haven't seen one like it on the internet. I hope this also serves as a kind of heads up for people with useless bootlegs they could turn useful if they have a proper flash chip inside.
It's a very simple PCB design with a black blob in the back of it that I can't really see a use for other than pulling the chip's reset signal high or doing some address translation magic so I won't bother, but the flash chip inside of this bootleg was an LH28F320BFN which is close to the LH28F320BJE used in one development cart according to FlashGBX. this chip being an intel flash I thought to myself "oh cool this is ancient but can be flashed" and I was kind of wrong.
After examining the PCB for what seemed like 2 hours i finally figured out that the write enable pin of the flash is hooked up to the reset line. Well in that case writing to the flash would be impossible, BUT, any moron (me) with a soldering iron can just run a wire from the write signal on the connector to the write pin on the flash chip because apparently the signals just kinda work out.
Of course I got to work, using the thickest solder wire possible and the worst soldering iron with a tip the thickness of an incredibly dull pencil. After breaking off my bond wire having soldered it in the via for the write pin on the connector, and then subsequently breaking the pin on the flash chip after trying to use thick copper wire as solder wick (highly recommend against) and then having to shave off the plastic of the package to solder to what was left I ended with this monstrosity.
yes I have damaged the PCB mask and absolutely thrashed the chip and connector but it works! and I can send commands to it via gbabf as an intel chip.
all in all this turned out way better than I expected and would like to know if anyone recognizes these bootlegs and dates them as I haven't seen one like it on the internet. I hope this also serves as a kind of heads up for people with useless bootlegs they could turn useful if they have a proper flash chip inside.
