Pics of inside a GBC and a GB cartridge

Discussion of programming and development for the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color.
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Jarhmander
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Pics of inside a GBC and a GB cartridge

Post by Jarhmander »

I had some time to kill so I took my set of security screwdriver bit and I disassembled a GameBoy Color and a Tetris cartridge (I don't have the proper bit but I figured out how to with another security bit)

Face
Image

Back
Image
it reads CGB-CPU-04

Cartridge
Image
An horrible black blob!

BTW I have too the original Gameboy but my bit is too large for the small and deep holes...

Hi res pics : http://jarhmander.home.googlepages.com/DSCI0030.JPG;http://jarhmander.home.googlepages.com/DSCI0031.JPG;http://jarhmander.home.googlepages.com/DSCI0032.JPG

Hope that is useful for someone
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koitsu
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Post by koitsu »

The "horrible black blob" is actually called an epoxy blob. The game code/graphics are actually under there, instead of in a mask ROM with pins and so on. I believe the way it works at the fab is that the mask ROM itself is perfectly placed on the PCB, then a large blob of epoxy is applied to hold it in place.

Why do it this way? Simple: extremely cheap/inexpensive.

kevtris would be able to confirm/deny this method, as he's got experience lifting (removing) epoxy. :D
IIMarckus
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Post by IIMarckus »

Tetris is the only (legit) cart I’ve seen with epoxy.

Here is a site with more carts

I also photographed an old Kirby cartridge some time ago… link
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MottZilla
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Post by MottZilla »

Well there aren't all that many Gameboy games that don't use a MBC chip. When working on my Gameboy emulator I found that out pretty quick. Most games use atleast some sort of mapper to be bigger than 32K. So I'm guessing the glop top doesn't make as much sense or maybe not with mapper chips. Either way glop tops suck cause they leave us nothing pretty to look at.
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