Trying to FIX: 3 x Faulty Nintendo Game Boy Games 

This video had more twists and turns than an episode of CSI.

With a lot of patience and great soldering skills you managed 2 out of 3, great job my friend.

I’m hoping there will be another Blair Witch adventure at some point in this video! 😂. I’m stick chuckling now😂

CE usually means Chip Enable. The chip just will not work at all if it's not "enabled", but sometimes it's also used in timing when reading/writing from/to the chip. Although I'm sure you've figured that out since you've made this video two years ago lol.

You never give up, you earned a 👍.

1:22:06 however, this is Silver version in the gold version shell!!

Every time I see a new video from Vince I check the length. When its above an hour I know I'm in for a good show.

1:01:13 Vince: “It’s not even showing the gameboy logo anymore...” Me: “That game cartridge has gotten so bad it made the gameboy forget it’s own name.”

Hey Vince, I have a box full of old broken Pokémon games if you are interested please let me know, I would like to see some one fix them I would just need postage

A12 an address line. Tie this to ground through a 560~ish ohm resistor if the resistance is too low(internal pulldown is most likely shot) Having an address line floating will render the game unbootable since it won't start executing from the correct place. WE = Write Enable; normally CPU controlled. If the WE pin has a trace going to the cart connector then this is almost certainly CPU controlled, otherwise it can be tied to it's inactive state meaning the data is only read and never written to the chip and read operations are done through the OE pin or another WE pin somewhere on the chip. OE = Output Enable; normally CPU controlled. If the OE pin has a trace going to the cart connector then this is definitely CPU controlled, otherwise it can be tied to it's inactive state because it's most likely not being used to signal a read operation and some other WE pin is being used to clock the IC. CE = Chip Enable; tied high or to ground depending on it's normally activate state(active low denoted by a bar above the CE letters in the datasheet)

You've really come a long way in the past year Vince. You're doing stuff now that you didnt do during your "switch killer" vids. Keep it up. :)

"This game features water Pokemon so I'm going to test it in this fast moving river"

“Killer”Ohms is better anywayzs.

Love your videos, my cat hates them because of the beeping lol.

You should have removed the battery before you started shorting pins/traces together with your soldering iron....

umm pokemon fan here. Vince, thats not gold my friend. that was silver @1:22:04. Gold and Silver have 2 different intros. I totally agree what I saw was the silver ROM grounded out, however I can 100% say that Lugia under the water swimming is silver. Also the comment about could be fake cartridge; European and USA cartridges are different and could have different stickers, so I would check to make sure. thanks Vince! loved the videos as always! plz bump so he sees this!

It says "RAM" right next to that chip on the first game.

>uses all boards to make one. >Pokemon Blorange

you have to apply 3v and 100-300ma current to vdd and see what is heating up,and replace. it takes no much time

Really splashing out Vince - a whole sheet of paper to scribble on rather than a torn piece of envelope - definately living your best life 👍👍

I don't know if anyone here noticed it but you fixed the Silver version and not the Gold one because the main menu you see very shortly at 1:22:05 shows the Silver menu not the Gold.

Great video vince, very interesting faults. The faulty Mitsumi 1134A chip is a (sram power down chip) and is used to disconnect the sram from VDD when the system is powered off (as it has a battery as well), mainly to prevent false data writes etc. Enjoyed the fixes though, have done many gameboy games in the past and its always nice to see them working again! :)

Awesome work, sir! I love the long videos. I love that you'll chase the fault until you're fed up with it or it's fixed. I (and I'm sure many other viewers) get to learn quite a lot from your processes that would be lost in the shorter formats.

That Pokémon Gold has either been reshelled or is a fake cartridge. The sticker is completely wrong 🤔 Edit: lmao it was a reshelled Silver Version

i think sean butchered the silver one

inserting and removing gb cartridges puts a lot of flex into the pcb that creates cracked solder, ive had loads of gb games fixed by applying no clean flux and running some hot air over the pads to get everything reflowed and connected. finding games with such unique faults and actually getting results is very impressive.

Hi Vince, noticed than in all? of your videos there is a slightly annoying humming noise in the background. Maybe an amplifier turned on or a power supply. Can you please try to fix that? Thank you!

If I were to guess CE is "chip enable".

Honestly thank you for explaining what the numbers on a battery mean I work for an alarm company and a lot of the sensors use CR2032 but a couple use CR2025 Now I can tell customers why the battery for the door won't work in the keyfob

Most retail gameboy cartridges, seemingly those with battery-backed RAM saves, have four test pads on the rear side of the PCB, labelled TP1, TP2, TP3 and TP4. Connections: TP1: RAM supply voltage/VCC TP2: Battery voltage (after 1kOhm resistor R1) TP3: Battery voltage direct TP4: Ground/negative for the whole board Useful tests: Battery voltage: Voltage between TP3 and TP4. Could be more convenient than measuring across the battery terminals. Low voltage here indicates a dead battery or short circuit on input side of R1 (i.e. close to the battery). Battery drain current: Voltage between TP2 and TP3. The reading in volts equals the current in milliamps, or the reading in millivolts equals the current in microamps. Large voltage (near battery voltage) here indicates a short circuit on output side of R1 (i.e. not necessarily close to the battery, probably around U4) or faulty R1. RAM supply voltage: Voltage between TP1 and TP4. Zero/low voltage here with a good battery indicates a broken trace, or faulty U4 (may be caused by short circuit near U3 or U4) Components: All these components have the same numbers on all official boards as far as I can tell. R1: 1k ohm resistor between the battery and U4. Acts as current sense (for manual testing) and short circuit protection. Tiny black rectangle or large brownish blob mounted in a hole, near battery or U4. U3: Save RAM chip. Part number varies between games. Large chip usually near the bottom-left of the board. U4: Power management chip. Also known as MM1134 or 134A. A small 8-pin chip usually near the middle-top of the board.

20:07 Setting the iron to 400 degrees is way hot. You're going to wear out your tip very quickly. It also increases the risk of damaging components and PCB. With small parts like that, it's better to start out at 350 degrees or even lower, and adjust if necessary. The quality of the solder joints might even be better because you're not burning off the flux as fast.

Oh come on!!! I've had a whole weekend of doing flipping Black Friday orders, went out on the lash last night and then spent another 6.5 Hours in the office today ( I'm there as I type this ) and NOW, now I need to watch an hour and a half of these things ( hopefully ) getting sorted out, something I epically failed at :-p Been hoping you'd do a vid on this for a long while :) Good Luck Vince, I've got my fingers crossed, but I am going home to watch in comfort now :-)

Watching this again 2 years later I noticed the gold Spanish version was actually Silver version in Spanish, wonder if the person who sent them mixed them up or if that other chip made the gold version change to silver.

Pokémon gold is actually Pokémon silver Vince!!

I'm afraid the ROMs are wiped out. It might be fixable with a ROM programmer ( there's one kinda cheap from Voultar you can buy ), by re-flashing the ROMs that you can find easily on the web. You could even flash the English versions of the games.

1:00:00 CE = Chip Enable Looks like you found the _logic_ labels for the pins. Not the pin numbering schematics. 1:13:30 "Works fine, but French." Throwing shade at the French like a true Englishman. How do you manage to blow the ass out of all four ICs on the game cart? That's nuts.

When you start to see multiple shorted chips in one board, that's a classic over-voltage/reverse voltage or other similar damage symptom, especially when they're sharing the same voltage supply. Once you found two shorted chips I suspected all the chips. Half the chips don't fail on a board for no good reason. One maybe, two out of four, no. Didn't surprise me they were all dead at all - glad to see you didn't give up!

You should swap it to the silver case since its silver pokemon thats working and not gold

New subscriber here, I just wanted to say your videos are very entertaining and I'm just binge watching them.

Great job =D What's probably happened is an overvoltage from a failed GameBoy - it fried all the chips on that one cart. It's rare, but it does happen! It happens on the Atari Lynx too. CE = chip enable. On a ROM chip the CE pin is usually active low, meaning if its pulled low the ROM can be read, when high it cannot be read. A 'pins' are address bus lines. D 'pins' are data bus lines.

Pokemon Gold and Silver are sister games and newer, Blue is sister to Red and they are much older. So, "in theory" G and S chips should be interchangeable. But if the person tried to change roms, then maybe the bios' weren't changed as well. Then the system would lock it out because it knows it's an non legal rom for that cartridge or something to that effect. The last 2 lines maybe incorrect, I'm not trained in this field, only dabbled.

To clean the contacts, use a pencil eraser, works like a dream!

I could be wrong, but I figure all of the chips would get faulty if the voltage regulator failed. It's not like there is a fuse or something keeping the rest of the circuit protected when the main voltage regulator fails. Once again, I could be wrong in that assumption, but it seems like it would make sense.

To quote Meatloaf, ♩ ♪ ♫"two outta three aint bad"♩ ♪ ♫

I'm sure you're in my brain. I get some tp-4056, you get one. I do game gears, you do one. I do gameboys, you do the games. Get out of my head Charles! Really though, looking forward to the video. I still haven't managed to do any yet :( And don't do a famicom AV mod. I just finished one. DON'T DO IT!

For some reason, the footage with the relaxing music over the top reminds me of "Take Heart". 😂

Great job on this one... You are persistent, I give you that, Sir.... Your pronunciation is quite clear to the average american... I think people are trolling you.... Killer Ohms, Kilohms, Kilo Ohms... Keeel Ohms.... whatever. We know what you mean....

Okay... so in the end there was a Silver ROM in the Gold cart the whole time? The previous owner must have been more confused than Vince.

hears a good vid on hpw to fix gb cards > ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RaG69Ff1Fhg.html

When you finally find the solution but you realize there is still an hour left in the video so you grab popcorn and drinks. Great stuff.

Looks like the voltage regulator (working one) is an old TPS6735 by Texas instruments. Datasheet I found is dated 1997. Could have gotten a new revision or 2 since then lol. Guess the VCC to GND short was caused either by the regulator dying, which fried the memory chip or vice versa. Always interesting to see your videos, even though I'm working in the electronics business. I'm nowhere close to 20+ year old games though, so it's fun to watch repairs on all that. Keep it up!

Thanks for the Video, and it was not boring at all. Great work :) So all Chips on the Silver was not okay.. :)

Hello Vince, I think the reason why the cartridge got damaged is due to an adapter having high amount of AC ripple. Even after the rectification, some AC adapters carry an appreciable amount of noise/ripple which can damage electronics the way static electricity does. The other cartridge with an apparently good flash memory might be just faulty which has bad memory blocks.

I know this video is 3 years old, but when you ended up getting gold version to work, it was actually running silver version. It had the lugia under the sea in the intro sequence instead of ho-oh in the sky. So funny how that worked out. Either way thanks so much for these videos. I just started learning how to solder and ended up being able to diagnose and fix my old gameboy advance sp thanks to your work. So thank you!

You should read the data sheets because they give you the maximum voltage tolerance for the chip. When you use the continuity tester you put a voltage across the chip, if the voltage the tester supplies exceeds the maximum voltage the chip can handle, you will destroy the chip. Luckily, the first chip you removed is 5v tolerant, so you didn't necessarily hurt it. Also, the datasheet will tell you the maximum soldering temperature the chip is tolerant of as well. If you can avoid it, do not use the hot air for removal of single chip capacitors or resistors. Use your soldering iron for those, it is less damaging than the hot air.

The pins on the other side are to help hold down the real pins on the game board, they are there to the vias have something to attach to, and if the vias weren't those the pins would be damaged more easily

Sweet, I was waiting for a Nintendo retro repair video. Thanks Vince! :)

Dear God... you have inhuman patience.

So many twists. It’s like lottery with them chips. Need correct combination.

Change out the batteries on the GameBoy

Not once did he blow into the cartridge worked everything for me as a kid

i was sure that it's going to work in 44 minute of video. I must say that you are very patient Vince.

The crystals would be specific to the Pokemon games. I don't think you'll find a crystal in most Game Boy Color carts. However, the Pokemon games do have time-based features which depend on having a real-time clock.

I think he actually sends them because he likes to watch you squirm and struggle.

U3 as mark in the board corresponds to an ram the other one U1 is mask rom and the other in the upperside U2 is for save handling data X1 correspond to an oscillator... My humble opinion .

someone replaced the pokemon silver battery

Best video yet my good man. Please make more cartridge fixing videos 👍

Anyone know what that little touch screen laptop is he uses

2:28 Looks Like Gordan Ramsay

Didn't swap the 4th chip, might as well, 3 other chips are broke, might as well guess the 4th is too

If you buy "SMD glue" and cooper strips you can rebuild tracks like those gold fingers. You just need to activate it with heat. BTW, when heating a component you should leave the tweezers close to the air flow so they get warm to avoid thermal shocks.

in electronics we tend to pronounce it KIL-OHMS and MEG-OHMS without the A. As for the silver game, I expect you can probably get the chips but you would need some way to program the ROM and the file to put in it. in any case the contacts are knackered. great result though :). enjoyed watching that. and you're becoming an expert on removing and reinstalling these SMD packages

Not once did you blow on the cartridge....if you owned a Gameboy you'd know this fixes the issues you are having instantly.

Hi Vince, you might want to look at the chips datasheet. I must say I like a lot the way you diagnose stuff but you might be confused with some pins that are doing chip configurations like CE, OE , etc

CE is chip enable, A12 is an address line and there is no correlation to your other project. The *256* was likely a static RAM (hint: any powers of 2 like 64,128,256,512 etc in a part number). The battery backup and the watch crystal are sure signs of an SRAM and microcontroller keeping track of time and game progress. We have serial EEPROM for this nowadays. You really should have just desoldered the battery as the first thing before messing about. It's shit to work on live boards. In the case of a Gameboy the missing data means nothing. Besides you swapped the SRAM anyway so why keep it powered?

Vince, don't sweat your accent. People can get over it. You do great work, thanks!!

As usual Vince another great video. Keep up the great work mate and greetings from Scotland Glasgow 👍👍

btw, this Pokemon Gold isn´t Pokemon Gold.It is Pokemon Silver."Plata" is Silver in Spanish.Also the ROM has the Silver identity.Infact both (the silver and gold) games were Pokemon Silver.

Please do more of these! And more psp!

46 mins in and home boy was like LKASJFLSJFOISDOJSD why did it blown.. the struggle of fixing things is pure human and to solve it , i't's a master piece when it's all done.

Anyone else notice he didn't try the very first troubleshooting step! Didn't blow on the cartridge 🤔😉great video Vince!

a few words on gameboy catridges: the Nintendo logo you see is loaded directly from the mask rom (and also used as protection from unauthorized game releases) also the CE pin > Chip Enable > u see the Nintendo logo, nl need to mess with CE clearly its enabled back to the protection bit: if the nintendo logo is not 1:1 the same as stored in the gameboy itself it refuses to boot the game, this was to prevent unauthorized game releases by publishers that dont have a license, the logo must be in the catridge header, doing so without a license would give Nintendo Legal grounds to file a copyright violation for unauthorized use of the logo. u may think this is yet another bs move of nintendo but this and the nintendo CIC chip saved the game industry from the videogame crash of 1985 caused by market flooding of bad games by ensuring all games for nintendo consoles would be approved by Nintendos president. Sources: - MVG: Secrets of the Nintendo CIC Chip - Early Cartridge Anti-Piracy | MVG - Ghidra Ninja: Hacking the Game Boy cartridge protection

If I remember correctly, the Nintendo logo is part of the game protection. If it fails, the game will not boot. Also, Pokémon games include an RTC hence the battery. Most GB games don't need it. Finally, if the game has a save feature, it has its own flash chip. I think the game requires a specific chip but it certainly needs to be the same size, eg if the game had a 256kb flash chip, replacing it with 32kb will at worse stop the game booting/not save and at best will only save the first 32kb of the data!

Nice intro music

Gameboy games, old ones, need to put in and out a few times, the Nintendo Logo will always show up wrong the first time. It is corrosion on the pins and this will rub off if you wiggle it in and out or do the eraser trick. So, I think you have to know these games won't work if the battery is low, sometimes they won't save, sometimes they won't even boot up. Batteries die after 5 to 12 years. But many user swap it by them selve, with poor solder knowledge. So on Pokemon, because it is famous, first check the Battery and check a short on GND to VCC. Changing between same Generation (red/blue or gold/silver) will work, Chips are the same. Site note: the Nintendo logo in the beginning is saved in the game rom, the Gameboy itselves checks this logo bit by bit if it is on the screen, if it don't match it won't boot. this is some kind of copy protection by unlicensed use of a Brand name.

Sweet

Hey Vince, sorry to comment on such a old video but after watching it, i noticed sonething really weird happened at the end... You showed that the pokemon Silver rom was faulty, all the chips from the pokemon silver cartridge were blown, and that the pokemon gold was good, just with the broken pins, yet, when you showed it working, right at the end of the video ,it was the pokemon Silver title screen, which makes no sense, the silver rom was shorting, the gold rom was the working one yet the working one was 100% Pokemon Silver in the video (it's in the title screen "silver version", also, both title screens are very different). Edit: you do mention a repair had been attempted before, could it be that the previous owner had swapped the roms chip already? Either way, you ended up putting the Silver Rom into the Silver PCB where it belonged originally which is a weird twist but something happened there. Just in case you still own these cartridges, go check if it says Silver Version on the title screen and put the pcb on the correct cartridge if you want to have it legit :p what it matters is that it works more than anything so that's no big deal

Dont apologise for the way you speak Vince.Anyone who doesn't know what you mean obviously hasn't got the brains they were born with.Great vid BTW.

Thanks for the new video! Always feel more confident to also try my best to fix everything instead of replacing it instantly. (Though I also often feel bad for having thrown away so many things in my life i could at least have tried to repair) Btw. Gamers Nexus just uploaded a video where they compared thermal paste application on CPUs. Their conclusion was: If your paste is not conductive, it does not matter much if you use too much or what application style you use. (except for maybe making a mess and wasting paste, but from cooling point of view it made almost no difference)

I wonder if some of those games have a suicide system that kicks in if the battery goes dead and the game disappears from the EEPROM, the 8 pin chip is a fixed -5V regulator. www.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheets_pdf/T/P/S/6/TPS6735.shtml

Repairing Pokémon Silver. ROM is read correctly but then I get a white screen. Issues with white screen are usually related to MBC chip. There are a few traces I am not sure how to check continuity for, as they go through a big hole in the board. Anyone know what these mystery traces connect to?

Vince, the CE should be Chip Enable, here's a write up from JEDEC if anyone is interested: www.jedec.org/standards-documents/dictionary/terms/chip-enable-input

I don't know at exactly 59 minutes and 26 seconds one asks what ce = chip enabled is! So turn on the chip sorry iam from germany and have a bad englisch !!

I do want to start this comment by saying I love your videos and as someone who finds soldering super relaxing these videos do help me sleep, but from one micro-solderist to another you're using wayyyyyy too much flux my friend, depending on the kind of flux you use it could cause corrosion or even surface damage to the PCB, I'm not trying to be a "hater" this is purely advice, you have my subscription weather you take it to heart or not 😁

CE means "chip enable", it's used to access the data in the rom chip

At the 1:02:48 mark what was that part called you swapped over? The one with the tape under it. Mine is broke off and my game won't go past the Nintendo logo screen. Please help! Thanks!

I think you were a bit unlucky there, since some bloke had already made a mess of things, swapping around stuff without knowing what he/she was doing. At some point, though, someone completely fried one of these games, causing headaches for both of you.

I have replaced batteries in my pokemon games and I have 2 emerald copies one I replaced and works the 2nd one I messed up on so it has no battery in it currently. The battery is only for the clock based events I'm having issue with it. The Gameboy logo comes on but the nintendo logo doesn't and the game won't boot? Any idea

you should try blowing the cartridge lol. but seriously, swapping from gold to silver shouldn't make any difference, imo. unless maybe there were revisions to the cartridge, and you're messing with a v1 and v1.1 in between the 2 of them. idk if those are physically different, or if they simply have different coding in the rom files, but that could be my only guess between the chip/board swapping doing nothing. still, haven't finished video yet, so i'm gonna continue after this post

Missing the mb3ca chip that's also attached directly to the same cap through the plated through hole, just quickly saying it's the big chip that's the short, was right but still 🤷‍♂️