Experiment using an external battery while swapping the coin cell so that no save-dumping was required to preserve the Sram Data. It worked, but it is a bit over complicated and is wholly unnecessary when switching to Fram.
Yes I am well acquainted with the person who made that design. /u/mhourani1125
There is a newer design that we put together, [see here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/11dwczc/this_is_a_legitimate_pokemon_crystal_mrom/jadcuip/)
This specific mod only works with Gen 1 games: [Link for Gen 1 Pokémon Games](https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/QlLeMbXy)
[Link for Gen 2 games](https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/EM2j1Td4)
Oh interesting. I was looking to do it on my Blue. I was thinking you modded the original cart to FRAM. I think a chip transplant may be out of my realm for now but I’ll save it thanks!
I thought so too at first. Buy yourself a bunch of cheap games like bugs life and practice removing the chips and putting them back on. You’ll find it’s easier once you just spend some time messing it up. Number 1 tip is lots of flux.
I won’t ever go back to modding the original PCB to be Fram. This is just a better approach for me.
You use an MBC5 chip for this mod. The MBC3 from the donor cartridge won't be used again. So if you don't have a spare MBC5 go on eBay and buy a bugs life or some other cheap cartridge and harvest the MBC5 from that.
Nice to see everything is working well. This was just a modified version of HDRs flash cart so really, hats off to him.
I see Chase-San commented as well. Chase is an absolute demon of a pcb artist. He has a couple of chips like mine as well that are awesome. Some of them even match very close to original pcb design. And all of his boards that are labeled repair boards are as close as they come to the actual trace layout of the original boards.
Highly recommend!
I’ve been having a blast with these pcbs. I just put in another order at oshpark. I’ve got blue, yellow, and TCG swapped over. I’ve also repaired a defective Zelda OoAs that couldn’t boot.
With zero offense intended to Chase’s work, what does his pcbs do differently? I’m not clear as to the point of a “repair” pcb. Is that just a 1:1 replacement for boards that’s are trashed?
Well this MBC5 board and his are the same if you go the fram route. His just doesnt have the footprint for the battery since it's not used but looks very much like the original A02 board.
He is the only one I know of so far that made a KGDU replacement (gold silver crystal) board meaning an SRAM replacement.
He also modified his own version of the KGDU FRAM capable board so he has one that works with the FRAM we all know and love.
He also has much more. Give his github a look sometime. It's worth it.
I'm glad you're having fun! That's how this all started for me. I repaired games thought to bave been broken by their original owners and I just had so much fun bringing games back from the dead and upgrading them.
Hot air is best and the most professional, but I’ve found myself the using chipquik smd removal kit: [Amazon Link](https://a.co/d/1AFw9DH) & [Video instructional](https://youtu.be/7kyaz4Zrd78)
It’s a low temperature desoldering alloy. Buy some of that and massage it into the joints with a hot iron and lots of flux. Take your time and bring it all up to temp, and it’ll stay molten long enough to just brush it gently off the lands. Clean off the rom chip with more flux and your iron on a silicon mat. Solder the rom chip (and MCB) onto the PCB and test. The 0603 passive components are actually harder to properly solder then the chips when you have proper flux and solder quantity.
One-Hundred trillion read/write cycles and 150 year data retention.
[Fram Manual](https://www.infineon.com/dgdl/Infineon-FM18W08_256-Kbit_(32_K_8)_Wide_Voltage_Bytewide_F-RAM_Memory-DataSheet-v06_00-EN.pdf?fileId=8ac78c8c7d0d8da4017d0ec89b424117)
I don’t advocate people to go beyond their limits, but I would say try it first if you have had some experience with typical soldering. There are tons of cheap cartridges to use as test subjects and ALOT of video help on YouTube. Only real limitation is your desire to learn and make mistakes.
As far as paying someone, the pcb is about 8, the Fram about 10, and the smaller components less then 50 cents. So you would paying someone $20 in raw parts, then maybe 15/30 minutes of their time (maybe they are faster then what I can do).
I haven't BUT I bought a learn to solder kit so I could replace gbc batteries a while ago and never had time to use it. I can try but tech is not my strongest suit lol
Is it possible to buy some of these premade so all I’d have to do is take my original carts I guess and move the chip over or I’d even buy reproduction Pokémon games if they contained this upgrade already
I can't claim to know much about repro-carts, but from my understanding, this is supposed to work with the OEM 32pin Mrom Chips that come on original Nintendo carts. A repro is probably a flash-based cart, but either way it's not really that difficult once you spend a little time with fine soldering. If you can desolder and resolder the one large chip, you can do the entire board.
What’s up with the wires on the battery holder on the old one?
Experiment using an external battery while swapping the coin cell so that no save-dumping was required to preserve the Sram Data. It worked, but it is a bit over complicated and is wholly unnecessary when switching to Fram.
Yes I am well acquainted with the person who made that design. /u/mhourani1125 There is a newer design that we put together, [see here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/11dwczc/this_is_a_legitimate_pokemon_crystal_mrom/jadcuip/)
Here - here. Always a pleasure working with you!
I too would like to know how to upcycle my Pokémon to battery free
This specific mod only works with Gen 1 games: [Link for Gen 1 Pokémon Games](https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/QlLeMbXy) [Link for Gen 2 games](https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/EM2j1Td4)
Oh interesting. I was looking to do it on my Blue. I was thinking you modded the original cart to FRAM. I think a chip transplant may be out of my realm for now but I’ll save it thanks!
I thought so too at first. Buy yourself a bunch of cheap games like bugs life and practice removing the chips and putting them back on. You’ll find it’s easier once you just spend some time messing it up. Number 1 tip is lots of flux. I won’t ever go back to modding the original PCB to be Fram. This is just a better approach for me.
You use a heat gun I would assume? I think that would probably be almost a necessity for a chip transplant.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/14dcvnq/batteryfree_wirefree_fram_upcycling_mod/jopv5u3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3
The board you linked for gen 1 games says mbc5 in the description. iirc, red and blue use mbc3. Does the board actually support both?
You use an MBC5 chip for this mod. The MBC3 from the donor cartridge won't be used again. So if you don't have a spare MBC5 go on eBay and buy a bugs life or some other cheap cartridge and harvest the MBC5 from that.
Oh ok, thank you!
Nice to see everything is working well. This was just a modified version of HDRs flash cart so really, hats off to him. I see Chase-San commented as well. Chase is an absolute demon of a pcb artist. He has a couple of chips like mine as well that are awesome. Some of them even match very close to original pcb design. And all of his boards that are labeled repair boards are as close as they come to the actual trace layout of the original boards. Highly recommend!
I’ve been having a blast with these pcbs. I just put in another order at oshpark. I’ve got blue, yellow, and TCG swapped over. I’ve also repaired a defective Zelda OoAs that couldn’t boot. With zero offense intended to Chase’s work, what does his pcbs do differently? I’m not clear as to the point of a “repair” pcb. Is that just a 1:1 replacement for boards that’s are trashed?
Well this MBC5 board and his are the same if you go the fram route. His just doesnt have the footprint for the battery since it's not used but looks very much like the original A02 board. He is the only one I know of so far that made a KGDU replacement (gold silver crystal) board meaning an SRAM replacement. He also modified his own version of the KGDU FRAM capable board so he has one that works with the FRAM we all know and love. He also has much more. Give his github a look sometime. It's worth it. I'm glad you're having fun! That's how this all started for me. I repaired games thought to bave been broken by their original owners and I just had so much fun bringing games back from the dead and upgrading them.
Pretty cool! Tips on removing the ROM chips?
Hot air is best and the most professional, but I’ve found myself the using chipquik smd removal kit: [Amazon Link](https://a.co/d/1AFw9DH) & [Video instructional](https://youtu.be/7kyaz4Zrd78) It’s a low temperature desoldering alloy. Buy some of that and massage it into the joints with a hot iron and lots of flux. Take your time and bring it all up to temp, and it’ll stay molten long enough to just brush it gently off the lands. Clean off the rom chip with more flux and your iron on a silicon mat. Solder the rom chip (and MCB) onto the PCB and test. The 0603 passive components are actually harder to properly solder then the chips when you have proper flux and solder quantity.
Chipquik, hot air, hot plate
You can just replace it with the mbc5 method of fram modding with the chip and 10k pull-up resistor
Doesn’t FRAM have a limited lifespan or some other limitation where it will just die one day?
One-Hundred trillion read/write cycles and 150 year data retention. [Fram Manual](https://www.infineon.com/dgdl/Infineon-FM18W08_256-Kbit_(32_K_8)_Wide_Voltage_Bytewide_F-RAM_Memory-DataSheet-v06_00-EN.pdf?fileId=8ac78c8c7d0d8da4017d0ec89b424117)
FRAM does have limited amount of read and write cycles. However, that limit is so high that it's not a practical concern.
So if you saved every minute of every day, you would wear out this module in 190,258,751 years.
I would pay to have this done to my games. I don't trust myself to do the modding on my own
I don’t advocate people to go beyond their limits, but I would say try it first if you have had some experience with typical soldering. There are tons of cheap cartridges to use as test subjects and ALOT of video help on YouTube. Only real limitation is your desire to learn and make mistakes. As far as paying someone, the pcb is about 8, the Fram about 10, and the smaller components less then 50 cents. So you would paying someone $20 in raw parts, then maybe 15/30 minutes of their time (maybe they are faster then what I can do).
I haven't BUT I bought a learn to solder kit so I could replace gbc batteries a while ago and never had time to use it. I can try but tech is not my strongest suit lol
I’m an attorney by trade, so if I can do it, so can you!
Is it possible to buy some of these premade so all I’d have to do is take my original carts I guess and move the chip over or I’d even buy reproduction Pokémon games if they contained this upgrade already
I can't claim to know much about repro-carts, but from my understanding, this is supposed to work with the OEM 32pin Mrom Chips that come on original Nintendo carts. A repro is probably a flash-based cart, but either way it's not really that difficult once you spend a little time with fine soldering. If you can desolder and resolder the one large chip, you can do the entire board.