Gameboy Megaman 3 Repair Help Cracked Romchip

[Hoagtech]

I bought a Megaman 3 cart that I was going to attempt repair on. I went to reflow the components and noticed the main rom chip was cracked in half.

Is there a way to reprogram another romchip with the Megaman 3 rom and transplant into the cart?

I assume the rom chip is unsalvageable.

Anyone in this realm. Your advice would be much appreciated.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Is there a way to reprogram another romchip with the Megaman 3 rom and transplant into the cart?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: My understanding is the chip on there is a proprietary mask ROM produced for Nintendo which means the actual encoding is on the chip itself at the time it was processed, rather than the chip being a generic variety that can have any game programmed into it afterwards. You wouldn't find a manufacturer on the market producing a chip you can just pop into the sockets in its place because a) they'd likely need to go through the process of reverse engineering it which is difficult and time-consuming, and then b) you'd need to find someone willing to risk getting sued by Nintendo to produce them.

There's some reports of it being possible to swap in a flash cart with just that game installed, but the soldering involved will be quite tricky, you'd have to find a chip with the same pin layout/footprint... doesn't seem worth the effort.

Sorry about the game. It also looks like the back of the case is damaged.

[Hoagtech]

Thanks BKR. I am looking into custom flash chip replacement and see a few different options by Benn Venn and jrodrigo.

They have conflicting info and seem to focus on donor carts with batteries.

If someone with experience could elaborate. I would be more than comfortable soldering at this level.

My cart PCB is a DMG-BEAN-02 and I don't see this on a donor list.

Here's the example of the chip replacement with a Pokemon Silver donor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZZOb85OL9w

[Hoagtech]

Small update. I reached out to Benn Venn and confirmed the PCB is unsupported for the flash chip , BUT that the chip should be repairable.

Apparently the crack was off centered and did not destroy the chip itself but disconnected the circuit and any joints past the break.

he suggested I could could "grind away the top of the chip to expose the large copper legs and repair them on the chip"

I have a Dremel at the lakehouse and am feeling very positive after this news. Ill find out on Monday.

[bobrocks95]

It's already broken, so definitely worth a try.

Other than that I'd say swap out the whole board and call it a day, if you can't get EEPROMs with a matching footprint/pinout.
https://retrostage.net/?product=gameboy-blaster-lite

[BareKnuckleRoo]

If someone with experience could elaborate. I would be more than comfortable soldering at this level.

Best of luck with the repairs. Unfortunately I really don't know much about hardware repair for the GB, but it sounds like you were able to get in touch with some proper experts, so that's promising. It'd be interesting to hear if you were able to fix it or not.