Game Boy Flash Cartridge Boards Have Arrived!
Summary
Package Delivered
Ten days ago I placed my order for the Game Boy Flash Cartridge Board with JLCPCB. Today, they arrived at my door. The boards look and feel nice, with no visible defects in their manufacture. I used a digital multi-meter to perform a few continuity checks and found no pads connected that shouldn’t be.
Solder time!
It’s been a while since I have done much soldering so the first board is a bit messier than I would like. All the parts on the board are surface mount. The header pins have large pads and where easy. I do need to get some smaller diameter solder, however. The stuff I have on hand is too thick and it was hard not to use too much. The part that I was most worried about was the 32-pin TSOP flash. The following process worked really well:
- Put a bevel tip on the iron and heat it up.
- Using tweezers, place the chip on the pads and tack down one corner.
- Again using the tweezers, align the chip on the pads and tack down the opposite corner.
- I didn’t worry about bridged pins at this point.
- Apply flux to the pins and solder each side using the drag method where you put a small amount of solder on the tip and drag the iron across the pins.
- Use more flux and solder wick as needed to clean up any bridged pins.
Here is a close-up of the flash chip on one of the boards I soldered:
Will it work?
Who knows? Maybe? Tormorrow will be the real test. I am going try to write a game to the flash chip and play it on the Game Boy. Hopefully, it all works.