Game Boy Advance Flash cart making?

[mastera2b]

Hello I'm new here so please excuse me. But how do I make my own GBA flashcard?
I really want to know how to make one and all the good Flash cards are a lot of money and I cant afford any so how do I make one? Also flash cards for the gameboy advance are almost extinct to the internet and shops online.

[jdmlight]

Hello I'm new here so please excuse me. But how do I make my own GBA flashcard?/color]

You don't.

Technically it might be possible, but unless you have a level of understanding of electronics at a level comparable to marshallh, it's not worth the effort.

[Snow_Cat]

Yopu don't need to be at the level of marshallh,
GarryMan seems to have managed to build a couple different flash cartridges just fine.

However, Garry's use flash chips that are programmed using a specailized programmer, and not regular USB cable like marshalh's.

You will need:

• Materials
  • Soldier
  • flash chip of sufficient size
    • Mapper/Pager chip compatible with GBA
    • Copper Clad PCB
    • Etch Resist Masking
    • Etchant
    --or--
    • Sacrificial GBA Cartridge
    • hookup wires
• Tools
  • a programmer for this flash chip
  • soldering iron
  • Etching bath
  • cutting tools (for PCB)

You can either replace the ROM chip in an existing cartridge with a flash chip or make a custom PCB.

If you replace the ROM chip the pinout may not be identical to the flash chip and you may need to cut traces and fly wires if you are not already using an external socket for your flash chip.

If you make your own PCB you will need to find the pinout for the mapper online, or figure it out for yourself.
If you are using Eagle to design your PCB I will help by building the library files for the mapper/pager chip(s) and cardedge if asked.

edit:
see this thread for information (or links to information) about nintendo/Gameboy/gameboycolour/gameboyadvance/virtualboy mappers

[Haunted360]

Snow_Cat is correct.

Marshall's knowledge is quite high in hardware development. He could make a flash cart so easily, as long as he can emulate memory bank switching on the MB5 chip. That is all that makes it difficult to do. However, you can make your own, simply with a EEPROM of 8-megabits. I have done it myself, and it works perfectly. Just need to know how to solder very finely is all