Pics of inside a GBC and a GB cartridge

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Pics of inside a GBC and a GB cartridge
by Jarhmander on 2009-03-07 (#44012)
I had some time to kill so I took my set of security screwdriver bit and I disassembled a GameBoy Color and a Tetris cartridge (I don't have the proper bit but I figured out how to with another security bit)

Face
Image

Back
Image
it reads CGB-CPU-04

Cartridge
Image
An horrible black blob!

BTW I have too the original Gameboy but my bit is too large for the small and deep holes...

Hi res pics : http://jarhmander.home.googlepages.com/DSCI0030.JPG;http://jarhmander.home.googlepages.com/DSCI0031.JPG;http://jarhmander.home.googlepages.com/DSCI0032.JPG

Hope that is useful for someone

by koitsu on 2009-03-08 (#44030)
The "horrible black blob" is actually called an epoxy blob. The game code/graphics are actually under there, instead of in a mask ROM with pins and so on. I believe the way it works at the fab is that the mask ROM itself is perfectly placed on the PCB, then a large blob of epoxy is applied to hold it in place.

Why do it this way? Simple: extremely cheap/inexpensive.

kevtris would be able to confirm/deny this method, as he's got experience lifting (removing) epoxy. :D

by IIMarckus on 2009-03-29 (#44917)
Tetris is the only (legit) cart I’ve seen with epoxy.

Here is a site with more carts

I also photographed an old Kirby cartridge some time ago… link

by MottZilla on 2009-03-29 (#44918)
Well there aren't all that many Gameboy games that don't use a MBC chip. When working on my Gameboy emulator I found that out pretty quick. Most games use atleast some sort of mapper to be bigger than 32K. So I'm guessing the glop top doesn't make as much sense or maybe not with mapper chips. Either way glop tops suck cause they leave us nothing pretty to look at.