Assembling an InsideGadgets GBA Flash Cart
Channel: makho
Date: 2019-09-22

Yeah, I know, you can get these pre-assembled, but haven't you seen any of my videos? I like putting things together. Plus, I already had a cart that I'm using for parts so why not save a bit at the same time? This is the flash cart that I'm working on:  https://shop.insidegadgets.com/product/gba-32mb-1mbit-flash-save-flash-cart/

If you want to DIY the flash chip, you can use any of the gen three pokemon games (any region). There are probably cheaper games out there to source the chip, but again, just working with what I had. 

Once you've got the flash chip on there, there's not much else you need to do. Mine did not come with a capacitor next to the chip (since these carts work fine without the flash chip as well for most games, you just can't save) so I decided to add one. Per Alex at InsideGadgets, it's a 0.1uf cap and I used a 0805 sized one. Easy peasy if you can do the flash chip.

Here are some close ups of my soldering: https://imgur.com/a/trFfYjS

Once you've got the cart assembled, you can reflash it normally with a GBxCart RW. Other readers may support this (or may be modified to support it) but at this time, none of my other readers seem to support flashing the ROM (they all handle the save just fine though). 

The biggest pro of this cart and what I wanted to test in the first place, is that since it works with unmodified GBA Pokemon ROMs, it DOES work fine when used as the source cart for a Pokemon gen four PalPark import. I tested this with the save and ROM dumped from my legit Emerald cart and then with my legit Pokemon Soul Silver cart in a DS Lite. 

Cool, right? I thought so. If you're just looking to play the games though, you might be better off just getting an EZ Flash Omega or something.