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Step 12Moving the Cartridge Drive
Oh man, this step was hard. So because the character has a front facing boot game slot in the show, I wanted to move the Game Boy Color disk reader from the back to the front. The problem with this, I found, is that because the reader has 32 soldered pins, it was obviously designed never to be removed, so expect a lot of soldering and unsoldering here.
The way I did it was by using a Solder Pump and after applying a bit of solder to each of the holes, sucking out the solder from each of the pins. Then, once all of the pins had solder removed from them, very carefully prying off the cartridge reader from the back. If there is any additional solder preventing it from coming out, use a pair of tweezers and gently push the pins away from the hole.
Now, the goal here is to take an upwards facing boot slot and being able to turn it 90 degrees downwards so that it rests horizontally- much like an early Macintosh's disk drive. What I ended up doing was strip the 32 ribbon cable into 32 individual thin yellow wires. That way it's a little bit easier to bend when putting it in Beemo.
Editor's Note: WARNING- Be careful that all of your solder points are very clean and that the pins are isolated from each other. If they happen to touch, it could cause a shortage and potentially damage your GBC.
The way I did it was by using a Solder Pump and after applying a bit of solder to each of the holes, sucking out the solder from each of the pins. Then, once all of the pins had solder removed from them, very carefully prying off the cartridge reader from the back. If there is any additional solder preventing it from coming out, use a pair of tweezers and gently push the pins away from the hole.
Now, the goal here is to take an upwards facing boot slot and being able to turn it 90 degrees downwards so that it rests horizontally- much like an early Macintosh's disk drive. What I ended up doing was strip the 32 ribbon cable into 32 individual thin yellow wires. That way it's a little bit easier to bend when putting it in Beemo.
Editor's Note: WARNING- Be careful that all of your solder points are very clean and that the pins are isolated from each other. If they happen to touch, it could cause a shortage and potentially damage your GBC.
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The cartridge slot really is a TOUGH thing to remove and move to a new location. After I finally finished soldering all the wires in place and it was able to read games, I was so happy. I'm sure you were too.
My project was combining a GameBoy Color and a Nintendo DS so I could play any Nintendo handheld game. Here is a link: The GameBoy DS
Like I said in my later steps the Game Boy Color Cartridge was obviously designed never to be removed. Not only is it a pain to have to remove but what I found is that the slightest bump after soldering can result in the game skipping or glitching. I eventually had to put a small support piece of foam to keep the wires in place.