For people commenting on my video that I did this first, it wasn't my idea! I saw someone else do this like 5 years ago on Reddit. And we're all in this together, just having a good time and sharing knowledge with each other. :) Nice job Elliot!

@TheRetroFuture

9 ай бұрын

Thanks Sean! You have a great video on this too. Hope you’re well?

@esotericsean

9 ай бұрын

@@TheRetroFuture Yep! Just had a baby, life is a lot different now :)

@dmphax

9 ай бұрын

​@@esotericseancongratulations!

@MrShadic999

9 ай бұрын

@@esotericsean congrats! :)

@ScruffyLookinRGB

9 ай бұрын

@esotericsean Congratulations on the little one man!

*-Buy a Japanese Pokemon* *-Switched the english rom chip to the japanese board* *-Puts it up on auction for charity* *-Leaves* Chad move right there Elliot.

@MTheConqueror

9 ай бұрын

you should go out sometimes little bro :D

@erik3371

9 ай бұрын

Why is switching something from Japanese to English a Chad move...?

@batterypwrlow

9 ай бұрын

Auctioning off the old American cart. He should of put the japanese rom in there and let the shenanigans begin of someone thinking they got some rare Japanese copy of the game hah.

@TheGentleCreepers

9 ай бұрын

@@erik3371 It's putting the cart for auction for charity is the chad move.

@Ebi_fuwafuwa

9 ай бұрын

that isnt what chad means you utter zoomer

Pokemon did a good job on the Japanese boards. They look amazing.

@numberoneappgames

9 ай бұрын

@@mr.dr.profstonerman I know right, a little bit attention to detail goes a long way.

@BeefJerkey

9 ай бұрын

Japan version of Crystal had extra features that were not in the other countries' versions, and those features made use of even more save data space, so it has a 1MB chip. That being the only GBC game to have this chip (that I know of), they decided to give it a custom board design.

you could have just learned Japanese

@samlippert7122

9 ай бұрын

Where's the fun in that?

@goodnightmoon

9 ай бұрын

​@@samlippert7122can watch anime without subs

@GreatSageSunWukong

9 ай бұрын

@@samlippert7122 you get more kudos and can play more games

@neohedge1552

9 ай бұрын

😂😂😂

@SumTr011

9 ай бұрын

That also would take a very long time, possible years

The old board can actually be modded into a flashcart, combined with RTC functionality of the board it can serve as a base for some cool Pokemon hacks.

@mattquellobello

9 ай бұрын

Didn't know it was possible Sounds cool

@S31Syntax

9 ай бұрын

I'm gearing up to do exactly this, actually. I have a Japanese silver cartridge and the necessary ROM chip adapter board, I'm just waiting for the required flash chip to arrive. Once its all assembled with a fresh battery I'm going to flash my current Pokemon Patched-Crystal game to it and move the save over.

@randyfordz5416

9 ай бұрын

​@@S31Syntaxhey do u have a video link for this procedure

@ohyou_6599

8 ай бұрын

yeah I'm confused why he didnt do this aside from original-ness i guess. this and the battery socket mod are some fairly intermediate tier mods that he already did half the work for. maybe a future video

@sillynewbz

6 ай бұрын

I can confirm. Had a phase a few years ago and bought all the JP Pokemon Crystal carts under $25 bucks i could find. Installed flashable chips on them and put US Crystal, Crystal Clear, and Pokemon Prism on em.

I didn't think Crystal Version could get any better. Today I learned- The Japanese cart is much cooler than what we got. Even if it just had the one graphic on the back...

@stanleymorgan5826

7 ай бұрын

Think the japenese crystal you could actually catch celbi in the illex forest with the gs ball

@AnonymousGentooman

5 ай бұрын

@@stanleymorgan5826 It could but iirc you needed to have an accessory that allowed you to connect a cellphone

They really did put a lot of extra love in these old cartridges that you don't see on modern games

@fran2911

9 ай бұрын

What about them compared to modern games?

@benayers8622

9 ай бұрын

@@fran2911 they are 10000000x better in EVERY way. Do you think any 2022 games will be talked about or remembered like 80s to 2010? Lol think again! Back then our childhoods were glorious adventures of freedom and new technical innovations that enhanced our daily lives. Not boring shovelware that is nothing original and designed to manipulate kids into microtrans and lootcrates. Games are so dead now they litrly are remaking all the games from our youth in HD now! Usually worse than the originals! And we socialised too we played together as a unit and created wonderful memories we didnt sit miserable alone chasing the next lootcrate dopamine hit because the games are intentionally unsatisfying in order to manipulate your psychology and make you hand over maximum profit.

@fran2911

9 ай бұрын

@@benayers8622 I’m not that young, I agree most games are shit now, I just don’t see what he’s comparing old cartridges to.. Lol

@asafesseidonsapphire

9 ай бұрын

​@@benayers8622i mean I can see people talking about Zelda Tears of The Kingdom in 80 years same with Honkai Star Rail, but for different reasons.

@ChillingStreams

9 ай бұрын

@@benayers8622true Damn I miss the early 00s

The large metal base of your microscope is probably sucking up all the heat you're applying with the hot air gun, making the task much more difficult. Nice work around by adding more solder to one side. 👍

@spartan456

9 ай бұрын

That's definitely a factor, and to keep this from being an issue, I would just pop a silicon mat on top of it, this would insulate the boards being worked on and prevent the metal base from sucking away heat. But the biggest problem is the tip selection! It's a conical, I don't know why people still use these things. Every soldering station I've ever bought comes with one, and they suck. I throw those tips out and use something else with more surface area. I've been repairing electronics for the last 9 years, and the most important element when it comes to soldering is thermal linkage. This is the amount of tip surface area that is in contact with the work. A conical ends at a fine point, and you might think that makes it perfect for soldering small things. It doesn't. The end is round, and there is very minimal surface area contact with what you actually want to solder. Even if you tin the tip to maximize the thermal linkage, it's still nowhere near as effective as it could be with a more beneficially shaped tip. The size of the tip is important, you don't want to use a tip that's far too large for the pads you're dealing with. But the shape of the tip is equally important. Beveled tips, in my experience, provide a much better soldering experience for SMD components. SOIC, QFP, QFN, etc are all much easier to deal with when using bevels, or even curved tips, than using conicals. Why? Because there is much higher thermal linkage. Bevels don't terminate on a round end, they have one big flat face, which means better transfer of heat. For the hot air removal of SOICs, I use curved tweezers and get under the legs, and gently grab hold of them. Once the whole thing is floating, it's very easy to pull up. The trick is to constantly move the air across the pins. The method with bridging one side of the SOIC is completely valid, and it can be made even better using a non-eutectic solder like chipquik (low melt) or a 60/40 blend of leaded. Additionally, if this were an SOIC that still functioned, it wouldn't have been salvageable because when the package was lifted after one side was free, all of the legs that were still soldered were bent and damaged. It was broken anyway so it doesn't matter, but if you wanted to apply the same technique to save a component, I wouldn't advise doing it like that. Not at all saying this is a bad video, I quite enjoyed it! Just wanted to point out some criticisms I had with the tools being used. The stuff shown is technically correct, but if I were doing it, I would have tackled a few of the problems a bit differently.

@SCorpG22

9 ай бұрын

@@spartan456 As you seem quite knowledgeable in the field, can I ask a quick question? - I need to hot air solder a resistor to a Nintendo Switch. I've been practising on a donor board for several days before I move to the actual working board and have found that the switch PCB seems to soak up a lot of heat, I'm wondering whether it's anything to do with how many layers the board has. The temp I've been successful with is 420C and 40% airflow, which takes approximately a minute to a 90 seconds to get the solder paste to solidify. Is this kind of heat and time ok on a switch board? I'm fine with soldering by hand, but hot air is a new one to me and the resistors are so tiny that all my tips are far too large, which is why I've turned to hot air. I've installed about 5 up to now, but any temp less than 420C and it seems to take forever.

@spartan456

9 ай бұрын

@SCorpG22 Hot air rework has a lot of nuances to it. You're correct that board layers play a massive role in heat dissipation. Hot air rework is not just about the air temp, it's also about the size of the nozzle, the velocity of the air, and how far away your nozzle is from the work. I've done soldering on lots of things with hot air, including even delicate plastic FFC connectors and terminals. In my own experience you are far more likely to damage delicate components (plastic, sensitive transistors, etc) long before you harm the board substrate permanently. As long as you're careful, that is. My advice would be to do a bit of pre-heat. Before I touch anything with hot air, I point it at the general work area, and let it bathe the area in hot air. This slowly brings the temp up. Over the course of about 30 seconds to a minute, I gradually bring the nozzle closer and start bumping down the airflow. Until eventually the nozzle is right on top of the component and I'm wiggling it around in circles. Depending on the component, I may need to keep the airflow the same or even bring it up higher. You can use flux as a visual indicator for where your air is going and how hard it is hitting. This time frame sounds about the same as what you might be working with too. The difference between my approach and yours is the amount of time I have the board exposed to the highest amount of heat. That's ultimately what you want to figure out, and this is a nuanced thing that just comes from experience. It varies from thermal mass and workload, and your particular hot air station. Some components I do need a solid minute of air, even after the preheat step. HDMI ports on Playstations need TONS of heat, but their boards are purpose built to dissipate as much heat as possible. So on something like that, it's designed to take that beating. Another thing to consider is station calibration. Your station may be set to 420C, but the actual temperature could be lower, or it even could be higher. Many stations are equipped with a calibration feature in which you check the actual temperature with an external thermocouple, and then tell the station what the actual temperature is. From there it will correct itself and show you the actual temperature. Edit It also helps to have a suitable air station. Don't use anything with a blower in the handpiece (the $70 stations from amazon). The more pricey professional stations are worth the cost because they move MUCH higher volumes of air, and provide a FAR less turbulent air stream. I own one of those cheap stations, and a Quick 861DW. There is a significant difference between the two. The cheap station at the highest airflow is the same as the Quick on 20%.

@SCorpG22

9 ай бұрын

@@spartan456 The resistor I'm attempting to install is a 0201 size and by god it's tiny. It's taken a lot of trial and error to land on the sweetspot of not too much volume of air (which has been evaporating the flux too quickly) and the right distance of the nozzle. Like I say, I've managed to install 5 successfully, but my air station isn't the best however it's only the 1 job I'm doing as a favour to someone so buying an industrial sized station just isn't feasible for the time being. I do get what you're saying though about the benefits of one though. I'll take your advice and try and pre-heat before I do it. Tell me, how long is too long to expose a multi-layer board too? And how much heat can resistors take? I did test one of the ones I installed and the ohms reading was correct, so I didn't kill it. I'm just wondering if the heat I'm exposing the board to is likely to kill anything else? - Probably not, but it's always best to seek advice. Thanks a lot by the way!

@spartan456

9 ай бұрын

@SCorpG22 The thing you really want to watch out for is dumping too much heat into the board too quickly. For example, a room temperature board? You wouldn't want to get your nozzle right up to the component and start blasting it. This will actually cause significant damage to the board itself, as the layers experience thermal shock and expand/contract. If you were to try something like this, you'd see the board layers begin to delaminate and bubble. Since you've managed to do a few already, it sounds like you got a good hang of it. Unfortunately I can't really answer the question about how long is too long. The answer is "2-3 seconds after the solder melts is when you want to stop". How long it takes to reach that point varies entirely from board to board and component to component. In electronics assembly, it is much more precise. But when they toss a board into a reflow oven, they're programming the oven with a specific set of instructions that tell it how long to heat and when to raise the temperature or drop it, etc. It's all very precise, yet still takes an order of minutes. It sounds like you're very careful, so you shouldn't have to worry about damaging boards. In terms of passive components like resistors, it's very unlikely you will damage those with heat. If it were something more delicate like a component with plastic, that would be different.

Great video, the japanese cart is so much cooler with that print on the back. One thing you can try to make the chip removal easier is to get a PCB preheater. They get the whole board up to a temp below the solder but you need to apply much less heat to the chip to remove it from the board, since it's already warmed up. It can make it a lot easier to move components. The rest of the soldering station looks legit now, cheers.

@davidcameron648

9 ай бұрын

You can also use your hot air station to preheat the PCB. Heat the bottom of the PCB with the temp set to about 150c and the airflow higher than what you would normally use, flip the board over, reset your temp and airflow, and work the component off.

This is essentially exactly what I'd like to do, but the fact English Crystal carts are so darn expensive puts me off the idea because I don't want to be spending a bunch of money just to break it.

@ClosestNearUtopia

9 ай бұрын

Flash the chip yourself? Spare a international crystal copy, safe a japanese one.

@Myriadys

9 ай бұрын

@@ClosestNearUtopia I looked into this and I'm not sure it's possible with official carts. At least, the info I saw seemed to indicate no.

@scottsthoughts2227

6 ай бұрын

I somehow need to replace the battery on my crystal and gold and silver games. I just don’t trust myself enough to do it without breaking the carts

@johnsmiths256

6 ай бұрын

@@scottsthoughts2227 Dude I did it on Yellow, gold/silver, and emerald…they all worked but idk what happened to Gold maybe the battery leaked or I fucked something up but the board is now fucked

@scottsthoughts2227

6 ай бұрын

@@johnsmiths256 Thats rough man

Your soldering skills have come on massively - hot air rework on these fine pitch SMD chips is a real art form. Amazing work Elliot!

@309electronics5

9 ай бұрын

Definitely nice! Yes i agree, but once you mastered it its fairly easy

@trolojolo6178

9 ай бұрын

It was one of the worst botche up solderings I ever have seen. I'm struggling to understand what he did great here? He almost ripped off the solderjoints by lifting up a partially attached chip. Just wow

@theitsguy

6 ай бұрын

It was honestly terrible. This was very easy to do with just hot air and Flux, he just lacks the patience

You didn't put an Intel chip inside the cart at all, I feel lied to. Awesome video, I love mods like this. I look forward to more!

@peteypete9357

5 ай бұрын

EXACTLY I was waiting for the moment he'd use the Intel chip

Awesome video - re: use of the solder wick, please don't drag the wick! Place in one spot and soak up the solder, then remove and place again if some solder remains - else of you drag it can scratch the solder mask, damage traces, components etc. - Also for fine pitch work like that, try a J or Knife tip instead of conical!

@Ravio_Lee

9 ай бұрын

Dragging the wick is fine, the important thing about solder wick is not applying pressure with the iron, simply resting it on. Heating a single spot for longer is more likely to lift pads or damage traces than dragging the wick and distributing the heat.

@ProgVirus

9 ай бұрын

​@@Ravio_Lee My instructors in college would disagree re: dragging, but different techniques are out there for sure - it was always pitched to me as a bad habit and would have failed me in college tho :^) Heating a single spot (not excessively, appropriate dwell times & temp) should not itself cause damage unless we're talking about an already damaged PCB (corroded from a blown cap, etc. etc.) for basic desolder wickening anyways (there are always edge cases I acknowledge, so I'm speaking generally)

@nyanpasu64

9 ай бұрын

I find that raising the temperature to melt lead free solder is more likely to burn pads than leaded temperatures.

@ProgVirus

9 ай бұрын

@@nyanpasu64 True! Adding a bit of fresh leaded solder to dilute the lead free can lower the temp and make desoldering easier and at safer temps

@kasuraga

9 ай бұрын

@@ProgVirus I learned that pretty quick when I ran into lead free solder. It always melts way better once you add some fresh lead solder to it.

that's a COOL idea

You missed the last step: carefully using the heat gun at the lowest temperature to remove the stickers and swap them.

Well done Elliott! Just saying, you can also perform a FRaM mod. Therefore the CR would be used for Real Time Clock and the save would be stored within the FRaM, without any fear or replacing it for another 50ish years.

@mimivrc4148

7 ай бұрын

was really hoping this would be part of it as well!

This has been on my to-do list for years. And you made that look so easy and clean

Pokemon Crystal is my favorite Pokemon game of all time. Seeing you basically re-engineer the cartridge was a treat. Great video!

this was beautiful to watch. your videos really inspire me to tinker around with my retro gear more!

And so he became an electrical engineer! I love it

I am so literally envious of your skill, I really loved this content for learning purposes

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”

Your soldering skills have gotten amazing bro. This was a delight to watch. Great work!

I bet the dopamine hit after seeing "continue" felt awesome

Extra points for the Lugia Toothbrush!

You can use kapton tape to help protect the board.

This feels like a bigger waste of time than accidentally soft resetting on a shiny Pokémon.

Now you can enjoy beautiful sprites and a horrendous level curve

Bro you are so good at repairing things, also the video quality and your skills, everything, Your content is just perfect❤

Honestly, you do videos on the most niche cool things that I tend to care about and think others wont. Going this far for the print on the back of the board is awesome, and the type of thing I love!

An arguably more difficult option would have been creating your own label/sticker.

Lovely build as always. That new work station though! Beautiful! Come a long way son!

What a stunning desolder and solder job. Respect!

I just want to say that the quality of your solder on that battery is just... amazing. The perfect roundness to it. Good job lol

Nothing like a Retro future video with a nice cup of coffee in the morning.

Omg. This is such a cool project. Glad it worked for you!

Omg it sold for 420 pounds, that’s amazing.

I remove and replace chips like that a lot at my job. Best strategy I've found is solder wicking each pad then go through and touch each pad with your solder tip and as you touch it lift slightly on the leg of the chip with a pick just enough to stop it from making contact. Key is not leaving the tip on the pads too long or you'll lift them up which is a sad day. I swear by 700 F tips, they give off the perfect amount of heat! Or with the heat gun method you can surround the chip with heat proof tape and crank the heat gun to around 850 F and just keep moving it back and forth on the chip till you can pull it up.

I can barely imagine how long this took and the amount of grey hair this project gave you. All that for a barely 6 min video. Absolute champion.

One minor correction: Replacing the battery will absolutely not last multiple decades, you'll probably get about 5 or 6 years with a half decent battery, generation 2 games chewed through battery life due to the real time clock, compared with generation 1 games which had no clock.

Dude, I had that same issue with Red Version in 1999. I just had to keep my game going when I went to bed at night. One day, I was playing, and my dad was telling me to do something around the house. I was in the middle of a battle, so I said, "Okay. I'll do it in a sec." That man said,"When I tell you to do somethin, you do it RIGHT then!" Snatched the Gameboy Color, and shut my damn game off. I was livid! A week and a half's worth of work to get to the to the Elite 4 gone. So, I went to do the dishes, and started over. I'm 35, and I'm still pissed about that lol. Eventually, I just called Nintendo, and they sent a free replacement, even though I bought it off of a friend for $2.

I've always wondered why people don't just solder on a holder for the battery instead of going through the process of soldering on a battery every single time it dies.

Retro Future: to better desolder SO, QFN, TSOP, etc. I recommend you use a IR preheater (not hot plate) with board clamps or holders. Bring the board up to 450 F and then use the hot air to bring the chip off smoothly. Also, you don't need to use flux to do this. Flux is used to bond the metals and it helps with keeping solder from bridging, but it has little effect on desoldering.

What an absoultely maddening task. The Japanese pcb makes it totally worth it though. Great work Elliot! ❤

For the future if you ever have to solder a multi-legged IC again: Solder all onto the PCB, you can use a ton of solder. Then just take your desoldering braid and use it to get rid of the excess solder. Done

This is a really informative and fun video. Thank you for making this

This was a stunningly educational video on the use of a Hot air rework station. Nicely executed my friend.

Waow! It is gorgeous! If it could have had the English version's label on the japanese cartridge it would would have been so perfect!!!

"ULTIMATE" man he got me with the clickbait

“Great idea”, somehow you can just feel the sorrow😂

2:50 it is actually the best method to remove factory soldered ic's, just mix existing solder with a new one and only after that try to remove it with hit air.

THANK YOU for making a video about my favorite game in the world! I've dreamed of this day for years!

The japanese cartridge art is definitely impressive. Good job!

Nicely done man

Good work mate!

You need a soldering tip that looks like an exacto knife blade to easily remove chips and soldering back chips to boards.

So clean!

That's beautiful!! I love seeing silkscreen/copper trace artwork on a PCB! Laying out a PCB can be so difficult, especially when you have a space constraint. Seeing someone go the extra mile to lay out some pretty art on the board is so cool!

Invest in a proper circuit board holder, the metal base you had the board sitting on was absorbing all the heat from your hot air.

Just a tip if you're going to be doing this kind of stuff often. You can get low melt solder, flow some of it on chips and it helps the solder stay molten so you have more time to move the heat around and take them off without bending any legs. Very handy stuff.

Finest understanding of mechanical engineering

Brilliant idea, I love changing the region of games and consoles when there are different versions like that too

I wanted to thank you for all your videos. They gave me the confidence to take apart my dead Game Boy Advance, and I was able to get it working again for the first time in many years.

I wouldn't use regular qtips for electronic devices. Apparently there is a special kind of qtip for electronics. From my own experience, regular qtips can easily break apart and you're left with fabric being stuck somewhere, which could lead to it burning, depending on the voltage. I've had stuff getting stuck in my CPU pins one time.

I love the new macro filming rig, those shots are pristine!!

Awesome work dude your soldering skills have gotten ace. I'd completely screw up that chip mounting if i tried lol

Nice video! I just started to mod and this will definitely be a future passion project!

Never cease to amaze me Elliot!

So on soldering. You can use low melt solder to lower the melting point temperature down. Then using hot air station to easily take off that chip

Bro that was cool. I had no idea Japanese crystal had that on its motherboard!

Crazy idea and I love it!

for anyone coming to this video as a reference to do their own mod: do not use a hot air station with batteries around. Remove batteries first. Dead or not, the chemicals in the battery could heat up, explode, and getting you injured.

Dang nice work. I've been debating doing this project for a while now but not having a hot air gun has deterred me xD

Now this just needs a no-battery mod.

2nd Gen was my Favorite of the Games. I liked the timed Events like the Bug catching tournament or how to catch Lapras. Never knew the Japanese Version of the Cartridge looked so awesome. Hope I get the chance to do this myself one day. Your Videos are awesome. I recently modded an old Gameboy Advance SP and watched your Videos on how to disassemble it.

Your solder joints are so pretty

Get a "helping hand" to hold that circuit board! I do this for a living and i would get yelled at for what you did.

Now this is how you do a proper English translation rom hack!

What an amazing idea. Something I'd love to emulate but can't risk my lack of skills on.

love that infinity mirror would look so good on my kids desk

I gotta say a Job well done on the rom soldering!

I am actually amazed. 😮 While the soldering does take real skill, I can't believe it's a simple as swapping the rom chip. That's actually crazy 😱

Pro tip add solder to every pin, hit with hot air it will come right off. Clean it up after with flux and just picking it up with the iron and wiping it off. Also when using wick you only want to scrub the long way of each pad, going side to side can rip them off.

Looks great, perfect job!!!

Nice! Really good job!

For attaching the ROM chip, to deal with the issues you seem to be having, I recommend drag soldering. It's perfect for what you're trying to do

The thumbnail made me think you were actually gonna swap it for a more powerful chip

Such a cool idea!

I wish I was as professional as this guy when soldering new batteries onto games. I just grab scrap cardboard the game and heat till it melts, no flux, then use solder with flux in it to reattach the new batteries, no clean up or prep before… I probably look like a barbarian when doing it.

this is soo cool i feel like i could never solder anything that tiny

Use to work at a computer board manufacturing plant when I was 18 and your method is spot on. When there were long chains of legs from a single surface mounted part and you didnt want to spend 3 days soldering individual legs. As long as you were quick and had enough flux you could just take a glob and swath it across really quickly and get a perfect finish.

Wants one, sees auction, realises I'm not getting one 😅

Those battery solder bubbles look perfect 😮

cool! this is impressive!

The fact you can still buy a Pokemon Crystal cartridge in Japan is just so cool

Fun project. Well done.

If there is somebody that won’t make me nervous destroying a gameboy cartridge and putting it back together is you. Without your videos or tutorials i would be where i’m at right now with knowing how to fix my own stuff. I owe you a lot for teaching us these skills.

@2:36 thank you sir!! Good advise indeed so hard to remove also struggle with that 😅

Awesome skills bud, so smooth with this jazz!

If this item ever changes hands without the history going with it its going to confuse the hell out of a future owner.