When I get my hands on I rock

The other day I was, let’s say, reminded of the fact that I have a Nintendo DSpacc in my drawer.

I’m not ashamed to admit that it’s disused, because the only thing I can play with it is Pokémon Ruby.
But not because there is only one screen left! It’s because…

The console’s DS slot is broken

I don’t really understand how, but slot 1 is broken: some pins are simply bent, but 2 are really missing, and the latter unfortunately are some of the important ones, not duplicates like the ground ones. So, no playing any of my physically owned DS games, nor using a flashcart.

Pokémon is the only GBA cartridge I own

I don’t have any other cartridges from the GBA! I only have this Pokémon one because I found it at a fair years ago and, not having any GBA cartridge but the DS already broken at the time, I decided to buy it. I’ve played it quite a bit, but I want more. But I don’t have any other cartridges or even a GBA flashcart.

The fact is that, also because I had to take a photo for the WikiSpacc article, I took it out the other day. When I see it I regret not using it, but unfortunately there is little that can be done.

My crazy mind, however, today recalled an idea that, if I were capable of doing these things, maybe it would have even been good… but that’s me.
I thought: what if I soldered a DS flashcart in place of the slot?** I didn’t think of this out of nowhere, I saw it some time ago in a modification of the DS made by a person who does these things well . In some videos from a year ago, like this, you can see that this other form of DS has a flashcart soldered onto the motherboard.

I take the screwdriver and bits, and disassemble the console. All OK, I’ve done this at least 4 times counting just the DS Lite.
But then, I arm myself with a welder… honestly they should take away my gun license, considering the damage I do.

The first thing I find myself having to do is desolder the slot. Ouch.
After cutting the non-electrical points that held the slot to the motherboard - which looked like solder points, but didn’t melt - I first started by trying to heat up all the pins slowly, pulling the slot out slightly. But it doesn’t work. So I try to heat every single pin and remove the solder with that strange tool used to suck it up… but little or nothing comes of it. In the end I go back to the initial method, but done faster and more smoothly.. what a disaster!

Almost all the soldering points have come off, and now there is brown. I know the trick of scratching away the green layer of the PCB, to expose clean metal to solder on, but there’s just no room here. On this card everything is close together, there is not the slightest room for manoeuvre.

There are some very small holes with the conductive diameter around them (just as wide as a single copper wire), testpoint type, which actually appear to be connected to where the solder pads I destroyed were connected. Just to, I try to solder up there, but there’s absolutely no way to do it. Those are small and there is no good space around them, so the pond doesn’t settle.

I just wasted time, and once again demonstrated to myself that I’m just not capable of doing soldering work that goes beyond connecting 2 wires to huge pads (which I do poorly anyway, with dirty work).
I’m going to buy a GBA flashcart now, and use it.. to boot DS software. To my surprise, it’s possible, and maybe I’ll talk about it next time.