Gameboy cart hacking/flashing question

[Zorator]

I found an old copy of Pokemon Red that doesn't boot*. I just get a black screen after the Gameboy logo. Would this be hard to fix? And if I wanted to flash a different rom to it after fixing it, would Pokemon Red be a good donor cart? I've been thinking about getting into hacking/flashing GB carts for a while now so assuming this one can be fixed this would be a great opportunity for me to test the waters.










*Not the one I listed in my trade thread in the market section, I had two copies for some reason.

[Anapan]

srsly, tho the ketchup worked for the EuroAasian Gameboy Page team I haven't heard of someone replacing the eeprom, the dev stuff is so cheap that it's not something people do regularly. You can single-rom one of the many flashcarts and be done.

[Zorator]

srsly, tho the ketchup worked for the EuroAasian Gameboy Page team I haven't heard of someone replacing the eeprom, the dev stuff is so cheap that it's not something people do regularly. You can single-rom one of the many flashcarts and be done.

Excuse my ignorance but I don't understand any of this post. I wasn't talking about physically switching out the rom I meant turning it into a flash cart and flashing a different game to it. I've seen this online but Zelda: Link's Awakening DX is always mentioned as the ideal donor cart. What does this picture of a cart with ketchup on it have to do with anything?

[Anapan]

I had never heard of re-flashing a commercial gameboy cart until now. I always thought you needed to flash a programmable rom chip and replace the one in a cart and the donor cart should be the same mapper. I have had flash carts that you programmed through the cart pins but as I mentioned it seems like an awful lot of work vs just getting a drag'n'derp or similar.
The ketchup was kinda a joke. Aparently it cleaned the contacts and brought the game back from the dead.

[Zorator]

Ahh, well maybe I was mistaken about being able to flash the rom in the cart. All my knowledge was based off a GB flash cart guide I merely skimmed a while ago that I can't seem to find in my bookmarks right now. Maybe it was done with a programmable chip as the finished flashed carts I saw in the guide had an added port sticking out of the casing. Does anyone know where I could go for information about Gameboy mappers?

I was just looking for something to do with this not working Pokemon Red cart. I guess this thread should focus on simply finding out how to fix it now.

[Anapan]

There's tons of sites on Gameboy dev stuff - Google found this one that has a nice layout and addresses what I think you were looking for:
http://marc.rawer.de/Gameboy/Index.htm
Sections 1.3 and 1.4 talk about memory mappers.

There's some great tools for viewing and editing header information in gameboy roms here.
http://www.no-intro.org/tools.htm
GBATA can show you everything useful in the rom header you might need (to figure out which mapper type your cart is).

You could try running an eraser over the contacts and replacing the battery.