What's inside those "reproduction" cartridges?

[Zerosquare]

I have recently been given one of those "reproduction" cartridges by a friend, who mentioned that the PCB inside was different from the standard one. So, naturally I wanted to take it apart.

 

For obvious reasons, I won't name which game it is, or who I got it from. Let's just say that the developers of that game are definitely not OK with those "repros".

 

Here's what's inside:

 

So indeed, that's not the standard PCB. Someone actually spent time creating it. And it has unique features:

- no gold plating on the contacts. Because getting red screens is half the fun of the Jaguar, right?

- no voltage translation. Go ahead, connect those 3.3 V-only memory chips directly to a 5 V bus. I'm sure it won't hurt the cartridge or the console one bit.

- no voltage regulation. Why would you bother with an actual voltage regulator, when you can just use two diodes in series and save 40 cents?

- none of that reflow or wave soldering nonsense. Each solder joint is guaranteed to be hand-made, and they're all different shapes, just like snowflakes. You may even get a cold one, free of charge.

On the minus side, the PCB edge appears to be beveled, so it may fail to damage the connector on your Jaguar. A waste of opportunity, and a few more cents to be saved here.

 

TL;DR: Don't buy "reproduction" carts from dodgy sources. Even when they're not ripping off homebrew authors, they're trash.

[+CyranoJ]

At least it wasn't full of developer's tears.

[Bratwurst]

The poor soldering is reminiscent of every bottom tier PCB I've ever seen assembled that came out of China/Hong Kong.

[+cubanismo]

Still better than the soldering on the first Skunkboard I assembled ?

[Editorb]

I did my first soldering recently 9-volt connector to wire for active electronics on my five-string bass. It worked, but it's more solder now than musical instrument, twisted and evil.