GBA Cartridge RePCB

If you have a GBA game that has suffered PCB damage perhaps from a failed battery swap attempt, corrosion or other forms of damage, this is a perfectly reproduced 1:1 replica of the AGB-E05-01 PCB used in games such as Pokemon Emerald.

Board comes bare. The idea is you transplant all your components over from the original cartridge to the new PCB.

The most accurate reproduction of the AGB-E05-01 Game Boy Advance Cartridge PCB, without any restrictions.

This is fully open source in the real meaning of the world.

• Highly accurate traces, copper pours, masks and silkscreens
• Overlaying the original PCB you cannot tell a difference in any aspect, so a perfect replacement

How we made It

The first step was to either strip down a copy of Emerald to scan in or use an open-source accurate scan already out there. I chose to use an accurate scan from https://archive.org/

Next up was to retrace the entire PCB outline, traces, vias and copper pours to re-make the PCB in KiCad 8 so anyone can open the files without paying.

As the rules, trace shapes, copper pours and silkscreens were all non-standard, I chose to manually re-draw every single pad, trace and detail carefully, without a schematic, just purely PCB drawn.

The silkscreen I made a complete TTF font for, so I could just type the font into the Text areas, and be 100% accurate in every detail.

The copper pours I remade in Affinity Designer using the Pen tool, then importing the graphics into KiCad.

The traces and Vias I redrew directly in KiCad using freeform paths, fillets and other technics.

BOM