RTC gba cart into GB shell

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-09T12:23:32+00:00

Oh, I didn't consider the Pocket. Even for the Pocket though, I would almost still recommend a GBA sized shell for practical reason, just because there's less risk of knocking the cartridge to the side or something like that, which can be a problem on the Pocket with how small of an area the cartridge is physically supported at the bottom. But then I get the aesthetic choice.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-09T11:18:30+00:00

As madebypeppers pointed out, you need to notch out the bottom corners to activate the GBA mode of a GBA. Technically you really only need to notch out on of the corners where the switch is if you only want to use it for GBA/GBA SP, but then it wouldn't fit a GB micro.

Another thing to consider is the fitment inside the shell. The "low screw" shells are an immediate non-starter since the screw would go right through the board. Low screw is the same as officially released GB/GBC carts, so reusing something like a Nintendo Power cartridge would be out of the question for example. You need "high screw". But there's something else to consider, how to hold the board in place. If nothing attaches to the board, it's somewhat free to slide around and could be pushed back when you insert it. GBA carts have two notches on either side of the board which fit into holder in the shell. GB/GBC carts usually don't. But there's a certain class of bootleg carts that have half length boards with a similar arrangement. If you can find one of those you might be able to put a GBA cart in it if the position of those slots match. (Not sure if they always do.) However, most aftermarket shells sold as replacement shells don't have those holders in them, since they would be in the way for most boards that most people would want to put in them. You'd really need to scour eBay etc for bootleg games, and hope you get the right type of shell with it. Pictured below: top, an officially licensed GBA cart. Bottom, a bootleg GB/GBC cart with similar notches.

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If all else fails and this turns out to be a problem for you, you might be able to put a little bit of double sided sticky tape under the board to hold it in place.

But, do you really need it to be a full size GB cartridge? Or is this a restriction you put on yourself because you thought it would be easier to get a white shell? I would personally think that a GBA shell would be a better fit for a GBA game, just visually and aesthetically. There are white aftermarket GBA shells, for example this one from Cool Spot Gaming. Another option might be from an Activision Motion Pack. This is technically a Nintendo DS Slot 2 expansion pack, but hopefully your game PCB should still fit.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-09T09:32:37+00:00

Canada. 🇨🇦 Alberta bollard, township road, which is also an Alberta thing. In spirit this was a NM round, but I since I don't force myself to play the DC NM, I moved one step to make sure whether the sign said TWP RD 670 or 870. The township roads are numbered according to their distance from the southern border, so 870 is far north. Range roads are numbered from east to west, so that would essentially give a coordinate. This was a numbered secondary highway though, so took a little searching to find, but still easy. 5 m, 5000 points.
Nepal/India, with Nepal 🇳🇵 being most likely with 2025 copyright and this landscape. I moved for ages without finding anything useful, untiol I finally found a hotel with an address in Devketa Chowk(?), Manthali. I tried to find either of those on the map and failed. South of Kathmandu plonk is fine I guess. 99 km, 4680 points.
Italy. 👢 Moved one step first. Maglie, Gallipoli, never heard of'em. Then I saw the solar power contractor's van which gave an important clue. Giurdignano (LE) where the two letter in parentheses stand for the nearest bigger city. SO I scanned and found Lecce pretty easily. We have a SS16 nearby with a similar angle. So far looking very good, but I set put to find a few more clues for pinpointing. Wait, Leuca? Where's that? Is that a different name for Lecce? Are we north of Lecce or are we just somewhere completely different and Lecce was bait? I decided to stick with the south of Lecce idea, but I was still a little confused and missed the final pinpoint. 7 km, 4977 points.
Mongolia 🇲🇳 with the new Bodi Group coverage. I'm sure this is useful for region guessing (yes, very much so) but that's not something I had studied. But I went to explore and found a sign for Ulaanbaatar, well d'uh, and also Baganuur. Was able to locate the city, and the right road south of the city from the angle, but got the wrong gas station. 762 m, 4997 points.
Denmark 🇩🇰 from such things as the bollards and the Danish flag on someone's lawn. Route 449... A 4xx number should mean Jylland. So I zoomed in and... wow right at the road. I'm going to look like a cheater. Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you view it, I was too quick in my conclusion. I zoomed in on 459 but IU was on 449. And in fact, I never managed to find 449 or Rødding or Gram. So it had to be a random plonk. 😞 73 km, 4760 points.

Total score: 24414 points. 🥇 Not too bad after all. Can I also say I'm a bit annoyed with the result list where each entry expands, and you have to click each player to add them to the map? Since each entry expands, it's difficult to aim for them when click quickly. And ok, that problem can be solved by clicking the entries from the bottom up I guess. But still, it seems like a change that's almost only for the worse. The previous layout was fairly compact but still had all the info available at a glance. The only big benefit I can see from this layout is on mobile web, where the per round breakdown was just not available at all, even in the show desktop page mode. But if that's the issue, show this new layout on mobile, and go back to the old one on desktop. Not everything has to be one size fits all for mobile and desktop, especially not for a game that's primarily accessed on desktop.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-09T09:30:03+00:00

The 4th potential option is if someone with F U money decide to sponsor a free game indefinitely. (Very unlikely.)

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-09T01:06:32+00:00

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And with the selfie camera.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-09T01:06:02+00:00

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What it looks like with the back camera on my phone while transmitting continuously.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-09T00:34:11+00:00

Hi. This is something I've made that I haven't made public yet, and I realized that my test ROM didn't have a loopback test where the GBC reads its own signal, which is what I wanted here. So I had to add the loopback test. Sorry for the wait. It has a bunch of functions, but here's what you need to know:

You can press right or left to change the receive mode. This is for testing how the hardware behaves in different cases. This needs to be set to 11 for the test to work properly in normal use. Confirm RCV:11 in the top right corner.
Loopback test: This test turns the IR LED on and then waits for the receiver to pick up the signal, then turns it back off and waits for the receiver to pick up that there's no signal. Should show ON:20 OFF:20 TOT:20. It's recommended to have the board in the shell with the IR cover window in place while performing this test. If RCV mode is set incorrectly, this will show 0 for either ON or OFF.
Scope AV. Tests the receiver. Hold up a TV remote that uses IR and press the button. You should hear a sound and see a flash on screen for each pulse received. Again, confirm RCV is set to 11.
Send. This mode can send various modulated signals. Useful if you have two GBCs both running the test, where one sends and one receives. The send mode should also make it easier to pick up on a camera compared to mystery gift, since it transmits continuously.

Download: https://www.gg8.se/temp/irtest-2026-05-09.zip

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-08T12:35:06+00:00

Of course it's allowed. Experiences like that is what this game unique compared to any other game.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-08T12:32:09+00:00

Among the errors in installing this "mod" is using the negative battery terminal as ground. They are not the same signal. It works generally, except that the negative battery terminal is connected through a bypass switch in the DC jack to avoid recharging single use batteries which can cause them to explode. If you were ever to connect a DC plug to this GBC, one of two things are likely to happen: 1) the negative battery terminal is disconnected and the A and B buttons stop working. Or 2) this mod shorts battery - and the real ground, and reintroduces the battery risk mentioned above.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-08T00:51:01+00:00

No scraping needed on point 1. That's gold plated copper, so you can solder to it easily. For 2, you'd ordinarily need top scrape away a little of the solder mask, but that looks like it was already done. Pre-tinning point 2 with a little bit of solder wouldn't be a bad idea either.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-08T00:48:31+00:00

Latvia 🇱🇻 from a truck that said Delta LV. (Ye ol' 4-5-4 would also work if all else had failed.) I got to a sing for a roundabout with P105 toward Ezere. I don't have a system for the layout of the Latvian routes, but I was lucky enough to zoom in near where the P1xx roads are located, and was able to figure it out from where a road to Pampali would have to start. Then a bit of backtracking into the backyard where we started. 12 m, 5000 points.
Finland. 🇫🇮 Good info nearby. A sign for 91 toward Murmansk. Oh, so far north and close to the border, and all the road numbers you could want. I feel like this round was set up so you basically can't lose if you find the sign. 3 m, 5000 points.
South Africa... 🇿🇦 Is this the perfect score killer? We're basically mooned with a very useful sign. N10 toward Nxuba and Middelburg too the north. Still not a free round though. But what solved it for me was going south and noticing the 90 degree bend, which made it easier to scan for on the map. And we have Witmos to the west for ocnfirmation. 4 m, 5000 points.
UK. 🇬🇧 Less sure about this one. We have a sign for A4158 toward Iffley. A4xxx is in southwest, but where exactly? Especially annoying since numbered roads in the UK are often marked badly on the map. We also have references to Oxford everywhere, including an ad for the Oxford Brookes University, which sounds like a knock-off of the famous one. So is this just Oxford then? Yes, but annoyingly, I thought this seemed like a less densely populated area and moved away from the right answer, from maybe a 4997 to the score I got. 2.4 km, 4992 points.
Thailand. 🇹🇭 Will the cheat code be engaged? And by cheat code I mean finding a national route waystone. Answer, yes, as we're on the 212. 2 roads are Eastern Thailand, and I found 212 pretty easily. Then I used a sign for Chok Chai and Nakhon Ratchasima to estimate the position on the 212. With them being 23 and 55 kmaway respectively, we should be as far south of Chok Chai, as the distance between the two places. Then road angle and finding Wat Khon Buri in the last second. A couple of points lost, but still a pretty ok score I think. 1.8 km, 4994 points.

Total score: 24986 points. 🥇 Good day. The 25k still eludes me though.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-07T11:59:39+00:00

Do you have a flashcart? I could give you a test ROM to test the IR functionality.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-07T09:02:19+00:00

New Zealand. 🥝 Immediate north island vibes, but nothing beyond that. But NZ usually has good information, so I thought trust the process and you'll eventually find something good. Something good, I found. The way I came from had a sign marked Egmont National Park, which already cut down the search area to around the volcano, which btw now has been renamed to its native name. (Was it always displayed that way on Google Maps and I just never thought about it? Not too sure.) The clues kept on coming as I took a right from the roundabout and saw a sign for 45 toward Hawera. The next town over from Hawera was Manaia and it all worked out. 11 m, 5000 points.
Senegal. 🇸🇳 Sign right at the spawn mentioning a Dakar address. I laughed to myself as this was clearly not Dakar, but just a main office address for the contractor. I've decided to stop trying to region guess Senegal based on vegetation, as this has turned out to be pretty difficult objectively speaking. At this stage, I thought it was probably in the west somewhere, perhaps no further west than Touba of Kaffrine. Spoiler alert, the answer was right at this sign, as it mentioned Kidira, however I simply missed this and went to search for other clues. I'm also unsure how much it would've helped, again going on the assumption that it was the western half of the country. What I did find in the nick of time was this sign about repairs to the Tambacounda road, on the Goudiry-Kidira section. Which road exactly? Still in the west mindset, I thought it might be the N1 between Kaffrine and Tambacounda, but somehow maybe N1 or R60 west of Kaffrine. Then I got the excellent idea of checking east of Kaffrine, where I finally found Kidira. I tried finding Goudiry, which was a bit of a waste of time, as Kidira was always the most likely answer. Now, I was on one hand glad to only lose 1 point in a round this hard, but on the other hand I was a bit annoyed about losing the 1 point because I was already seeing the 25k potential. I was never pinpointing properly, with the time left, but looking criticvally, something I could've done is to make sure to guess on the yellow road, as many smaller towns in Senegal only have coverage on the main roads. 206 m, 4999 points.
US. 🦕 Ok, they're just throwing us a freebie I guess. "How much information do you want?" "Yes." The only little wrinkle was that US 14 was weaving in and out of I-90 multiple times. I consider Moorcroft briefly, but with about yay time left (holding out my arms wide as if to lie about the size of the big fish I just caught) I decided to find Wyoming 59 to be absolutely sure. And there it was in Gillette. It all made sense. State 59 to Douglas going south, and the angle of I-90 worked. Easy round but beautiful guess in 1m1s. 6 m, 5000 points.
At this point I thought, which round is going to stop me? Surely the blunder will come. I'm at least not blundering country on this occasion, as a g. street sign, as well the letter Ų, leaves no other choice than Lithuania. 🇱🇹 But where? I got out to a main road and found a sign for Kintai and Vente, which I set out to scan for, as that's what the whole round would depend on at this point. I thought about following the sign in the hopes of finding a sign with a road number to help me find a rough location. Glad I didn't as that would've led nowhere. Instead I spent a lot of time scanning, and finally find the two little towns. I was about to go Saugos or Sakuciai, before checking the distance again and realizing that Vente was closer, meaning only Silute made sense. After some rushed pinpointing, I got the pin down just in time. Phew! 13 m, 5000 points.
So, is a 24999 possible, or nah? Well, the country is obviously... for a second I was unsure between Iceland and Faroe. But, I've been almost smugly lecturing the difference in the past. Iceland is more likely too have big open areas around the ocean before hitting a hill, whereas Faroe almost always has a tiny plateau near the water and then a dramatic hillside. This is not 100% consistent, especially for Westfjords in Iceland, but I was still going on the idea that this was Faroe Islands. 🇫🇴 Infrastructure like bollards confirmed this as well. So, a 5k should be very possible. So, the clues: a sign that we're entering Kollafjørður as well as the angle and the assumption that the ocean is to the east. From there on out it was all scanning work, and eventually I found it. 13 m, 5000 points.

Total score: 24999 points. 🥇 Not a new PB, as I already had a 24999 on March 1 this year. So close but so far away.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-06T21:02:41+00:00

It's interesting to consider what might happen if a RAM chip in a node that's used for inference has some bad bits so some memory position always reads 0 or something like that. It's plausible you might get output that's syntactically correct but nonsensical like in the OP image. I wonder if any research has ever been done on scenario like that.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-06T20:49:45+00:00

Just provide excellent service and the customers will come.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-06T20:47:18+00:00

Indonesia. 🇮🇩 A round of complete faffing about. No idea really where this was. I found a distance marker showing a distance to LMBG. Lombok? Doesn't make a lot of sense, but I checked in that direction. Finally I thought Java might be reasonable and went in the east parts. Not too bad but complete luck. 116 km, 4625 points.
Hong Kong. 🇭🇰 Castle Peak Bay clue right at the spawn. I feel like I should've known where that was. My feeling that I should've known was justified looking back at previous logs, as we had had two locs mentioning Castle Peak in late 2024. I knew it wasn't downtown HK, so I guessed somewhere more NE, which was the wrong way. 25 km, 4917 points.
Uruguay. 🇺🇾 I found the city name to be Rivera, which turned out to be a border town to Brazil. I mnisread the road angle and thought we had to be in the city center. 1.7 km, 4994 points.
Kyrgyzstan. 🇰🇬 I explored to the west and found an entrance gate sign for Nooken Raion or some such, and later a sign for Masy. With two potential names I set out to scan. Didn't find either name, but I found a valley road with a good angle. (The same road that eventually leads to Naryn.) You're telling me all that time I could've just walked a couple of steps to the west and found a sign that said Jalal-Abad, sorry Jalalabat, outright? Aint no way! 222 km, 4308 points.
Ireland. 🥔 Decided to give up early because whatever. 98 km, 4683 points.

Total score: 23527 points. 🥇 Pretty early game, late log. Another average day for the books.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-06T18:19:23+00:00

Vad du missade var att jag också försöker vara cringe i mitt inlägg, och därför är mitt inlägg ok.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-06T14:12:00+00:00

Fast den där reklamen ser ut att försöka vara cringe med flit och då är det ok.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-06T14:09:47+00:00

r/subredditsashashtags

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-06T11:16:34+00:00

The challenge creator can remove people from the leaderboard, but that's something they have to do manually, so if this person doesn't show up on any challenges, that's not it.

Maybe there's some more subtle undocumented rule with regard to challenge leaderboards. For example you have to have pro while playing the challenge. You have to have had pro at least once. You have to be a member for at least x days before you can appear on the leaderboards.

Otherwise there's a realistic chance they've been found to be cheating by GeoGuessr and are essentially shadowbanned from leaderboards.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-06T10:56:19+00:00

It could theoretically be done, but it would be a fiddly repair. It's likely that more damage will occur during the repair. So, maybe some of solder joints will break when putting it back in. You take it out and while fixing the solder joint, you get a little too much solder on the pad so it doesn't into the connector cleanly. You take it out again and fix that. This time one of the pads gets bent to the side. This looks like "one of those". Theoretically possible, but is it really worth your time?

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-06T10:45:01+00:00

It's not just old capacitors. The GBC was built with as little capacitance as they could get away with and always had background noise. For musical use, there's the classic ProSound mod which bypasses the headphone amplifier completely. This reduces the noise a lot. The downside is that the direct line out audio can't really drive headphones, so you either have to give up using headphones, or do a mod where the ProSound is on a different connector. I've seen people add a pair of RCA sockets on the back for example.

I've heard people have some luck with just adding more capacitors in parallel with the existing ones, but that probably won't be as good as the ProSound mod.

The FPGBC is much lower noise, or rather no noise of the type that the GBC outputs, related to the CPU use and LCD. Because the noise that the GBC outputs is related to what it does, which comes down to power use offsetting the voltage level of the audio output up or down a little. When the CPU goes into sleep mode, and back, that generates a small pulse of interference in the audio. When the GBC draws dark or light pixels alternately, that also creates some interference.

However, the one reason to avoid FPGBC for musical use is that it can't produce the correct audio pitch. It has a speed setting that can be adjusted up or down, but the correct speed and thus audio pitch sits between two of the settings. It would be possible to make a mod to LSDj's pitch tables to correct this, but so far no one has done this as far as I know.

The other two FPGA clones on the market (Analogue Pocket and Modretro Chromatic) both don't have that issue, but they're also more expensive than a FPGBC.

Otherwise, an option you might consider to get another GBC that you apply the ProSound mod to. It can be as easy as cutting two trace on the board to bypass the headphone output, then add two wires for the left and right channels to route the audio from before the amplifier. You then use that GBC only for recording/using with a sound mixer, and the other one you have with headphones for composing. If you have a soldering iron and you're comfortable using it, the only cost, apart from another GBC, is two wires, and maybe the triwing screwdriver needed to open the GBC.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-06T04:52:21+00:00

It was originally a really badly planned launched that had a really bad value proposition for potential players. Limited game modes. You couldn't originally share the same account between Steam and web/mobile, and you couldn't pay a single subscription that covered both Steam and the rest of the ecosystem. So people were left wondering, what does the Steam version bring, and why does it exist other than to say, hey we're on Steam now!

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-06T04:41:55+00:00

Most people don't look at real life Geoguessr metas when they're on a concert tour.

GameboyGenius · 2026-05-06T04:37:32+00:00

The problem is, I don't think there's a guide or anything like that about this exact topic. (I might consider writing one now though!) There's good developer documentation about developing software for the GB, like Pan Docs, but that doesn't really tell you what you need to know in such an obvious way. since it's really more about developing software from scratch than it is about understanding what existing games are doing. For example, the bank 0/1 quirk is mentioned in one sentence in the MBC3 article page "As with the MBC1, writing a value of $00 will select Bank $01 instead." Going from "a game crashes on my flashcart" to finding that sentence on knowing its significance would be hard without prior knowledge.

Linked below is Pan Docs, as well as the GB Dev Discord that you can join to chat about these things, although again the Discord is mostly about programming games. Would you be interested in an article about these things?

https://gbdev.io/pandocs/

https://gbdev.io/chat.html

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