I thought I’d take a little break and tear something apart, this time it’s the Super Gameboy SNES Adapter which allows you to play Gameboy games on the SNES.
Lets flip it over to see some chips.
So what do we have here, it seems some of the chips look a bit similar to something else… the actual Gameboy!
Gameboy
I don’t have a Gameboy Colour to compare to I do have a regular Gameboy and you can spot the similarities: both have the same sort of CPU, both have identical 2 x 64K SRAM and another chip.
1. CPU
The CPU of this unit which I assume would be working like the CPU in the colour gameboy does. You can see the traces of the CPU go directly to the Gameboy cartridge header.
SGB-CPU 01
2. 64K SRAM x2
The 2 memory chips for the CPU to do it’s work with.
LH52A64N-TL
3. SNES Lockout Chip
According to this website this chip seems to be used as a region lockout.
F413A
4. Some kind of ROM chip
As you can see by the traces on the PCB this chip communicates with the SNES side. According to this website might be a ROM chip?
SYS-SGB-1
5. Chip
Seems to also communicate with the SNES side too and with some lines going to the CPU. It kind of looks like a MBC chip but I probably am wrong.
ICD2-N
So that was just a quick tear down, I thought that there would have only been 1 chip to handle reading the ROM/RAM and somehow this chip would emulate the Gameboy but I guess back then it might not have been possible, so they just stuck the guts of the Gameboy in it instead.
[…] There really is half a gameboy inside of the Super Game Boy. Incidentally, this has made them quite popular among Game Boy […]
Thank you! Very useful! 😀
you could combine the rom of supergameboy with a rom of gb to run them in a super evedrive china ver?
Correction on #3
The intention of the lockout chip is to prevent unauthorized games from being played on the console not to region lock the game. The indents on the back of the shell and the shape of the cart did that not the chip.