GBA PCB serials and scans?

General No-Intro related discussions.
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Screwtape
Posts: 34
Joined: 29 Aug 2017 08:46

GBA PCB serials and scans?

Post by Screwtape »

I've seen dump submissions that include the game's PCB serial and even photographs of the PCB. That information doesn't appear to be present in the DATs from the DoM.

Is that information being recorded somewhere?

How many GBA games would have that information? All? Most? A few? None?

How can I get a list of (say) SHA1 hashes and PCB serials?

Basically, it's impossible to accurately know by examining a GBA ROM what kind of non-volatile storage it uses, if any, and the GBA world really needs a database of which games used which storage. Having a PCB scan for every game would be awesome, because somebody could just look at the chip on the board. Having the PCB serial for every game would be less awesome but still very useful, since the PCB narrows down the possibilities quite a bit.
Hiccup
Datter
Posts: 1720
Joined: 09 Oct 2015 11:29

Re: GBA PCB serials and scans?

Post by Hiccup »

In the past dumpers often haven't posted this info (and for some reasons datters/admins haven't requested it). I agree that its important. In terms of viewing that data - are you using https://datomatic.no-intro.org/ to view the full data rather than just the dat files? Might be a stupid question :P
Screwtape
Posts: 34
Joined: 29 Aug 2017 08:46

Re: GBA PCB serials and scans?

Post by Screwtape »

Ah, OK, I guess I hadn't explored the DoM fully. It turns out that if you have a particular game in mind, you can examine all the dumps of that game in particular, and if you're lucky, some of them will have PCB serials or PCB images or both. Or at least, I assume so—that particular link only has PCB images available.

I was hoping for some kind of report or CSV or something to download. I'm interested enough to write some scripts to compare guessed save types with documented save types, but not quite interested enough to click through the DoM to find thousands of PCB scans and manually type them in myself.
Hiccup
Datter
Posts: 1720
Joined: 09 Oct 2015 11:29

Re: GBA PCB serials and scans?

Post by Hiccup »

The internal nintendo spreadsheets posted in one of the undumped games threads have GBA save chip info, I think.
Screwtape
Posts: 34
Joined: 29 Aug 2017 08:46

Re: GBA PCB serials and scans?

Post by Screwtape »

If only I could find a copy for myself. :/
Hiccup
Datter
Posts: 1720
Joined: 09 Oct 2015 11:29

Re: GBA PCB serials and scans?

Post by Hiccup »

An option could be to PM the dumper to ask for pictures - they may still have the cart or have kept pictures (or transcriptions) of it.
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