Inside the R4 3DS cart

Recently picked up a Nintendo DS Lite from eBay - wanting to play some Powder http://www.zincland.com/powder/ (all time favourite game - and most time played on both the gameboy advance, and PSP) I had to of course get a flash cart.

Actually buying one of these is a real pain - Aliexpress, eBay, etc don't list them.  

From what I read apparently PayPal does not allow the sale of what they consider 'modchips'. Thus finding a reputable site is a bit of work and many recommendations from forums lead to broken links.  (I guess stores have a hard time staying up?) I was shocked that nothing had changed from the 2000s when I last went looking for a flashcard for my gameboy micro.

Anyways.... 

I was of course curious to what the PCB looked like. Sadly it looks like the brains is a 'Chip On Board' (COB) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_packaging#Glop-top

Apparently you can use the wifi to load files to the SD Card. Considering the DS Lite only supports WEP and the software is some sketchy windows only thing it's unlikely i'll ever try it out.

"Truth Inquiry" Uh okay. 

I believe the top left chip is KH25L1606EM2C-12G - a spi-flash chip.

The bottom right chip is 95010WP - which is a ST micro SPI eeprom http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/memories/serial-eeprom/standard-serial-eeprom/m95010-w.html

As I don't have a magnifying glass at the moment reading the text was a bit difficult. 

Bottom of the board. 

Video of the very ghetto UI. 

ELAN Z630 guts

One of the most difficult things I have found with doing electronics and especially audio stuff is finding a appropriate case. Many times the price is is higher than the actual components! Not to mention the mechanical side of things is not my forte. Without a drill press and the proper tools it's very difficult and time consuming to work with metal. 

Recently I found a seller on eBay that had some crazy prices on various server equipment and miscellaneous audio equipment. The catch was shipping ($20-$30) with FedEx ground as the only option. 

However for most stuff, even with shipping the price was still cheaper than buying a rackmount enclosure! 

I picked up this preamp / input selector for $4.50 (and $32 shipping) $36.5 total for a 1U rackmount case with all the holes I need for my input selector! Device is a ELAN Z630.

Inside the case were some useful components I can salvage (specifically the transformer!)