For those who are curious as to what the process is for dumping the ROM contents* (*- if applicable) of these games, I figured I'd scribble out a little synopsis of what's involved. It's kind of long for a synopsis, though, so strap yourselves in, folks!
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Multiple photos are taken of the exposed die, then stitched together. At this point, it would be a good time for a small digression about "mask programmed" versus "electrically programmed" silicon chips.
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Hand-waving away certain details, the vast majority of modern chips are electrically programmed. The chip starts out blank, and has its program uploaded at the time of manufacturing, usually via pogo pins against the wafer itself, or a custom jig after the chip is packaged.
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But, for chips that are going to have a lot of them made, this step costs too much time and money. In these cases, the ROM bits are literally a part of the photolithographic mask used to manufacture the silicon chip itself. So yes, bits in this case are actual physical objects.
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The bright side to this is twofold: First, after photographing, the bits can be pulled out of the images however. Computer vision, some unfortunate fellow sitting and manually plugging 0/1 into an editor, whatever method results in the least number of errors.
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Second, and most importantly, it means that the actual ROM bits are usually the absolute *last* thing to break. So, in the event that you have a partly-functioning or non-functioning LCD handheld that you'd like to see dumped, take heart and send me a DM! :-)
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This ended up being even longer than I expected, so I kindly thank all of you who have stuck with me for this long-winded explanation. And I give even bigger thanks to all of you who have pledged your assistance in this monumental auction!
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