The ultimate PassMe
At some point nostalgia hit me, and I decided to collect every type of PassMe I could find. At the very least, I would have photos for future articles — and honestly, I just wanted them.
Since some versions are basically impossible to find, I had to solder them myself.
When PassMe first appeared, the design was simple and a little brutal: a Nintendo DS cartridge was soldered directly to the PCB. In the photo above is the classic yellow PassMe with a green NDS cartridge soldered onto it. Cheap, crude, and functional.
Later, the design improved a little. Contact pins were soldered to the board and pressed against the cartridge, allowing you to insert a game without soldering anything. In the photo, that is the green PCB with the contact block in the center.
Then someone discovered that a Game Boy Color cartridge connector, trimmed slightly, happens to fit Nintendo DS cartridges almost perfectly. That kicked off another wave of homemade solutions.
And then came the fun part — I decided to build the ultimate PassMe. Back when PassMe devices first appeared, Nintendo 3DS cartridge connectors were impossible to get even on eBay. But time passed, and eventually I found one on AliExpress, ordered it, picked up some black PCBs, assembled everything...
...and of course it did not work 😄 The contacts in this connector turned out to be arranged in exactly the opposite order. So the ultimate PassMe was a failure — but at least it looked good.
