Home on rrock.dev

Upgrading a Cheap ELM327 Adapter to Work with iPhone

rrock.ru@gmail.com (Dmitry (rrock) Shchannikov) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:24:32 +0300

This is a translation of my original article, which was first published on Drive2

Since my Android phone days, I had a cheap ELM327 adapter from AliExpress lying around.

I did some reading online beforehand and deliberately picked one with two boards and a PIC18F25K80 controller.

The peculiarity of this adapter is that it only supports Android phones. Out of curiosity, and just for fun, I decided to poke around and see if it could be upgraded.

About

rrock.ru@gmail.com (Dmitry (rrock) Shchannikov) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 20:30:00 +0200

About me

Hi, I’m Dmitry, a curious mind exploring the intersections of information security, reverse engineering, and hardware DIY. I love dissecting systems, analyzing binaries, and tinkering with electronics to understand how things really work.

This blog is where I share my experiments, research, and ideas - from deep technical dives to hands-on projects. Whether it’s uncovering vulnerabilities, building hardware, or just exploring new tech, I document it all here for fellow enthusiasts and learners.

Game Boy + Arduino Due: Reading a Cartridge Directly (Part 1)

rrock.ru@gmail.com (Dmitry (rrock) Shchannikov) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 18:59:32 +0200

I have always been into retro devices and hardware projects, and the Game Boy is almost ideal for this: the architecture is relatively simple, and the cartridge interface is well documented.

In this article, I will show how I approached reverse-engineering the GB-MAX cartridge and how I implemented minimal read access through an Arduino Due without extra chips like 74HC595/74HC165.

How the project started

I bought a Game Boy on eBay and a universal GB-MAX cartridge plus microSD card on AliExpress. After experimenting with it, I became curious about the low-level design: how the OS is loaded, how bank selection works, and how to dump data directly.