Modified cart with chip socket and flip switch

[yanbu]

I picked this up on a whim recently, I couldn't see any better photos of it to see if it had a chip already inserted when I bought it, but it did not. From what little bit of searching I've done it looks like this accepts an E-Prom for custom chips? Wasn't quite sure and thought I'd check with the AtariAge community about it. I haven't opened the shell since it looked like it had been glued on at one end.

[CPUWIZ]

Pirate cart, that allows for 2716 (2K) and 2732 (4K) EPROM's to be played.

[+groundtrooper]

Very interesting and functional design.

 

I have a bare board version that I can't see any possible way to house it in a shell. It works fine but it is awkward positioning it into the cart slot.

I don't use it a lot. I have used it a couple of times to test if some of the eproms that came with it actually worked.

 

[Andromeda Stardust]

Nice tool, but I'll stick with my Harmony. Thanks for posting this...

 

Is this a real proto cart by Atari? The build quality looks professional and uses an authentic cart shell. I'm not sure any aftermarket or homebrew rigs would have looked this nice. Kinda surprised it still has the label though.

[CPUWIZ]

Nice tool, but I'll stick with my Harmony. Thanks for posting this...

 

Is this a real proto cart by Atari? The build quality looks professional and uses an authentic cart shell. I'm not sure any aftermarket or homebrew rigs would have looked this nice. Kinda surprised it still has the label though.

 

No, there are tons of these, in all kinds of flavors, that have survived over the years. I must have seen 25+ different ones by now, just for non-bankswitched stuff, if not more.

[yanbu]

Very interesting and functional design.

 

I have a bare board version that I can't see any possible way to house it in a shell. It works fine but it is awkward positioning it into the cart slot.

I don't use it a lot. I have used it a couple of times to test if some of the eproms that came with it actually worked.

 

Holy cats! That's impressive! If by any chance you have a double of any specific title that you might want to sell, I would be interested in buying a chip off you

 

Nice tool, but I'll stick with my Harmony. Thanks for posting this...

 

Yeah I think it's pretty cool that people found a way to DIY carts using eproms before the tech involved in carts like Harmony and Everdrive etc came out. I wonder how old some of these eprom pirate carts are? I would guess that's documented somewhere, I haven't looked it up. Kind of interesting to have a piece of that older history I guess.

[Keatah]

Nice tool, but I'll stick with my Harmony. Thanks for posting this...

 

Is this a real proto cart by Atari? The build quality looks professional and uses an authentic cart shell. I'm not sure any aftermarket or homebrew rigs would have looked this nice. Kinda surprised it still has the label though.

 

That it still has the label says homebrew. No reason a homebrew job couldn't look as nice. In fact, homebew done with care would look nicer than an engineering slap-together. Because. Time.

[Lord Thag]

I had a childhood friend whose dad worked in engineering at Atari during the heyday. These were extremely common internally at Atari. The engineers would whip them up and burn eproms for employees. His dad had two or three kinds of carts like this and well over a hundred eproms including, if memory serves, a couple of games that were considered protos (alpha/beta or unreleased) now. Shame I was never able to save them.