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Wanted: SuperChip-based Atari 2600 Carts


Albert

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Those are just my boards, which is why Al needs donor carts, so he can extract the SuperChip (SARA) from them and use them on these boards.

 

Here is a comparison shot between Atari's board and mine:

 

Okay, daft question time here perhaps, but why not just remove the game chip from the old boards and solder the newly burnt homebrew to them instead? Rather than extract the SARA, solder it to the new board AND then solder the homebrew chip to the new board.

 

Because of the bankswitching logic PLD, the original ROM's had the logic in the chip, EPROM's do not.

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Well... I was looking through a few lots that I have (a 160 cart lot and an 80 cart lot).

Looks like I have 8 games from your list:

 

Dig Dug

Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles (Atari Corp)

Defender II

JR. Pac-man (2)

Millipede (2)

 

I need to look around tomorrow after work. I may have a few more for you as well Al.

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Because of the bankswitching logic PLD, the original ROM's had the logic in the chip, EPROM's do not.

 

BTW, it's probably too late for this idea to be useful, and it's probably not practical anyway, but I may as well suggest... would it be practical to make a daughterboard that would plug into the space occupied by the ROM on an Atari cart? I would guess it would be necessary to use surface-mount, but such a thing would have two advantages over using a new PCB:

 

-1- It would be a smaller PCB, and wouldn't need gold fingers.

 

-2- Though it would require more labor to assemble than a normal PCB, the labor required to destructively remove a ROM and solder a header to two boards might be less than the labor required to non-destructively remove a RAM and solder it into another board.

 

The approach might have been fairly nice (albeit pointless) for some older cart PCBs that had two rows of holes with all the cartridge signals; one could destructively remove the old ROM without unsoldering it and connect the new board to the other holes. It doesn't look like Atari's SARA boards have the extra holes, though.

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Because of the bankswitching logic PLD, the original ROM's had the logic in the chip, EPROM's do not.

 

BTW, it's probably too late for this idea to be useful, and it's probably not practical anyway, but I may as well suggest... would it be practical to make a daughterboard that would plug into the space occupied by the ROM on an Atari cart? I would guess it would be necessary to use surface-mount, but such a thing would have two advantages over using a new PCB:

 

-1- It would be a smaller PCB, and wouldn't need gold fingers.

 

-2- Though it would require more labor to assemble than a normal PCB, the labor required to destructively remove a ROM and solder a header to two boards might be less than the labor required to non-destructively remove a RAM and solder it into another board.

 

The approach might have been fairly nice (albeit pointless) for some older cart PCBs that had two rows of holes with all the cartridge signals; one could destructively remove the old ROM without unsoldering it and connect the new board to the other holes. It doesn't look like Atari's SARA boards have the extra holes, though.

 

I've actually thought about exactly that, but Al is allergic to surface mount parts. ;)

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I've actually thought about exactly that, but Al is allergic to surface mount parts. ;)

I'm allergic to soldering them myself, but happy to let other people do so.

 

..Al

 

Aw come on. The last time I had to fix a RAM chip in a cart, the chip was surface mount. I've been known to install 20 pin surface mount ICs with a pencil iron and a roll of solder. :)

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Because of the bankswitching logic PLD, the original ROM's had the logic in the chip, EPROM's do not.

 

BTW, it's probably too late for this idea to be useful, and it's probably not practical anyway, but I may as well suggest... would it be practical to make a daughterboard that would plug into the space occupied by the ROM on an Atari cart?

 

I wonder also: could one of those homebrew bankswitch PLDs be modified to include the 128 bytes of Superchip RAM? That way you would take a new EEPROM and a new PLD and solder them both to a new board - no need for donor chips?

 

I am not certain of the cost to source old Superchip games but I imagine at some point they will be converted to new uses and it would be more cost-effective to design a chip like that : )

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Well... I was looking through a few lots that I have (a 160 cart lot and an 80 cart lot).

Looks like I have 8 games from your list:

 

Dig Dug

Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles (Atari Corp)

Defender II

JR. Pac-man (2)

Millipede (2)

 

I need to look around tomorrow after work. I may have a few more for you as well Al.

 

I found another one. add yet another Crystal Castle.

I have 9 games for you.

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I wonder also: could one of those homebrew bankswitch PLDs be modified to include the 128 bytes of Superchip RAM? That way you would take a new EEPROM and a new PLD and solder them both to a new board - no need for donor chips?

 

There are no inexpensive DIP-based PLD's that include 128-bytes of RAM (indeed, I don't know if any such PLDs exist, period). Using a PLD plus an external RAM and ROM would be possible, but I know of no inexpensive PLD which would be suitable for that task and is available in DIP form. There is a chip that could be used which would include bank-switching, RAM, and ROM all within a single inexpensive chip, but it's only available in surface-mount. The latter chip will probably be used for 2600 carts in the future, but that design isn't finalized yet.

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I'm up to 38 SuperChip carts so far! Need another 62 to reach my goal of 100!! :)

 

..Al

 

Al,

 

I have a Crystal Castles that I can send, along with 5 carts I wanted to send for recycling (all 5 are non-functioning chips). If that's cool, let me know and I'll send them all along to you.

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  • 1 month later...
Can the carts be PAL or must they be NTSC? Does it matter if the carts are the variety that have rectangular holes in the upper corners of the front of the cart?

 

RAM doesn't care what country it operates in. :)

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