Jump to content
IGNORED

Atari 400/800 smaller cartridge slots


Chris Strong

Recommended Posts

While looking through some Atari photos today to post here, I found this photo of an unusual cartridge I found.

 

 

funky_cart_small.jpg

 

The cartridge on the left is a normal Atari EPROM board. The one on the right is the odd one. Notice it is running the Dorsett Cartridge (Atari Educational System Master Cartridge, CXL4001) and is dated 17 April 1979.

 

The board itself seems to be labeled "Candy". Clearly it is too small to fit in a normal Atari cartridge slot. I've not yet looked to see what address lines (if any) are missing, but it is an interesting variation.

 

Has anyone seen an Atari 400 with such a cartridge slot?

Edited by Chris Strong
Link to comment
Share on other sites

not a 400, but ClausB has a prototype 800 with the 24 pin cart slot, check out the pictures in post #14

http://www.atariage....l__ engineering

he also pictures a BASIC cart with 24 pins later in the topic

 

Wow, that is probably the coolest Atari prototype I've seen, at least for my collection. But I will reply in that thread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice!

 

A 2716 with 2K at $B800 means it occupies $B800-$BFFF, in the production cart space. Seems like the other one should be labeled $B000 to make a 4K cart. Can you photograph the back side?

 

This cart should work in old #26.

 

Claus Buchholz! Now that is a name I know very well. I used to do your memory upgrades for friends when I was in high school (sorry, I guess that dates me as a bit younger). Did you do the 288K 800 or the 256K 800XL? Or both? I remember it back in the days when I used to glue the address logic chips onto the boards "dead bug"-style and wirewrapping it all up. Then Brad Koda started selling premade PCBs for some of them in my last couple months of high school and it was so much easier...and then the PC/AT craze got going and 41256's went up out of sight. And I was out of business.

 

Anyway, I'll be happy to photograph it but it will take a couple days. I shot that photo in June of 2006, I just found the image recently. I've not seen that cart yet (I'm unpacking my Atari collections from years of storage), but I've found several containers with prototype carts and I saw that same SALT board right on top. so I'm sure the other one is with it.

 

I got several odd carts about that time. BASIC on Signetics PROMs, some ROMS in white ceramic packages, etc. Several carts I don't know what they are; they appear to do nothing but I suspect are some early diagnostics.

 

Dumping the ROMS will be a bit longer but I will get to it. I need to dump all of those EPROMS anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay, I'm running a speedskating even this weekend and I probably won't be back to this until next week, so here is some quick cartridge porn. I found the box. Sorry they are a bit out of focus, I could reshoot them later when I have better light. I only got three hours of sleep yesterday (we were up late aligning timing cameras), so I can't reshoot them.

 

Dorsett cart in high-rest:

 

dorsett_front_highres.jpg

 

dorsett_back.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now this RSZ cart. According to my notes, somewhere in this box is apparently a SALT 1 cart board from 1979, which is really neat, as I did not remember that I owned one. That's just the sort of thing I like.

 

Anyway, this is a strange board; the PCB is unknown to me. I don't know if it is the SALT, it's bag was unlabeled.

rsz_front.jpg

 

rsz_back.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...