Which game cartridges can be homebrewified?

[Col7800]

Hi all,

 

I was wondering how I could make homebrew carts?

I have duplicates of Ms Pac Man, Commando & Xenophobe.

 

Could any of these be modified to play homebrew?

 

If so, how. If not, which carts can be homebrewified?

[edweird13]

I don't know figure it out like the rest of us. If you can't then buy them.

lol like we are gonna tell you how to pirate hard workin coders games.

[+sixersfan105]

Why you would write over Commando is beyond me!

[Col7800]

So nobody has bought a Harmony cart or a Cuttle Cart or ever downloaded a freely available rom?

 

Thanks chaps.

 

And yes I have purchased plenty of homebrew titles. But I cant afford them all....

 

It was just an idea, until the Harmony Concerto is released into the wild.

The commando cart is in pretty bad shape, and I thought it may be useful for pokey games...

Edited December 4, 2016 by Col7800

[+save2600]

Here's a thread that talks a bit about the different options:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/250341-using-an-eprom-in-a-supercartridge-game-to-play-48k-sized-homebrew/?hl=7800%20boards

[Shawn]

So nobody has bought a Harmony cart or a Cuttle Cart or ever downloaded a freely available rom?

 

Thanks chaps.

 

And yes I have purchased plenty of homebrew titles. But I cant afford them all....

 

It was just an idea, until the Harmony Concerto is released into the wild.

The commando cart is in pretty bad shape, and I thought it may be useful for pokey games...

 

I'd buy that beat up commando.

[alex_79]

Hi all,

 

I was wondering how I could make homebrew carts?

I have duplicates of Ms Pac Man, Commando & Xenophobe.

 

Could any of these be modified to play homebrew?

 

If so, how. If not, which carts can be homebrewified?

You can modify any cartridge to use eproms, but it would be better to start with a game similar to the one you want to build in terms of amount of rom, ram, bankswitching and eventual Pokey chip to limit modifications and rewiring. For example, boards without ram and/or Pokey, will lack connections to some of the pins (Phase 2 clock, Read/Write signal, external audio from the cart). You can connect those pins, but it will require a lot of work to make the cart fit into the 7800 slot. (It can be done. I made a ramcart using a "Pole Position II" board and had to wire a couple of missing pins)

 

I'm not much into the 7800 (I'm focused on the 2600), but you can take a look at this page for pinouts and schematics of the various Atari 7800 cartridge. Also check this document from Graham J Percy (it contains instructions to build ramcarts for 2600 and 7800 development, but there are some tips and schematics that could be useful also for normal eprom carts.)

When using eproms, you might have to add some logic for address decoding, or invert some signals to make them work, but it all depends on the specific type of cart you want to build.

 

 

I don't know figure it out like the rest of us. If you can't then buy them.

lol like we are gonna tell you how to pirate hard workin coders games.

 

As long as he doesn't sell the games, I can't see the difference in playing an homebrew (when the rom has been made available by the author) or difficult to find original game on real hardware using an eprom cart, a flashcart like the Concerto or the Cuttle Cart, a development system with ramcart or anything else.

 

Some retrogaming enthusiasts enjoy tinkering with the hardware too, so keeping info like this as a "state secrets" has the only effect of making them lose interest in the platform. People interested in pirating games, on the other hand, will figure it out themselves (it doesn't takes much skills to reverse engineer an Atari game) and surely won't waste time and efforts rewiring old boards...

 

As a last note, I don't know anything about rarity of the games, but you guys realize that, on the basis of a previous thread by Col7800 (just a few topics below this one, right now), he is probably from Europe and the games are PAL, right?

 

[+sixersfan105]

As a last note, I don't know anything about rarity of the games, but you guys realize that, on the basis of a previous thread by Col7800 (just a few topics below this one, right now), he is probably from Europe and the games are PAL, right?

 

Didn't realize he's in Europe. I take back what I said about Commando. It's not rare over there.