Can a R6532P from China replace a broken RIOT?

[Dionoid]

Hi, I have a '2600 with a faulty RIOT that I want to replace.

 

I found some cheap R6532P's on AliExpress; are they any good to replace the broken R6532-15 RIOT?

 

And what is the difference between a R6532P and a R6532AP?

 

Thanks!

 

[Osgeld]

I forget what the difference is but the P will work fine in a 2600

[Dionoid]

I forget what the difference is but the P will work fine in a 2600

 

Thanks for the info! I just ordered a R6532P from China for $2 and free shipping.

 

For that kind of money I'm fine taking the risk :-)

 

And I did some investigation on the R6532AP, which seems to be a 2MHz version, while the R6532P is 1MHz.

Edited October 11, 2018 by Dionoid

[+DrVenkman]

Yes. The P suffix just indicates a plastic (instead of ceramic) case. It corresponds to a traditional vintage 6532 from any of the usual manufacturers who had licensed the 65xx chipset from MOS.

[Osgeld]

 

Thanks for the info! I just ordered a R6532P from China for $2 and free shipping.

 

For that kind of money I'm fine taking the risk :-)

 

And I did some investigation on the R6532AP, which seems to be a 2MHz version, while the R6532P is 1MHz.

 

 

That was what I was thinking but didnt want to bother looking it up

 

and yes DrVenkman is correct the P is for plastic shell (vs ceramic) , its the A vs non A that's the important part

[Shawn]

Careful ordering those 6532's from China. Some are DOA and most of them are fakes that are out of spec or just don't work at all.

[Osgeld]

well 2 bucks free shipping ... not a lot to loose

[carlsson]

Doesn't the 6532 have a custom ROM part and that is what the -15 represents? Or perhaps that only applies to 6530. I know that in Commodore PET circles, each of these are unique though it has been discussed about replacement solutions with a programmable ROM part so one chip should match them all.

[+DrVenkman]

well 2 bucks free shipping ... not a lot to loose

 

Exactly, I ordered 5 a few years ago for about $8. One didn't work, the other four are fine. Well worth it.

[Dionoid]

Update: I received the R6532P from AliExpress today and replaced it with the broken RIOT. All works fine and I've got a working 4-switch woody again. Yay!

[+Nezgar]

Doesn't the 6532 have a custom ROM part and that is what the -15 represents?

 

Usually on RAM and EPROMs, the trailing numbers indicate the refresh speed/access time of the memory. In this case 15 = 150ns refresh. The 6532 has 128 bytes of onboard RAM, and memory mapped registers for I/O and timer.

[john_q_atari]

A late post to the thread but I had some recent experience with ordering RIOT chips off ebay shipped from China. Of the 10 R6532P chips I ordered only 6 worked, but of the 5 R6532AP chips I ordered, all of them worked. Worked being defined as dropping them into a socket on a Vader and then playing 2 minutes of Pitfall II. The game wouldn't even start with the ones that didn't work, and the ones that did start the game didn't exhibit any noticeable errors during the first 2 minutes of gameplay. Certainly not a thorough and rigorous test, but only about as much effort as I was willing to spend to determine if the chips were good enough or not.