paul_da_programmer

Hello everyone. I have an aquarius that appears to be working but when hooked up to an RF video the screen rolls and is almost illegible. When I go through the few carts I have (AD&D, FileForm, Night Stalker etc...) I can see the screen for the game is there but it is barely visable. Is this an easy fix? Any ideas on how to diagnose what is wrong?

I'm in complete agreement. Put yourself in my shoes for a minute. I've just found a rare and interesting item and now I would need to do destructive modification to it (potentially) to ensure it is read. Also thinking about it ... I would think that any modification to the original (even if an improvement like socketing the roms) should from a collectibility standpoint lower its value. I would think an attempt to externally read the ROM is better than desoldering chips from a 30+ year old circuit board. If this Atarimax thing is able to dump INTV ROMS it shouldn't matter much that the ROM is an EPROM. I mean after all the INTV doesn't seem to notice any difference. I'll try it out on my INTV II I have as well although I'm sure it will play fine. Also I started looking into EPROM use for classic video game systems and I learned something new. All Adventrure vision carts are actually EPROMS as well as some Neo GEO AES (The arcade compatible boards) use EPROMS for games from the factory. Many people claim there has been no reports of failures of these games as long as they are sheilded from UV. I can always keep it wrapped in aluminum foil https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/can-aluminum-foil-block-the-suns-uva-rays.743058/

Thanks GroovyBee this is exactly what I was looking for! I don't know if I want to spend $75 on this though as I'll only need it once. Anyone in NJ (US) area want to help out?

That does look promising ... I was hoping there's some gizmo out there that accepts an INTV cart and can just drive the address lines to read the entire address space with no monkeying around needed. A knowledgeable user had said he could desolder the EPROMS / put in an EPROM reader / solder in EPROM sockets and plug the EPROMS in. The problem is he's on the west coast and (gulp) I just found this in the wild and I'd say its the 3rd or 4th coolest thing in my classic video game collection so I'm really not excited to gamble with it. I've heard various estimations of the lifetime of these EPROMS but the consensus is that good quality EPROMS can last a long time in not forever if protected from UV light. These are very good ones (Intel 2732) which if you read the spec sheet have crazy operation limits (http://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/pdf/157887/INTEL/2732A.html) -65C to +125C as these are the 'enhanced' Intel EPROMS. Of course there's no guarantees but I've put the chips back in the case and the EPROMS stickers are intact and opaque. Anyway ... I'm hoping there's an easy way to do this without physically screwing with the board ...

I recently picked up what is clearly a prototype version of INTV Parker Bros Empire Strikes back After playing it it seems wickedly hard compared to the release version although I'm basing this assessment on looking at videos of people playing the standard version. The roms are labelled v .11 and I'd like to get them dumped but I want to do it locally. I'm in NJ and would travel in the tri-state area to do this. The roms are EPROMS but they are not socketed so I'd like to know my options. Can someone read the ROM contents without unsoldering the ROMS?

Beany Bopper is one of my favs and I never hear anyone else mention it. kind of simplistic graphics, but extremely good gameplay, and great control

Has anyone else experienced an extremely bug ridden pac man jr for the Atari 2600? Having time on my hands today (snow day off of work - wife and kids all napping) I finally opened up my sealed copy (purchased from O'Shea MANY years ago) as I gave up ever finding one out there. I played it for around 30 minutes until finally realizing that the code is bug ridden: - there's one dot (lower left area) that I can eat over and over again without it dissappearing - the are 'double line' dots that look like equal signs all over the maze - there are empty gaps with no dots all over the maze - the left hand side of the screen has black lines (player missle graphic 'lines' for those who know what that is) all over the maze the label itself has a © date of 1987 - not 1988 as for most scans of the game. And yes ... I cleaned the game. I even put it in an Atari 2600 mini version just to see if anything was awry with my heavy sixer that is my mainstay. Did Atari release a bunch of bad Pac Man JR carts? I did some googling (including in this forum) and couldn't find any mention of this. Any help with this - I seriously doubt I ended up with some 'rare' bad carts, especially since it was purchased brand new from O'Shea, but I can't seem to find any info on the internet. Thanks!