fluorescein

Thanks so much for posting... I had tried looking for "ROM chips" on ebay, but didn't quite know what to search for. The chips on Ebay look exactly like what I have. I had a similar system for playing the ROMs as the "Loaner" device on the second Ebay auction you mention... except my "chip holder" is imbedded in a "Combat" cartride, rather than the open circuit board shown on the auction picture. The other thing is the label on the chips... 16K, 32K, etc. It's been a long time, but I believe you need a different "chip holder" for each type of chip, otherwise the game will not play correctly. Thanks again for pointing out the auctions. It certainly brings back memories to see pictures of those chips again.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a darn good "sequel" to the Civilization series if anyone's tried it. A lot more options, and the multiplayer games are great.

My dad used to work at the company that provided the chips for Atari's 2600 games. As I recall, he told me some of his chip designs also went into the video arcade (Pac-Man) games. Anyways, he brought home an Atari 2600 console with joysticks and paddles, as well as 2 or 3 hundred games. I truly enjoyed the Atari during my childhood! I'm pretty sure I still have these games somewhere in the garage. The thing is, they don't come in cartridges. All my games are on chips (about 1/2" wide and 1" long). These chips are stored on "foamy" blocks in plastic containers. (Hence, all 2 or 3 hundred games fit in 1 or 2 shoeboxes.) To play the games, I had several "modified" cartridges where there was a slot to put the chip into and a locking mechanism. I had several of these modified cartridges, as certain chips could only be played on certain cartridges. I'm not sure if this had to do with memory allocation, or what because some of the switches on the cartridges (the game chips were put into boxes, and the boxes were labeled with which cartridge and switches to use) were labeled with things like "4K" and "16K". Or something like that... keep in mind I haven't played with this stuff in over 10 years! Has anyone heard about ROM collections on chips like these? I wish my Atari 2600 still worked! I would have kept playing, but the on/off switch stopped working a long time ago. I've considered buying another console, but I don't know if I'd ever really play again. fluorescein