e5frog

Just thought of this as I read through this again - it wouldn't be possible to use the cart without the case as this is used to keep the cart in the unit... I still want both of these Democarts....

The owner suggested the Democart 2 was meant for another audience than the Democart (produced for retailers), perhaps when selling the system to ITT (Ingelen), SABA, Barco, Dumont, Grandstand and Luxor?

There is another Democart 2... I got these scans of the inside guts, a 3853 SMI and a 8316A (2kB Programmable ROM). One time programmable i presume. The Democart 2 is probably some sort of a prototype PCB was made 11/77, which is probably week 11 of 1977. But as the hatch is marked 09-78 it was probably not assembled until week 9, 1978. This one was apparently bought in Sweden at a Swedish auction site in early 2005 bunched with some Luxor carts, worst thing isn't that it was cheap - it's that I missed it! Pictures:

Have you tried the Pac-man game? Send me a PM if you want to try the latest version. Frank mentioned in the Tetris game by Peter Trauner is Frank Palazzolo, he has done some work on MESS, and me as you already knew and also Sean Riddle. Peter wanted to show it was possible to make Tetris for this system, he was never interested in the prize, I guess that's the reason it wasn't finished (no sound and missing some features). Another reason is that the binary is the same size as the available ram on his favorite computer (I'm guessing a VIC 20). No more attempts on Tetris has been made as far as I know.

Sean Riddle dumped most of them...

Yes! That would be nice, but I only have Fairchild stuff, C64, VIC20 and Amiga to trade with... ... oh and some Gameboy, NES, SNES and for Vectrex (besides the unit) only Sean Kelly's Multicart and a loose copy of Clean Sweep.

Faulty pixels on screen is usually caused by faulty V-RAM, there a 4 RAM-chips (usually on sockets) that are quite sensitive, if you get another unit you might be able to swap them and trace down the faulty circuit. Disassembling the unit isn't that fun though, a bunch of screws and removing the cart holder ribbon cables isn't as hard as putting them back...

Here are some scans of the Democart I had: front of Democart box back of Democart box Nice broschures, I haven't seen those before. I guess that's where the "Casino Royale"-name comes from, haven't seen that before in print either. But there wasn't any carts with this I name I guess, only "Casino Poker"? I have only seen #19 carts with the poor rubber chip cover, that might be the reason there's so few of these. The rubber covered chips usually contain cart #22 rom also and can be switched between these if you change a jumper on the circuit-board (and vice versa).

I have only found one confirmed existence of this cart myself, but if there is one there must be more. BTW is the one you know of in the USA ? Ian posted a picture of both of the Channel F Democarts on his homepage: www.ianoid.com Click on Site Features, then Channel F Oddities I agree that Democart 2 is much harder to find, but I have seen it on ebay before. I would love to add one to my collection someday, but I am not willing to pay nearly as much as FND is offering for it. Matt A. I thought FND was offering to little... Yes, Ian Baronofsky is the only one I know that has one, that's the cart that was dumped with Sean Riddle's automatic cart dumper. Sean actually sent it to Ian so that he could take care of business himself. I'm still not convinced that Democart 2 is the real thing, it might be a homebrew. I made similar labels for a Fairchild multi-cart, laserprinted with plastic film on top. All the names of the games printed on the label don't match with the real cart names... It might ofcourse be a prototype. It would be interesting to see the insides. As this was probably among the last things released by Fairchild there might have been many lost. It's strange however one never gets a Zircon re-labeled cart with Democart 2 labels beneath the ones on top, occasionally I have seen Zircon-re-labeled carts with either Fairchild #1 instruction labels or Democart labels. Zircon simply reused the cart shells of non-sold carts. I hope I'll come across a boxed Democart again, the one I had looked even better than Ian's. I can "play" them both anyway - I have a multi-cart...

Good luck finding a Democart 2, I only know of One in existence, I'd say it's at least ten times more rare than the Democart...

Where did you find it? A friend of mine at vintagegames.se is also looking for one, well, two actually...

I like #14 Sonar Search. It's ofcourse more fun if you're two players, then #9 Maze can be fun as well.

Peter Trauner wrote Tetris as evidence that it was possible to make a Tetris game for the Channel F after finding my competition... He wasn't really interested in recieveing the prize (complete set of SABA carts). After a while he got bored with my demands and stopped working on it, the last version I got from him has other scoring and more digits for the score. So... the competition is still on: http://w5.nuinternet.com/s660100106/competition/ Me, myself has done a whole lot of work on Blackbirds Channel F Pac-man, trying to make it more true to the original. Latest binary can be found here: http://w5.nuinternet.com/s660100106/files/...elf/pac-man.bin Fredric Blåholtz