Custom Cartridges

[dubhghaill]

I've been thinking today about making my own cartridges for the Atari 2600, but I have no idea where to start (beyond the programming). I've looked all over and can find no help as to how to construct a cartridge (it's getting the progam ONTO the cartridge that has me stymied). Can anyone help me with this? Yes I could just use Stella, but having my game on the actual Atari is what I fancy!

Thanks!

 

edit: Oh, and I don't really like the krocadile carts, maxicarts, or the like as they have the sticky out bits at the top and that really ruins the look of the cart. Eprom programmers are a little expensive for the handful of games I'd make, which adds to the problem. I'd heard of someone who would program the carts for you for $10 each but I have not been able to see anymore than a few vague posts about them on this forum...any ideas?

Edited August 11, 2007 by dubhghaill

[Shawn]

I've been thinking today about making my own cartridges for the Atari 2600, but I have no idea where to start (beyond the programming). I've looked all over and can find no help as to how to construct a cartridge (it's getting the progam ONTO the cartridge that has me stymied). Can anyone help me with this? Yes I could just use Stella, but having my game on the actual Atari is what I fancy!

Thanks!

 

edit: Oh, and I don't really like the krocadile carts, maxicarts, or the like as they have the sticky out bits at the top and that really ruins the look of the cart. Eprom programmers are a little expensive for the handful of games I'd make, which adds to the problem. I'd heard of someone who would program the carts for you for $10 each but I have not been able to see anymore than a few vague posts about them on this forum...any ideas?

 

 

nobody is gonna do it for $10 bucks a cart. Raise that to $20 and you'll have better luck.

[BigO]

quote name='dubhghaill' post='1349594' date='Sat Aug 11, 2007 2:04 AM']

[...]

 

I'd heard of someone who would program the carts for you for $10 each but I have not been able to see anymore than a few vague posts about them on this forum...any ideas?

 

 

Probably wouldn't be really tough to find someone to just burn the EPROMs for $10.00 each. Seems unlikely that anyone could/would be able to profitably put together an entire cart for that unless maybe they didn't charge anything for their time and used recycled pc boards, EPROMs and cart shells. I can make a plain, semi-decent label inexpensively, but it takes more time than I could likely ever make money doing.

 

There are some hobbyist grade EPROM programmers available for $25-ish to $80-ish. Search for Willem eprom programmer to see a common one. I can't vouch for them yet as I have one but haven't gotten around to burning anything with it yet.

Edited August 18, 2007 by BigO