My Brother Found This Old Cartridge......

[Atari Rescue Group]

My brother found a Atari Computer cartridge that has a small handwritten label on it that looks like it says, DLR PILLED GAMES (or the DLR is DIR). Inside, the Atari board is a red one with a Fuji on it says A601 & A602 on each side of the top and it has a removeable chip with some wires and transistor like things on it.

 

The case also has a date written on it (looks like 8-21-81) and the words Rom, Pre, First. I'm guessing they would be unrelated to the sticker.

 

We're Atari computerless now so we can't plug it in and see what it does.

 

Photos below in post #8.

 

Any idea what the words on the sticker mean?

Edited February 15, 2008 by Atari Rescue Group

[JayoK]

My brother found a Atari Computer cartridge that has a small handwritten label on it that looks like it says, DLR PILLED GAMES (or the DLR is DIR). Inside, the Atari board is a red one with a Fuji on it says A601 & A602 on each side of the top and it has a removeable chip with some wires and transistor like things on it.

 

The case also has a date written on it (looks like 8-21-81) and the words Rom, Pre, First. I'm guessing they would be unrelated to the sticker.

 

We're Atari computerless now so we can't plug it in and see what it does.

 

Sorry for the poor photo. With the camera I have tonight and the lighting here this isn't much to look at. I can do better on Friday.

 

Any idea what the words on the sticker mean?

 

 

Don't really know what it does, but I'll hazard a guess. From the picture, it look like the chip on boards isn't a PROM as such I would imagine that the cart itself doesn't hold any data. What it may do though is be a form of copy protection? That is if you load the game from disk you need to have the cart plugged in to actually play the game?

[Rybags]

Well, The Pill is a cartridge which write-protects areas of RAM which allow running normally protected cart images on a 48K machine.

 

Does this one have any chips in it? Does it have any switches on the board, or protruding from the cart?

[Atari Rescue Group]

No switches on the board or protruding from the case.

 

There's a Texas Instruments chip. 8 prongs on each side and is has SN74LS279N P1 El Salvador 7945A on it.

[Rybags]

Quad set/reset latch.

 

Most likely used to perform write-protecting of RAM - ie emulate a cartridge.

 

The Pill's copying software, from memory, just asks the user to insert the cartridge to copy, then dumps it out to disk.

 

Then, the loader would likely copy it to the computer's RAM, flip the write-protect latch and execute the cartridge.

 

Maybe someone here has a "Pill"ed cart image you could try with it.

[+Guitarman]

I have "The Pill" and the "Super Pill". The Pill has the switch on it to switch between "cart to image" or to play the images from disk. The Super Pill is switchless.

[miker]

Any chances for better picture?

[Atari Rescue Group]

Here are a couple good pictures.......

[Defender II]

Here are a couple good pictures.......

Looks like a Pill cart set-up.

 

I would think the label is DIR (as in directory) PILLED then subdirectory GAMES?