Any Interest in an Original A8 BIO DEFENSE Cartridge by Tymac

FND · September 8, 2012

Considering selling a few of my A8 carts (need money)

Is there interest in this title

This is the only one in cartridge format found to date. It has a very generic Label but according to some new

information ( see end of post ) its probably how they were done at the time

This was supposedly only released in the UK on cassette & maybe disk but not much of the specifics

are known. As for being issued in Cartridge format I have found no references except what was just

told to me (see end of post)

I did finaly get the case opened and there are two eproms (2764) inside with silver foil window

stickers with hand written notation as follows

BD

$8000

0412

AND

BD

$A000

0412

The PCB Board has etched markins as follows on the front

DEICO ELECTRONICS

SUNNYVALE, CA.

And on the back as follows

DEI 1007

REV-C2

EPROM

PCB

Here is a link to an old AA thread I had started back in 2007 when I first got this cartridge

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/108678-label-fungi-rot-bio-defense-tymac/

Here is another from the same time

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/108747-8-bit-protos-found-need-help-to-dump/

Here is a link to an Interview with a Tymac employee done by Bill Loguidice

http://armchairarcade.com/neo/node/601

I have also contacted the Employee from the above interview who has kindly passed along

on some aditional information which I have done a copy and past of below

“I had all but forgotten about Bio-Defense. It was written by Arthur Aspromatis at Game Gems for Tymac. Strange how things turn out. The game was released in the US and UK. However in the US most users were moving toward using disk drives and had a much larger selection of software available. The big name distributors in the US did not pickup the product line so limited promotion was done and sales were slow. Consequently fewer disk copies were produced. Contributing to so few copies remaining 5-1/4" diskettes tend to be stashed away or thrown away more readily that a cassette tape. Cartridge based games were on the decline but some of the Tymac products were distributed that way. We produced them as needed right on Main St in Franklin, NJ but no records of how many of any particular game were made remains. The cartridges were popular with salesmen, trade show demos and store displays.

Many of the items that remained after the flood of our building were disposed of in late 2006 / early 2007. We had sold our building and the new owner was starting renovations starting at the top floor. We moved our offices down one floor and began cleaning out the basement. If you were around the building then you would have had your pick of games, advertising materials, posters, etc since we filled 7 20 yard dumpsters. Within a few months we had found another building to move in to and any remaining materials from the games was disposed of during the move since Tymac had focused on the industrial automation product lines.”

Edited September 8, 2012 by FND