My 4-port apparently doesn't like 3rd Party Titles

[Lynxpro]

Anyone else have problems playing 3rd Party carts on their 4-port? I have 2 copies of River Raid and neither will play. my copy of Star Trek also won't play and the same goes for 1 of the 2 Frogger carts I have. I've recently acquired these along with a lot of Atari carts from eBay. The difference is every Atari cart works. None of the carts have been cleaned and they cosmetically look about the same dust-wise. The Atari carts all fit better but then again, the 5200 cartridge connector was definitely a step up over the 2600/7800 connector anyway. Since I found this rather odd, I thought I'd bring it to the forum.

 

Pitfall works like a champ though...

[eightbit]

Not sure I ever had any issues like this, but I do know that the four port models with the asterisk in the serial number were "fixed" by Atari to allow the 2600 adapter to work. Maybe they fixed some compatibility issues as well on these modules. All of my four port machines were asterisk models and I had no issues with the complete collection.

[+Allan]

No. It's just that Activision carts are usually more finicky with the 5200. Parker Bros. not as much but it does happen. I think the Activision cases didn't always allow the cart to sit properly in the 5200 and can case problems in making a good connection. I've taken some of them out of the case and put the bare board in and that has worked. Sometimes I've had to clean the connectors. I've never had to do that with Atari carts. It could be the the plating on the Activision board connectors is not the same quality as Atari's.

 

It's not a compatibility issue though.

 

Allan