Does anyone recognize this?

[+toddtmw]

I just bought this from an auction site. There really was no information. Does anyone have any information about this?

 

Thank you.

[Bryan]

Looks like someone's 2600 piracy kit.

[+toddtmw]

Ive seen wire wrapped ones. This looks more ... professional.

[Lord Thag]

This looks exactly like the setup my friends dad, who worked at Atari back then, had. I'd play 2600 when we visited them in Sunnyvale. All the engineers would rig these boards and take the chips home to play. He had a huge pile of them. Like... this looks *exactly* like his setup, same color foam mat, same game mix, same board style...

[+toddtmw]

So, is this something that Atari made to maybe test prototype games or something?

[Lord Thag]

 

 

So, is this something that Atari made to maybe test prototype games or something?

 

No, it's probably something an Atari engineer or employee (or just a pirate, but this looks more professional) made on the sly to pilfer new games on eproms to take home and play. My friends dad nabbed every available ROM he could find. He had about three styrofoam mats like that full of games he pilfered and burned at work.

[NISMOPC]

SOB! You beat me. I had $100 max bid. Congratulations!

[Keatah]

Those are real roms!

[BillC]

Those are real roms!

Maybe some, but I can read the 2732(4k EPROM) text on many of them.

[Level42]

Those are real roms!

 

No, they are all EPROMs.

 

I have no idea why people think this must come from some Atari employee. Although I'm very sure plenty of them would have sets like these, I remember my friend had a PCB like that and some games on EPROMS.

And I live in The Netherlands....far....far away from any Atari headquarters. And he had zero connections with anything Atari.

 

It was the first time I ever saw a ZIF socket, EPROMs and it was my first encounter with pirated games.

 

I was interested in it but the PCB was pretty expensive to get and the EPROMs were also 25 guilders each. Empty. And you had to know someone who had an EPROM programmer.....because those were insanely expensive then......To compare: I rented games for a week for 10 guilders BITD.

Although much cheaper then games in the store, this was only true in the beginning of the 2600. Pretty soon, the game prices came down, and also ....the XL's came to market so I soon forgot about the 2600.

 

IMHO this set is nothing special but if you got it for 100 bucks or so, it's not too bad for the EPROMs alone...

 

On the other side, you could have bought a Harmony cartridge and play all the games ever released for the 2600 for about the same money...

Edited September 29, 2017 by Level42

[Keatah]

It was a joke, kinda like the fake roms on the innernet. ba'dum..

[Lord Thag]

 

 

I have no idea why people think this must come from some Atari employee.

 

The quality of the zif socket boards and their similarity to the ones I saw back in the day from actual Atari employees, for one. And these setups do tend to be owned by people in the industry, just because of the cost of doing something like this without easy/cheap access to the parts... well, you almost were better just buying the commercial games on sale.