Realaports carts as donor?

[Coolcrab]

I found a site that sells realsports football and volleyball for very cheap. I was wondering if anyone knew how the board looks? Would it work to use those as a donor.

[jaybird3rd]

Yes, those games should work as donors. The boards have a standard 24-pin footprint for the ROM, so if you want to make a 2K or 4K cartridge, a 2716 or 2732 EPROM should do the job; you'll just need to remove the old ROM, solder in the new one, and add an inverter to generate the chip enable signal (see this thread for more information). A game that is 8K or larger would require a special board, since a plain EPROM does not have the necessary bankswitching circuitry for games of that size.

[SS]

FYI - I used a "Realsports Baseball" as a donor shell a little while ago and that label was a nightmare to get completely off!

[Coolcrab]

Great thanks! I was asking because I remember buying a realsports game that had 2 chips on it. But I forgot which one that was.

[jaybird3rd]

Great thanks! I was asking because I remember buying a realsports game that had 2 chips on it. But I forgot which one that was.

If it was a sports game, it was probably Super Football. That was one of a number of SuperChip games that contained an extra 128-byte memory chip called SARA. This thread has a complete list of the games that used this chip, along with a picture of the board.

[Coolcrab]

Yes this was it! Can you use that board as an ordinary 4k one?

[jaybird3rd]

Yes this was it! Can you use that board as an ordinary 4k one?

I've never tried, so anyone who knows differently should correct me, but I don't see why not. No 4K games used the SuperChip, so it will end up going to waste inside the cartridge, but the ROM should work.

[CPUWIZ]

Yes this was it! Can you use that board as an ordinary 4k one?

 

Yes, remove SARA (or be barbaric and cut off the 5V line) and connect the 2 pins of where the SARA resided.

[Coolcrab]

thats good to know! Thanks