Atari 8-bit carts.

[tregare]

i need to pull my pix off my digital camera, but some cleaning I did this evening has me wondering.

 

I was using some Caig DeoxiT to clean the contacts on some carts I just got, and it was easiest for me to open 'em up and pull the boards to clean them, and I noticed that the Galaxian cart is socketed? it only has a mask rom in one of the sockets, the other one is empty.

 

I've never come across a retail atari cart with a socketed circuit board.

 

Also, the circuit board is red? in color (or masking, I'm not sure... I don't have it open anymore to look at.)

[mimo]

Just checked my silver label Galaxians cart.

2 places on the GREEN PCB for ROM's,

only 1 ROM (in the R/H position)

No sockets

[Defender II]

i need to pull my pix off my digital camera, but some cleaning I did this evening has me wondering.

 

I was using some Caig DeoxiT to clean the contacts on some carts I just got, and it was easiest for me to open 'em up and pull the boards to clean them, and I noticed that the Galaxian cart is socketed? it only has a mask rom in one of the sockets, the other one is empty.

 

I've never come across a retail atari cart with a socketed circuit board.

 

Also, the circuit board is red? in color (or masking, I'm not sure... I don't have it open anymore to look at.)

 

Many Atari carts were made with or without sockets. You can buy a sheet of 10 replacement boards like you described factory made by Atari and sold by MyAtari on ebay.

[1050]

If you want to bend your head a bit, put the ROM in that other socket and play it as per normal.

 

Same goes for two chip games, put sockets on the board so you can readily swap chips for speedy proof of concept and play away in any configuration. It's all due to the power of the custom Maskable PROMs that Atari used for the game cartridge boards. I've got a few red ones but most are green and non-socketed.

 

@Defender II

The MyAtari boards may have been made for eproms which would be a different critter than the game cart boards sold by Atari and descried by tregare? There is a difference between the standard game boards and boards made for use with standard eproms, so be careful you don't buy the wrong thing, which is my only FYI point here.

 

I'm not real sure but the red board might even be an eprom board, in which case swaping the chip left for right position then wouldn't let it play even if there was only one chip.