Prototype Commodore Vic 20 cartridges?

[TheDash]

A friend of mine gave me this recently, because apparently it didn't work. I cleaned the pins and *bing*, it did work. So I'll be giving it back to them 😊

 

But I've never seen a Vic 20 cartridge quite like this before - a printed paper label on the usual aluminium front of early Commodore cartridges on the Vic 20, but nothing printed on the aluminium itself. A little look inside shows an unusual looking ROM chip, not the standard black ones as in every other Vic cartridge I've seen. And of course a brown case - no part numbers or 'Made in ....' tag moulded into it though.

 

The game seems just like any other version of Mole Attack I've seen, but I haven't done any byte for byte comparison though.

 

So my question is - is this some kind of pre-production demo or review version of a Commodore cartridge? Has anyone seen anything similar before?

 

 

 

[Supergun]

Well, the games IC is neither a mask rom nor an eprom. And the chip has gold trim and gold legs, so it certainly would not have been a mass production cart.

[Mayhem]

Some of the last production of certain carts were blank shells with paper labels glued to them. Seems legit to me but not a proto.

[TheDash]

3 hours ago, Mayhem said:

Some of the last production of certain carts were blank shells with paper labels glued to them. Seems legit to me but not a proto.

Are you suggesting it's actually the other way around then?

[kmg]

On 11/4/2022 at 7:07 PM, Supergun said:

Well, the games IC is neither a mask rom nor an eprom. And the chip has gold trim and gold legs, so it certainly would not have been a mass production cart.

Nah, it's definitely a mask ROM or EPROM (probably the latter and it has a window under the MOS cover). However, for whatever reason they've used ceramic packaging (CDIP) here instead of plastic (PDIP). The ROM label matches the known number for Mole Attack, FWIW.

[Supergun]

11 hours ago, TheDash said:

Are you suggesting it's actually the other way around then?

The chip itself is from the 13th week of 1982. Hardly what I would call a later release.

[carlsson]

I've seen pictures of similar VIC-20 cartridges before. I believe those were review copies or used at trade shows before production cartridges were available. Definitely different than production grade, but not quite prototype either.