Atari EEPROM Chips

[Rubikscow]

I have recently acquired some EEPROM chips with an Atari 2600. They came with a cartridge with removable chips. Many of the chips have a title as well as a 32 after. I do not know a whole lot about them and am having trouble finding info online. Does anyone have any information about these? There are approximately 114 chips along with the cartridge.

[Albert]

Greetings,

 

What you have here is a collection of pirated games for the Atari 2600, and a cartridge to use them with.  This is how games were pirated "back in the day", people would dump (copy) the contents of a commercial cartridge, and then burn the game program onto EPROMs for use with a socketed cartridge like the one you have posted a photo of above.  These are interesting to see, but don't really have any significant value, and they come up here on AtariAge routinely.

 

The "32" you see on the labels is likely to denote 4K games that require the use of a 2732 EPROM, versus a 2716 EPROM used for 2K games.

 

One thing I find interesting here is it looks like many of the chips are sitting in a socket.  I assume this may have been done to make them taller and easier to use with the socket on the cartridge.

 

 ..Al

[stepho]

The extra sockets maybe to help avoid pin breakage when plugging in/out many times from the cartridge.
If you break the occasional pin then you just replace that extra socket rather than losing the game.

[+Al_Nafuur]

1 hour ago, stepho said:

The extra sockets maybe to help avoid pin breakage when plugging in/out many times from the cartridge.
If you break the occasional pin then you just replace that extra socket rather than losing the game.

The socket on the cartridge looks like some sort of a ZIF-Socket, so breaking a pin while plugging shouldn't be an issue here.

[Supergun]

The extra sockets also served to make the chips bulkier and therefore easier to handle while using them.

 

 

[Buckaroo]

On 11/28/2022 at 1:14 AM, Rubikscow said:

I have recently acquired some EEPROM chips with an Atari 2600.

Are you looking to part with these?

 

It might be interesting to get them dumped to see if there's anything other than the final releases of the games on them. 

[alex_79]

I find the board interesting too. There's an unpopulated footprint for another 24 pin chip below the ZIF socket, six pads probably intended for switch(es) or jumpers on one side, and way too many components for a simple 2k/4k board: 4 ICs, plus 3 resistors and a capacitor are visible on the picture. The board could likely be configured for bankswitched games, although it only seems to be set up for simple 2k and 4k ones (the couple of jumper wires visible in the pic might be a modification to disable bankswitch). It would be nice if it could be traced.

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

12 minutes ago, alex_79 said:

I find the board interesting too. There's an unpopulated footprint for another 24 pin chip below the ZIF socket, six pads probably intended for switch(es) or jumpers on one side, and way too many components for a simple 2k/4k board: 4 ICs, plus 3 resistors and a capacitor are visible on the picture. The board could likely be configured for bankswitched games, although it only seems to be set up for simple 2k and 4k ones (the couple of jumper wires visible in the pic might be a modification to disable bankswitch). It would be nice if it could be traced.

 

Yes, looks like 8K ROMs might be possible with this board too?

 

The "clear case" looks like shrink wrap?

 

[alex_79]

19 minutes ago, Al_Nafuur said:

The "clear case" looks like shrink wrap?

Yes, it looks a sort of shrink wrap. The edges look weird, though, as if it's folded there.

Edited November 29, 2022 by alex_79

[WhyLee commotari.club]

i don't know why it has 4 ttl chips on board. usually to invert the highest address line A12 to make a nCS for the (e)eproms, you need only one line inverted with an 74LS04 for example. did they implement some kind of address extemsion / bank switching with the other TTL chips?

 

Edited November 30, 2022 by WhyLee commotari.club