+selgus Posted September 7, 2023 Share Posted September 7, 2023 While I was waiting on a few parts to come in for the portable ATARI 7800 hand-held I have been designing and building, I had started to look for a PCB for a cartridge game I was going to make for the system. I really couldn't find any blank PCBs I could purchase for 7800 cartridges with on-board ram (the game I was planning needs additional ram), so I decided to use Jinks PCBs as my base. After disassembling and desoldering one of these old cartridges and seeing how crappy they were made BITD, I thought I would just design my own. I used the C300565 PCB design as a template, and modified it slightly (it has many of the same jumpers) and uses SMD parts for all but the ROM chip (which would be an eprom for development). I have 8K sram on the board, and I can make these for a few dollars each, so seemed like an interesting route to go. So I manufactured 60 of these blank PCBs. I built up one of them tonight, and this is the result.. I have a low-profile zif socket that I can plug into the board for development, and then I can remove it and just insert the eprom directly into the PCB. 14 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted September 20, 2023 Share Posted September 20, 2023 Any chance of making 16k or 32k SRAM versions in the future for use with the games that need more than 8k? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted September 20, 2023 Author Share Posted September 20, 2023 1 hour ago, Shawn said: Any chance of making 16k or 32k SRAM versions in the future for use with the games that need more than 8k? I could add a few address lines for the sram footprint, though the game I was planning just needs 8k. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zonie Posted September 21, 2023 Share Posted September 21, 2023 Nice. Just a question. Why does everyone put an Atari logo on their own work? It's not Atari's work. It's yours. I see that on boxes too... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted September 21, 2023 Author Share Posted September 21, 2023 14 hours ago, Zonie said: Nice. Just a question. Why does everyone put an Atari logo on their own work? It's not Atari's work. It's yours. I see that on boxes too... I put it on there to show it is for the ATARI, and also that the schematic is based on the original PCB that I have modified. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted September 22, 2023 Author Share Posted September 22, 2023 I did spend a little time the other day and made a new revision of the board. If I make more of these cartridges, I'll just use this new design.. as it supports 8K, 16K and 32K sram chips now.. 7 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chriswhit Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 1 hour ago, selgus said: I did spend a little time the other day and made a new revision of the board. If I make more of these cartridges, I'll just use this new design.. as it supports 8K, 16K and 32K sram chips now.. do you plan on selling any boards or making files available at a place similar to pcbway? ether way your project is awesome. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted September 22, 2023 Author Share Posted September 22, 2023 5 hours ago, chriswhit said: do you plan on selling any boards or making files available at a place similar to pcbway? ether way your project is awesome. I do want to make them available to others, but the main purpose was to make a game and release it on cartridge. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chriswhit Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 13 minutes ago, selgus said: I do want to make them available to others, but the main purpose was to make a game and release it on cartridge. Yes I figured was mostly for a game release. I’ve wanted to make my own pcb’s . My only cad experience is 3d printed items in plastic. Are there any good programs to design them or a good video to get me started? I do mods and usually pay someone to do the cad part Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted November 9, 2023 Author Share Posted November 9, 2023 I had been thinking about this the other day and started working on a version that also included a POKEY chip. Right now I have the POKEY at $4000, but that interferes with my sram, so I need to figure out where it should live in the memory map, allowing both POKEY and sram. Then I need to see what logic changes I will need to make for that modification. Here it is at $4000.. 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john_q_atari Posted November 9, 2023 Share Posted November 9, 2023 On 9/22/2023 at 1:32 PM, chriswhit said: Yes I figured was mostly for a game release. I’ve wanted to make my own pcb’s . My only cad experience is 3d printed items in plastic. Are there any good programs to design them or a good video to get me started? I do mods and usually pay someone to do the cad part @chriswhit I learned KiCAD by designing and having manufactured 2 PCBs, one surface mount and one through-hole. I like the fact that KiCAD is open source and the data files are human readable. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+karri Posted November 9, 2023 Share Posted November 9, 2023 3 hours ago, selgus said: I had been thinking about this the other day and started working on a version that also included a POKEY chip. Right now I have the POKEY at $4000, but that interferes with my sram, so I need to figure out where it should live in the memory map, allowing both POKEY and sram. Then I need to see what logic changes I will need to make for that modification. Here it is at $4000.. Looks nice. But perhaps removing the trademarked Atari logo could be a good idea? What about a SN76489AN instead of Pokey? Easier to find imho. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted November 9, 2023 Author Share Posted November 9, 2023 55 minutes ago, karri said: Looks nice. But perhaps removing the trademarked Atari logo could be a good idea? What about a SN76489AN instead of Pokey? Easier to find imho. Thanks, and just removed the ATARI logos.. good call. As for different sound generators, I think I'll stick with the POKEY. More what ATARI envisioned and what I'm experienced with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted November 9, 2023 Author Share Posted November 9, 2023 1 hour ago, john_q_atari said: @chriswhit I learned KiCAD by designing and having manufactured 2 PCBs, one surface mount and one through-hole. I like the fact that KiCAD is open source and the data files are human readable. I have been using EAGLE for decades, but have been transitioning away from it (as Autodesk really doesn't know what they are doing in this industry) and moving to Altium. Now, Altium Designer is a much more expensive application but it is the most professional CAD you can really purchase imho. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john_q_atari Posted November 9, 2023 Share Posted November 9, 2023 Yes Altium seems to straddle the consumer/professional market. I had thought about using it in the past, but for now I'm okay with using KiCAD. Some smaller companies I know use Altium though I think the major companies mostly use Allegro. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted November 18, 2023 Author Share Posted November 18, 2023 Redesigned the board to use a gal22v10 for remapping and have a11-thru-a15 address lines as inputs, along with d0-d3 and some other signals. This will allow for placing POKEY and the sram at multiple locations, along as being both acceptable. Still need to finish writing the remapping source.. 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted November 20, 2023 Author Share Posted November 20, 2023 I made a modification to the board and have a bunch of blank boards being manufactured now. I decided I didn't need d3 data-line signal for the bank selections I'll be using these boards for, so I converted it to a10. This will allow me to have better control over where to locate the POKEY in the 7800 memory map (and not interfere with the sram). I also had forgotten to place a bypass cap on the POKEY, so corrected that, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted November 23, 2023 Author Share Posted November 23, 2023 Just to give me more options and to better fit within cartridge shells, I did two more versions.. the first for soldering the gal22v10 directly to the PCB, and the second allows both the gal to be socketed or directly to the PCB. This one is a bit tricky since the thru-holes and smd pads overlap. Need to test out how feasible, if a socket was necessary.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted November 30, 2023 Author Share Posted November 30, 2023 Did a few different boards, each with different ways to attach the gal.. socketed, smd mounted and one where it could use a socket or smd mounting.. 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+S.D.W. Posted February 17 Share Posted February 17 Do you have any plans to share these designs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted February 17 Author Share Posted February 17 2 minutes ago, 917k said: Do you have any plans to share these designs? Short answer is yes.. longer answer is I'm not sure how I'll do that. But one way or another, they will be available to other users. This specific board though has been superseded by my newer design, with multiple sound chips support. I have a newer thread for that.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted February 17 Share Posted February 17 On 9/8/2023 at 12:15 AM, selgus said: few parts to come in for the portable ATARI 7800 hand-held I have been designing and building, I had started to look for a PCB for a cartridge game I was going to make for the system. I should wish Atari hired you for a good wage, and let you do whatever the heck you wanted, and then just put your designs into a several 1000-units release. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maztr_0n Posted June 28 Share Posted June 28 a 7800 portable would be a very good invention, atari take notes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 Always fun to see someone re-do stuff, looks a bit more work to solder than my boards (which handle ALL original games and more). Nice work. 👍 Maybe @Trebor can post a picture of a gift I gave him ages ago, I don't think I have all of those left at the moment. LOL 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 On 9/20/2023 at 1:15 PM, Shawn said: Any chance of making 16k or 32k SRAM versions in the future for use with the games that need more than 8k? Didn't I send you some of those ages ago? Do you not remember Sirius & Plutos? My MCP cart is nothing BUT RAM, 512K of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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