How do they do that? - Make new cartridges

[Atari Dogs]

I have wondered how a rom becomes a cartridge. There are a lot of cool hacks now that I would love to play on an Atari. Who would not want an Evil Dead Atari game. May be a VE version could be added with a few Bruce Campbell lines. And my daughters would like female games like Jungle Jane or Tomb Raider. Hail to the king, Baby.

[Mindfield]

In the case of hacks and homebrews that are sold here on AA, they just burn the game's ROM on an EPROM using an EPROM burner, then put them on PCBs recycled from old cartridges and house them in shells from those same old cartridges. There's a little more to it than that I think -- an EPROM socket and an inverter are used there somewhere, I believe. Although there's a company putting out cool translucent Atari-style cart shells now. CPUWIZ already did one up and sold it on Bidiots -- really nice, that one was.

[Albert]

In the case of hacks and homebrews that are sold here on AA' date=' they just burn the game's ROM on an EPROM using an EPROM burner, then put them on PCBs recycled from old cartridges and house them in shells from those same old cartridges. [/quote']

 

The PCBs are actually brand new, only the cartridge shells themselves are recycled. It's far too much work to try and recycle PCBs from old games--I have many boxes of old PCBs from 2600 and 5200 games if anyone's interested.

 

..Al

[Mindfield]

Actually, I thought of that after I posted -- I remember you also sell new PCBs. :-)

[AtariDude]

Regarding PCBs, are these things still made or is there a limited quantity of them where once they are all used up, there will be no more of them to use to create games?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Regarding PCBs' date=' are these things still made or is there a limited quantity of them where once they are all used up, there will be no more of them to use to create games?[/quote']

http://www.pixelspast.com/homebrew/

[Bruce Tomlin]

I'm glad that they're trying to make new 2600 cart shells, but 2600 commons are relatively easy to find for recycling. Colecovision commons have been a lot harder for me to find over the years, and I will probably end up writing a thing or three for the CV in the future.

 

In fact, I socketed a 24K Donkey Kong and put sockets on one of my two PP Colecovision boards last night in preparation for finishing off something I've been working on for a while. (I also noticed that the standard CV shells are designed with space for socketed chips, unlike the standard Atari 2600 shells, which is nice.)

[Tsukasa]

I have many boxes of old PCBs from 2600 and 5200 games if anyone's interested.

 

..Al

 

I'm interested in the 2600 ones! Do any of the boards have bankswitching chips on them?

[Albert]

I'm glad that they're trying to make new 2600 cart shells' date=' but 2600 commons are relatively easy to find for recycling. Colecovision commons have been a lot harder for me to find over the years, and I will probably end up writing a thing or three for the CV in the future.[/quote']

 

We now use new cartridge shells for ColecoVision games, since as you said, it's a bit tougher to come by common ColecoVision games to recycle. I think it'll be a long time before 2600 commons are hard to come by.

 

..Al

[Albert]

I'm interested in the 2600 ones! Do any of the boards have bankswitching chips on them?

 

We presently sell two types of 2600 boards:

 

- 2600 2K/4K PCB

- 2600 8K/16K/32K PCB

 

The bankswitching boards (8K/16K/32K) use the standard Atari F8' date=' F6, and F4 bankswitching. A 64K board (which will be first used for Paul Slocum's upcoming Homestar Runner RPG) has already been designed and tested and will be available soon. Also, the latest revision of the 2600 boards is red, which looks pretty sleek:

 

 

I will be updating the store soon with images of the latest boards. The new 5200 boards are blue, in keeping with Atari's color scheme for the systems.

 

..Al

[Tsukasa]

I thought you said that you had used boards

All I really want is the bankswitching chip.

I don't want to have to build them out of multiple chips like shown here

[CPUWIZ]

The bankswitching is built into the ROM in 99% of the cases. Only very few carts have the 3 chip setup and prototypes. Some Activision carts have a bankswitch chip in them but those are kind of hard to find too and most of the time it's the rarer games like Rampage etc.!

[Albert]

I thought you said that you had used boards

All I really want is the bankswitching chip.

I don't want to have to build them out of multiple chips like shown here

 

Ahh, I misunderstood you. Most of the used 2600 boards I have are 4K games, but even the bankswitch games are a single chip (as CPUWIZ explained).

 

..Al

[Bruce Tomlin]

I thought you said that you had used boards

All I really want is the bankswitching chip.

I don't want to have to build them out of multiple chips like shown here

 

As CPUWIZ said, most original games had the bankswitching circuitry built into the ROM chip. The main exception in my experience would be certain Zaxxon carts, which are noticably heavier. Some of those Zaxxon carts use 28-pin EPROMs, and some use 24-pin mask ROMs.

 

What you want is to order a Pixels Past board with the bankswitch chip on it. The "bankswitch chip" is a generic chip called a PAL, which can be programmed to do specific logic functions (but still not enough for Parker Bros bankswitching). Unless you want to figure out the PAL programming yourself (which admittedly I did do), let someone else do it for you. $1.50 extra for the PAL chip already programmed and soldered is a good deal.

[Bruce Tomlin]

I'm glad that they're trying to make new 2600 cart shells' date=' but 2600 commons are relatively easy to find for recycling. Colecovision commons have been a lot harder for me to find over the years' date=' and I will probably end up writing a thing or three for the CV in the future.[/quote'']

 

We now use new cartridge shells for ColecoVision games, since as you said, it's a bit tougher to come by common ColecoVision games to recycle. I think it'll be a long time before 2600 commons are hard to come by.

 

..Al

 

Is there any web page where these are for sale? I can't seem to find it either here or on Pixels Past.

[Mindfield]

Those new PCBs would look sweet in a translucent case.

[Tsukasa]

Is there available code for the pals that I could write to them myself?

I would be willing to build a burner for pals, but is there some way to convert the code for pals into pic assembler? I already have a pic burner and a bunch of pics. One more question, how was the bankswitching built into the rom? Was it embedded in the code or was the masked rom multifuntional, ie. was most of the chip memory and the remaining portion bankswitching?

[Bruce Tomlin]

Is there available code for the pals that I could write to them myself?

I would be willing to build a burner for pals' date=' but is there some way to convert the code for pals into pic assembler? I already have a pic burner and a bunch of pics. One more question, how was the bankswitching built into the rom? Was it embedded in the code or was the masked rom multifuntional, ie. was most of the chip memory and the remaining portion bankswitching?[/quote']

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_device

 

First of all, you really need to read up on PAL/GAL chips. They aren't CPUs and have absolutely nothing to do with PIC. They let you take the equivalent of multiple logic gates and put them into one chip. Making your own PAL/GAL programmer is a lot more difficult than it sounds because each manufacturer uses a different programming algorithm, and sometimes it's even different for different versions of the same chip. Unlike PICs, which are designed to work with dirt cheap programmers, you pretty much need a real programmer to do PALs/GALs.

 

And then it's still a lot of work. I've been programming them as raw JEDEC files, from lack of open-source tools*, which is like programming an EPROM as a bunch of 1s and 0s. A given JEDEC file only works with one general type of PAL (the main types are 16V8, 20V8, and 22V10). I got a tube of 22V10s at a thrift store a few years back, so that's what I'm using. And tonight I finally tried out the JEDEC file I made for the PP Colecovision board, only to find out that 8K and 16K need pin 27 pulled high. At least my board works for 32K now, and 27256s are the easiest to find in junk anyhow.

 

*if anyone knows where to find open-source (as in bog-standard POSIX C) logic compiler tools, please tell me where to find them!