What's the little chip for on Froggo carts?

[kevin242]

I picked up a froggo cart called Sea Hunt and there is a chip on the cart

you can see on the little thing that plugs into your Atari (sorry, I cant

think of what this is called but it is at the bottom, and Ive never seen a

chip on the bottom of a cartridge like this? What is the deal with this?

[Mindfield]

Just part of the board's logic -- dunno what exactly; I've never been curious enough to crack one open. I've seen that on quite a few carts -- for whatever reason (lack of space on the upper PCB I presume) they place one of the chips "outboard" just above the edge connector.

[CPUWIZ]

It's a 7404 inverter chip, 95% of Froggo carts are made with 27C64 OTP EPROM's (only the bottom half of the chip is used).

[Cootster]

Eh, CPU's right . . .

 

I've always liked to think it was Froggo's attempt at using the power of Suck Processing to make their games even more awful, though.

[sku_u]

Eh, CPU's right . . .

 

I've always liked to think it was Froggo's attempt at using the power of Suck Processing to make their games even more awful, though.

 

You're partially right. The chip's primary function is to serve as a primitive low jack in case anyone ever stole your coveted froggo games. :wink: