Reusing Atari Combat cart PCB's

[8bitclassics]

Is it possible to reuse the Combat PCB's (or any older very common carts), desolder the prom's, and use it for homebrew games with eprom's?

 

Corey

[Bruce Tomlin]

Only for 2K games. Combat is a 2K game which lacks the board trace for the extra address line. Otherwise it's only good for shells.

 

Pac-Man boards are rather easy to convert if you use the "dead bug" trick where you bend out the pins on a 7404 and mount it upside-down on the bottom of the cart board. Three of the pins are already in position over where they need to connect. Other than that you just need to cut one trace and solder a 30-gauge wire-wrap wire to connect it to another 7404 pin.

 

The dead bug trick works for up to 32K games on a Pole Position II cart as well.

 

If you use a non-spring cart shell and trim the EPROM chip leads, you can even fit a socket in there as well. (The spring-loaded cart shell has a 2mm protrusion right where the chip goes which makes it impossible to use a socketed EPROM without using a very low profile socket.)

Edited April 22, 2005 by Bruce Tomlin

[jsoper]

I thought it was easier now to order blanks from the AA store?

[8bitclassics]

Easier, probably, but I have tons of Pac-Man, Combat, and other very common that probably won't sell on my site, so will be cleaning the cartridges and reusing them, so figured if I have all those pcb's available, put them to good use if possible. I have free labor I work in a K-12 school district and some of the high school students like to solder/desolder stuff.

 

Corey