NEW PCB's

[ANDYRYALS]

I would like to announce that Myself and Rene have produced a brand new batch of videopac PCB's. If there are any members that would like any PCB's ordering for there own homebrew then please send me a PM, we can sell you as few or as many as you like!

[Seob]

Nice to see that you have teamed up with Rene.

[Rene_G7400]

Technical details of these PCB's will follow here as soon as I've received my test PCB.

[Ozyr]

So someone finally did this! 

Outstanding! Hopefully many homebew and maybe even Packrat will take advantage of this.

_{(now if we could only get new plastic cartridge cases)}

[steelballs]

I spoke to my neighbour a while back about making plastic cases (an ex philips hardware product manager). He said the main problem is the cost of the template and the fact it is for a relatively small production run cripples the idea before it gets going, certainly if you want it done in Europe. I seem to remember grgh looking into this a while back as well via his wife's family outside of Europe and I think it was roughly the same story.

To reduce costs he said it would be better to drop the handle on the cartridge to simplify the design and maybe open up other production techniques but no-one wants a videopac cartridge without the handle I think.

[ANDYRYALS]

The cheapest way to produce plastic VP cartridges is still get to large batches from your friends from the Forums!!! A similar scheme should be set up like on atari age where you can buy old cart cases for a few cents at a time.

[grgh]

Yep, my wifes family own several plastic component factories in China, and it wasn't even cost effective doing it direct from there for such low quantities!

[TedFoolery]

I always wondered how hard it would be to modify an Atari (traitor!) cartridge to work in the O2. The cart physically fits into the hole, however the pins do not match.

Empty Atari cases are easily found, so if it only takes a quick mod to convert it to O2, it may be a viable solution.

I'm sure new PCB boards would have to be designed for it.

[ANDYRYALS]

Ted,

nice idea, i have just been playing around with a 2600 cartridge case and a odyssey2 case and physically they are quite similar, perhaps when we get the new PCB's we may be able to do something with them to customise them into atari carts. John Dondzilla the famous /vectrex programmer used to use coleco carts to fit vectrex pcb's and these worked fine.

PS do you want any PCB for pick axe pete 2?  send me a PM if your interested

[ANDYRYALS]

Our PCB's arrived today!

[Rene_G7400]

I've received my Videopac test PCB!



Features:

- fits in standard Videopac cartridge case
- compatible with Eprom types 2732, 2764, 27128, 27256, 27512 and all pin compatible variations and Eeprom types 2864 and 28256
- compatible with The Voice
- option to connect pin B of the cartridge connector to ground (for non-Plus or non-Voice games)

Limitations:
- the current design does not fit in standard Odyssey2 cartridge cases without modifications
- 3k, 6k and 12k games are not supported (address-line A10 is not connected)
- the maximum available address space for games is 8k
- the PCB doesn't have holes for the metal spring, so the metal slider can not be used

PCB with Eprom:

[Seob]

they look great.

[Ozyr]

Looks good, but won't

"the current design does not fit in standard Odyssey2 cartridge cases without modifications"

be an issue. Or are these a first test run before the final ones come out?

[Rene_G7400]

The problem is the small holes in the red circles in the picture below. To fit in an Odyssey2 cartridge case these holes would need to be at a different position.

[ANDYRYALS]

Yes, the PCB should be slightly modified to fit inside an 02 cart case, remember that problems were invented so solutions could be found (RYALS 2009!)