FS: NEW 32K Atari 5200 Game Cartridge PCBs (for Activision cartridges)

[jaybird3rd]

As a longtime Atari 5200 owner, I have learned that the game cartridges produced for the 5200 by Activision tend to share certain problems.  Most of these are related to age, and how it has affected the printed circuit boards that Activision used.

 

First, the card edge fingers seem particularly susceptible to corrosion, possibly due in part to the lack of the spring-loaded dust cover mechanism that Atari's cartridges had.  Second, the boards themselves appear to have been sized just a bit too short, so they often do not sit in the cartridge port quite as deeply as they should.  Only the tips of the card edge fingers—which would wear out first—ever make contact with the connector pins inside the port.  As both the card edge and the connector get dirty over time, it doesn't take much wear or dirt to prevent good contact; when this happens, even a slight tap to the cartridge in the slot can cause the game to glitch.  As a result, you really have to scrub these boards clean to get a good, reliable connection, and I have found that they often require regular maintenance thereafter.

 

I set out to remedy these problems in my own cartridges by designing a new replacement printed circuit board that fits inside Activision's original 5200 cartridge shells.  This board is the result.  It is compatible with non-bankswitched Atari 5200 games up to 32K in size, so it can be used to repair or restore any of Activision's 5200 cartridges to working condition.  Just burn the game binary to an EPROM, install the ROM on the board with a 7408 logic IC and a 0.1µF capacitor, and drop it into your original Activision cartridge shell in place of the original board.  (The 7408 is needed to combine the two !CE signals from the Atari 5200 cartridge port into a single !CE signal for the EPROM.)

 

 

(Note that, in Activision's cartridges, the chips face the *back* of the console when the cartridge is inserted, so remember this if you wish to test your assembled board outside of its shell.  The board itself is keyed, so it can only be mounted inside the shell in the correct way.)

 

To keep the assembly as simple as possible, this board is designed specifically for use with a 32K EPROM (27C256 or compatible).  If the game you are repairing is smaller than 32K—as I believe all of Activision's released 5200 games were—simply concatenate enough copies of the binary to fill the ROM.  (I do not provide or burn the EPROMs, so this step is left to you.)  Of course, you can also use non-Activision games with this board if you wish, as long as they are 32K in size or less.  After you create your 32K binary image file, I strongly recommend loading it into an Atari 5200 emulator (such as Altirra) for testing *before* burning it to an EPROM.

 

So, if you have one or more dead or intermittent Activision 5200 cartridge(s) in your collection that you'd like to rebuild, just send me a PM and I'd be glad to supply you with the board(s) to do it!  Here are the prices, with a discount offered for bulk purchases:

 

1–9 boards: $4.00 each

10–49 boards: $3.50 each

50–99 boards: $3.25 each

100+ boards: $3.00 each

 

(Postage will be extra.  If you also need a 74LS08 and capacitor for your board(s), I can supply those as well, for an additional $0.50 per board.)

[amiman99]

Cool project, I'm interested, but later on.

[Leatherrebel5150]

Old bump @jaybird3rd but are these things only setup to be used with EPROMS or can the original maskroms just be transplanted over to these boards? I've been having problems with a River Raid cart that I would like to fix it but really just want to transplant rather than replace everything outright.

[jaybird3rd]

On 2/25/2024 at 6:30 PM, Leatherrebel5150 said:

Old bump @jaybird3rd but are these things only setup to be used with EPROMS or can the original maskroms just be transplanted over to these boards? I've been having problems with a River Raid cart that I would like to fix it but really just want to transplant rather than replace everything outright.

Thank you for your interest, and apologies for the belated reply!  These boards are intended for EPROMs only.  The original mask ROM used in the 5200 River Raid cartridge is a 24-pin part, while the 27C256 (which this board was designed for) is a 28-pin part, so it wouldn't be a simple substitution.