2600 Game Jukebox

[Yuppicide] sent us a link to a photo album of an Atari 2600 modified to play ROMs stored inside. We did some digging around and have an idea of what’s going on. It seems that the creator, [Victor] has taken his Atari 2600 cartridge emulator one step further.

Previously, he had replaced the chip in an Atari cartridge with an EEPROM that he could reprogram via a ribbon cable. This new iteration places that EEPROM inside the case of the gaming console along with a PIC development board. The PIC board interfaces an SD card with somewhere around 1200 ROMs on it. Three switches added to the front of the Atari allow the user to cycle through available games and flash the desired title to the EEPROM. As you can see, a 2×16 LCD display now resides in the cartridge opening.

This seems a little more eloquent (and less legal) than the Super Genintari.

22 thoughts on “2600 Game Jukebox

  1. This reminds me of an NES mod I saw years ago. I can’t recall the exact function, but I remember that it had an LCD screen in the cartridge slot. I think there may have been two versions, where one was an NSF ripper, and the other was an NSF jukebox, for playing the files on the actual hardware.

    Probably not online anymore, but it’d be sweet if anyone could find it.

  2. @bobbers

    why not get all smartphone users (with “unlimited” usage) to download a large file at the time, delete, repeat. Find the large file of their own choosing so as to not fell a single server.

    You’d have an even bigger hoard that way.

    oh yeah… I’m an engineer too, but I’m still too cheap to get a smartphone.

  3. We have a discussion going with the guy who made this on the AtariAge website. Not much more information, though, you can view that here:

    http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/154831-atari-2600-with-1200-roms-in-a-sd-card/

    You guys should cover the Harmony. It’s a cartridge that plugs into the 2600. You can load games onto a memory card from your PC. Cost is about $60 or less. It has it’s own menu system built in, and can work with all games including ones that some others won’t work with.

  4. I’d love to see this with all the classic cartridge consoles, NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. nothing like playing the old games on the actual hardware, but with the convenience of an emulator.

    bonus points if you can find an SDK and create a “game” to chose which game to load :D

  5. There’s also something coming out called the Harmony Cart. Actually it’s kind of out already. Cost is about $60 or so. You can load games on it via memory card and it has it’s own stuff inside to build a menu and scroll through the games.

  6. This is a great mod. If you understand brazilian portuguese (or is willing to understand the pictures and figure it out on your own) you can create your own Cartridge Emulator by following this tutorial: http://www.instructables.com/id/Emulador_de_Cartucho_Montagem/
    And this is the cable you’ll need for all the cartridges: http://www.instructables.com/id/Cabo_para_o_Emulador_de_Cartucho/ (mainly a Floppy Flat cable without the small twist).

    A great idea of vacation project for gamers!

  7. Whell its not hard to make youre own Atari 2600 carts I did it my self I used a APOLLO branded cart to STEAL the idea on how to use a 7404 chip w only 4 legs and rewire the atari cart that used to be pacman chip witch
    i removed and added a socket
    to accept 2716 chips! or 2732 chips! then i
    can use a modded 8k rom now I could see
    how you could use a bigger chip and select
    address lines using switches but I dont know
    how to program chips using my eeprom burner w concatinated roms! and or what address anyway I do
    how ever understaND the concept its not that complicated all he did was make the basic stamp load p
    a atari file and run it into the a10 line if you understand
    basic stamp and or c+ or understand how the rom program loads into the a10 line on the atari from the cartridge slot then you would understand his project
    now as how he got the basic stamp to do that is a nother story but if you asked people in the basic stamp feild they would tell you how to run a file to make it work
    TRY asking NUTS & VOLTS how to make a atari rom loader with lcd and mabie they would like to help with that OF COURSE you would have to supply youre own roms but as we know there is a whole lot of hacked ones on ATARI AGE ..
    so its not so super complicated if you read up on basic stamps they are not so complicated and some already come w memory stick plugs!! so i could see how he did it but its not easy but still not super complicated the interface to the cart slot might be harder to do than the basic stamp.
    I was going to hook up 4 carts simultaneously then unhook the a10 line then use a rotary switch to select the CART I wanted to play this would work but YOU WOULD see interferance from the other carts being on!! as on my modded flashback II to take carts I was switching between built in asteroids and my crockrock version of asteroids where i used hackomatic III to change sprites to look like (aw) and (r)’s like registered (r) and aw for my name and was switching between original asteroids built into the flashback ans my cart and it only changed the shape of the rocks cause thats all that was differnt but when you have a cart plugged in you can see it interfering so I would thing having 3 carts on all the time would mabie cause some interferance but the lcd basic stamp would not cause youre only having one input the other way would need all the lines exept the pin 6 hooked to the carts and would probably make interferance but it would work you could choose between more than one cart although you would have to leave them powered up.

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