I've gotten the core 2600 chipset wired minus sound and video output, I am using a 74ls00 to generate the clock but the hcu04 will work as well, I'm going to use the unpopulated socket as a sort of expansion port (well header), which will be connected to a daughter board with the with the 1k of dual port SRAM which I want to use to implement part of a line/frame buffer, and 32k of general sram, and 32k of video and audio ram, and 256k flash.
The cartridge can be used to simply bank into the 256k ROM which can hold an OS and/or subroutines/kernels for sound and video, custom graphics/sound data, games, etc..., from there you can bank between the IO (TIA/RIOT) and memory (Cartridge/32k ram/ 256k flash), essentially I have a 2600 with a full 16-bit address bus, plus interrupts and 2-phase clock output, the socket is where a daughter board (I ran out of space) which holds the glue logic, 32k RAM ( TBH I am leaning towards using the internal ram of the MCU instead of the dual port simply for space), and 256k of flash.
Hi Robert, have u finished your project? I'm just working on a 6502 atari and I'd like to know how u make it... :)