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Log 5: Building A Better Cartridge

A project log for SYNDRUM: An Atari 2600 Drum Machine

Yeah, so I wrote a little program and built a hardware interface that turned my Atari VCS into a MIDI-capable drum machine

john-sutleyJohn Sutley 09/30/2018 at 21:510 Comments

"Goddamn, that last cartridge was terrible! I can do better than that!"

So, I did.

SYNDRUM Cart Ver 2.0
Ahhh, much better

This cartridge has new features like:

> Will work

> Not finicky

> It's an actual cartridge

> May summon wizards

The first matter of business was to find a new cartridge pcb. After digging through one of many boxes of junk, I found the pcb & ROM for Asteroids (I turned the cartridge into a guitar pedal a while back). After de-soldering the mask ROM, I placed the board in an old Combat cartridge, removed the labels, and cut out a hole for the zif socket.

No wonder it doesn't work, it's got a big hole in it!

The wiring is the same as the previous cart, except I now have an actual A11 address line!

b'youtiful

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