This sucks. One of my favourite VIC-20 cartridges, "Donkey Kong" by Atari seemed to have died a few months ago. No matter what VIC-20 I plug it into (I have tried four) all I get is a black screen when I power on.
I cleaned the contacts, opened it up and re-touched all the solder points. No luck.....
So I figure....okay, it's the first cartridge I've ever owned to die, but that's not unheard of.
So I buy a BRAND NEW, unopened Donkey Kong cartridge off of Ebay.
I get it, plug it in and the SAME THING happens on all my VICs. Black screen.
This is the ONLY cartridge in my collection that does this. All the other AtariSoft ones work just fine.
What are the odds?
Is there any way to pull the ROM off the board and test it some other way? I have an obscure board called a RAM/ROM Expander which has sockets to accept chips (I have no idea how it works though).
Anyone else have any ideas about how to test or ressurect these cartridges?
I'm willing to buy a THIRD....but that's it! Anyone have a working spare to trade? (I'm going to post my tradelist in the trades section now).
DEAD Donkey Kong Cartridges
You can test them by PEEKing the addresses from BASIC, though if the cart doesn't work I'd guess BASIC won't see it either, you'd just confirm it is broken.Anyone else have any ideas about how to test or ressurect these cartridges?
The cart can be resurrected by replacing the ROM with an EPROM with the correct image in it. This is probably not a straight swap as some pins may differ, but it is not impossible.
Lee.
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Donkey Kong has a bit odd memory layout, BLK1 + BLK5 as opposed to most other 16K games (even the other Atarisoft titles) which are BLK3 + BLK5. I don't know the reason for this, and I assume it is only a matter of using a different pin on the cartridge port. Maybe the pin that goes to BLK1 is more vulnerable for wear and tear than the other? On the other hand, it would mean that all 8K RAM expansions also were in danger.
Anders Carlsson