Denial

I asked Schema and Jim Brain about the Supermother with pause function.

It achieves pause and resume in some games including Goff by taking IRQ to ground.

Is there any long term risk in doing this?

If not I might doctor my FE3 to add a pause button.

Comments from hardware gurus?

Is there any long term risk in doing this?

No.

Lee.

No long term risk.

It may not work as intended on all programs though as you change the timing relation of the IRQ with respect to it's originally intended source. Typically a VIA timer.