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The Untold Story of the Invention of the Game Cartridge

Posted by timothy on from the complete-with-diagrams dept.

harrymcc writes In 1973, an obscure company which had been making electronic cash registers looked for a new business opportunity. It ended up inventing the game cartridge--an innovation which kickstarted a billion-dollar industry and helped establish videogames as a creative medium. The story has never been told until now, but over at Fast Company, Benj Edwards chronicles the fascinating tale, based on interviews with the engineers responsible for the feat back in the mid-1970s.

14 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. And we are back to them again... by jellomizer · · Score: 2

    USB Flash Drives are Cartridges reborn.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:And we are back to them again... by wierd_w · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not exactly. A flashdrive is a serial bus peripheral that communicates using an encoded format.

      A cartridge is typically little more than an exposed parallel logic bus that directly maps to the console's main memory. (Atari 2600 carts were literally a ROM chip, with its leads exposed on the card edge. Nothing else. http://www.hardwaresecrets.com... )

      NES and SNES carts had special purpose chips on them to help page the address of the ROM inside the main CPU's memory space, and even a few special co-processors on occasion, but were still just a direct tie-in to the memory bus.

      A DIMM and a cartridge have more in common than a USB stick does with a cartridge.

    2. Re:And we are back to them again... by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes a USB Flash Drive is more complex than a Cartridge, being that it is going threw a Universal Bus and is Read/Write (However Zelda use to be able to save data).
      But compared to other forms of storage after cartridges downfall after the Nintendo 64. The USB Flash brings up many of the core Ideas of the Cartridge. A device that has no moving parts that is made to be constantly inserted and removed.

      The Ford Model T is also very quite different than a Ford Mustang. But still they are classified as cars.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    3. Re:And we are back to them again... by Thud457 · · Score: 2

      USB is just a reimplementation of Atari SIO on steroids.

      --

      the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

    4. Re:And we are back to them again... by wierd_w · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Clearly, you do not understand the implications of what I said.

      USB storage requires an entire operating system to even access. It requires a kernel OS process, a driver for the specific USB chipset attached to the system, and yet another driver for the filesystem stored on the device. In addition to this, it has to have multitasking capabilities to switch between reading and decoding the data on the device, and executing the read program code.

      In stark contrast, a game cartridge requires no OS at all. The CPU simply jumps to the address location where the cartridge's ROM chip is logically assigned, and the CPU treats it exactly like it was fetching from RAM. The game is the ONLY thing running.

      The better comparison would be "USB is the new data cassette!"

      You can put all kinds of crazy things inside a cartridge that you simply could never put inside a USB stick. Things like additional RAM that runs at full speed, Whole new CPUs, an additional peripheral bus connector-- you name it.

      In theory, a (crazy) person could take an old SNES console, and with a very purpose built cartridge, turn it into a playstation.

      Really, the comparison you are drawing does not really reflect what a cartridge actually is.

  2. Re:Obligatory Joke by Russ1642 · · Score: 3, Funny

    We'd probably have records with twenty parallel grooves and reading heads with 40 or more needles.

  3. Selectavision by Kunedog · · Score: 3, Informative

    What else would you possibly store on vinyl?

    Superior analog video, of course:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  4. MOS technology built most of the cartridge ROMS by crgrace · · Score: 4, Informative

    MOS Technology did a big business in manufacturing ROMs for Atari's cartridges (both the 2600 and 400/800 /XE line). They also made the 6502 variants used in the 2600 and 400/800/XE and in Atari's main competitors (Apple and Commodore).

    Eventually MOS was purchased by Commodore and stopped making ROMs but cranked out the 6502s and SID chips.

    For some reason they never got around to making a followup to the 6502 and let the next generation business go to Motorola. Greed does that.

    Another fun fact: The original VCS games were programmed on a PDP-11 using a cross-assembler (!) and soon enough Atari upgraded to a VAX. When a game was finished they sent program tape to MOS who made the metal mask. The ROMs were pre-processed up to the metal deposition step. Then the final metal pattern was defined by whatever program was being written to ROM. This is one reason how MOS made them so cheaply: they mass produced ROM blanks and then programmed them with a single mask. I talked with an Atari old-timer about the process a couple of years ago. Great stories.

    1. Re:MOS technology built most of the cartridge ROMS by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      Another fun fact: The original VCS games were programmed on a PDP-11 using a cross-assembler (!) and soon enough Atari upgraded to a VAX. When a game was finished they sent program tape to MOS who made the metal mask. The ROMs were pre-processed up to the metal deposition step. Then the final metal pattern was defined by whatever program was being written to ROM. This is one reason how MOS made them so cheaply: they mass produced ROM blanks and then programmed them with a single mask. I talked with an Atari old-timer about the process a couple of years ago. Great stories.

      Actually, that's still done today - it's called mask programming and it's what happens if you need a bunch of chips pre-programmed with code. Practically every programmable chip has a mask-programmed variant you can use for mass production - you provide the manufacturer the code and they'll finish off the chip for you.

      In fact, this is commonly done even at the ROM stage - when the chips are made, the software for the boot ROM is often not ready yet (it can be a couple of months between tapeout and when the chips actually get fabbed), so when a new SoC is being prototyped, the blocks are all there, except the ROM contents are not programmed yet. When the ROM is ready, a mask step is done to program it - this can be done after the chips are made, too.

  5. Better than replacing socketed UV-EPROM chips! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I worked with lots of embedded systems in the '80's that stored their program on banks of UV-EPROM chips that we'd have to upgrade using a a chip-puller (screwdriver) and a chip eraser and burner.

    The sockets would eventually fail, requiring repair/replacement of the entire CPU board (about a square foot in size).

    When we saw our first game system with replaceable ROM cartridges, there was much forehead slapping, since we were already using board-edge connectors (on a bus very similar to the S-100).

  6. Re:Obligatory Joke by lord_mike · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, actually...

    "In 1986, the new BASICODE 3 standard was developed. The most important additions were routines for simple monochrome graphics, reading and writing data from within programs and sound output. BASICODE 3 made BASICODE popular in the computer scene of the GDR, and from 1989 onward BASICODE programs were transmitted via radio throughout the GDR. Also, a book was published which included a vinyl record with Bascoders for all computers common in the GDR. The last revision of BASICODE, which featured color graphics, was released as BASICODE 3C in 1991."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

    In the UK during the early 1980's, pop star Chris Sievey released a 7" single record where side B was the program code in audio format for the Sinclair ZX81 microcomputer. You plugged in your turntable's output into the ZX-81 "loaded" the record into memory, flipped over the record, played the music on Side A while running the program which gave you a "music video" while the song played. It was very innovative at the time:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  7. That's why the Nintendo PlayStation died by tepples · · Score: 2

    In stark contrast, a game cartridge requires no OS at all. The CPU simply jumps to the address location where the cartridge's ROM chip is logically assigned, and the CPU treats it exactly like it was fetching from RAM.

    That was true until roughly the Nintendo DS. It uses a seek and read protocol, similar to parallel ATA or SD, to read 512-byte blocks of game data from the Game Card. Even the N64 and GBA used a seek and read protocol, but the console's memory controller abstracted it away from the CPU with wait states.

    In theory, a (crazy) person could take an old SNES console, and with a very purpose built cartridge, turn it into a playstation.

    I don't see how. There isn't enough bandwidth over the Super NES cartridge bus to refill video memory every frame. That's part of why the agreement between Nintendo and Sony to make the Super NES CD peripheral broke down, and Sony took what it had and revamped it into the original PlayStation. There's the MSU1 coprocessor designed for streaming video, but video from that isn't exactly full-motion.

  8. Hacking the Atari by Snotnose · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We figured out the Atari cartridge was nothing more than a popular PROM (2716?) with one of the control signals reversed. We made our own cartridges that used an EEPROM, then used our EEPROM burner to read cartridges and store the contents on a floppy. We'd then burn EEPROMs of the games we wanted, and pop them into the ZIF socket on our home made cartridges.

  9. Re:Obligatory Joke by OhSoLaMeow · · Score: 2

    We'd probably have records with twenty parallel grooves and reading heads with 40 or more needles.

    I'm an old fart. I worked on a Burroughs B3500 back in the 70s. The "Disk Module" was a 10MB cabinet about 4 ft by 4ft by 2ft. It had 4 platters and there was one head per track. Seek time was non-existent but rotational delay was a bitch.

    --
    They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.