I had a few hours free last night, so I finally got around to making an NVRAM adapter for my Joust. I used some prototyping PCB, an 18-DIP long tail IC socket and a 24-DIP socket and wired them together with Kynar wire. The adapter sits in a dual-wipe socket that I soldered in place of the original 5514 SRAM chip on the main board.
It seems to be working great. Hopefully now I won't lose any more of my amazing, record-setting high scores.
Although I thought I screwed something up when I turned on the game for the first time - all the characters in the text onscreen were garbled. I just bent the ribbon cable going to the ROM board down a bit and that fixed it though. Guess it's pretty brittle after all these years. Anyways, time will tell if this mod is actually more reliable than the AA batteries + SRAM, but so far so good.
It seems to be working great. Hopefully now I won't lose any more of my amazing, record-setting high scores.
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