Successful DIY Joust NVRAM mod

delroy666

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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. :rolleyes: 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.
 

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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. :rolleyes: 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 and 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.

COOL!

Saltbreez
 
Nice work!

Here are some pics of my Ghetto-Highrise version of the same thing.
:joyman:
 

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Nice! :cool: Neat wiring job too.


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. :rolleyes: 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 and 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.
 
If someone can confirm that Williams boards run well with Ramtron NVRAM I would consider running a batch of these.

That's an interesting idea. The closest equivalent F-RAM part is actually few bucks cheaper than the M48Z02 too. I just ordered a sample from the Ramtron site, I'll try it out if I have a chance.

I actually did a PCB layout in software for this adapter, but decided to prototype it instead because I couldn't find a 100% appropriate part to use for the pins. They need to be long enough to go through the adapter PCB and into the socket on the main board, thin enough not to ruin the socket, and low-profile to fit under the 24-DIP socket on top of the board. I ended up using an 18-DIP wire-wrap tail socket and used a Dremel to cut it off above the board, but it's pretty kludgy. PeRFiDiouS, what did you use for the pins?
 
That's an interesting idea. The closest equivalent F-RAM part is actually few bucks cheaper than the M48Z02 too. I just ordered a sample from the Ramtron site, I'll try it out if I have a chance.

I actually did a PCB layout in software for this adapter, but decided to prototype it instead because I couldn't find a 100% appropriate part to use for the pins. They need to be long enough to go through the adapter PCB and into the socket on the main board, thin enough not to ruin the socket, and low-profile to fit under the 24-DIP socket on top of the board. I ended up using an 18-DIP wire-wrap tail socket and used a Dremel to cut it off above the board, but it's pretty kludgy. PeRFiDiouS, what did you use for the pins?

I've used .100 header pins and a socket in a pinch. Solder the header pins to the board then plug into a socket and plug the socket into the socket on the board. Alternatively you could replace the socket on the board with a dual wipe that will accept .100 header pins.

Not the most elegant solution but it works.

I have a bunch of Ramtron stuff for projects I'm already doing. It wouldn't be too tough to do a run of these. I just don't care enough about it to do my own leg work to see if they run well on those boards :)
 
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