Help identifying this cart-thingy

[Zeela]

I helped a friend of mine picking up a VIC-20 package he bought the other day.
Mostly uninteresting stuff, like 8K RAM, a couple of games on cart etc...

But there was one thing in the lot that I quite can't make out what it is...
This thingy

VCS Vic cartridge simulator

VIC-cart-thingy.jpg (412.22 KiB) Viewed 1080 times

Anybody got any info about it, what does it do? How does it do it? Rarity? Value? Anything...

[groepaz]

its a cartridge with RAM on it instead of ROM.... with some software you can copy another cartridge into that ROM and then emulate it.

[orion70]

So, Atari VCS could play VIC carts ? I knew of vaporware (i.e., Protecto's adapter) that was intended to do exactly the opposite!

[Mike]

So, Atari VCS could play VIC carts ? I knew of vaporware (i.e., Protecto's adapter) that was intended to do exactly the opposite!

The VCS here does not refer in any way to the Atari VCS, rather it is the cartridges intent: VIC Cartridge Simulator. Nothing more.

The four 2016 SRAMs most probably provide an 8K RAM expansion for BLK5. As we all know, it is then possible to soft-load cartridges into that range and run them via reset.

Actually, the PCB seems to be slightly 'crippled'. It is missing one of the connectors and some switches (at the left, for ON/OFF; at the right, for VCS/BASIC (VEC?)). My bet is, it allowed to remap/exchange BLK3 (or BLK1, BLK2) and BLK5, to prevent the cartridge autostart and let the cartridge data been saved from BLK3 (or BLK1/2) instead, then load back the data to BLK3 (...), map it into BLK5 again and finally perform the reset to start the game.