Cleaning Restoring Atari Game Cart - ZanyGeek Tutorial
- 9 years ago
In this video we clean and restore a Atari 2600 game cartridge to fully working order.
Atari (from a Japanese verb meaning "to hit the target" or "a success") is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972, currently by Atari Interactive, a subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA (ASA). The original Atari, Inc. founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company's products, such as Pong and the Atari 2600, helped define the electronic entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid-1980s.
In 1984, the original Atari Inc. was split due to its role in the video game crash of 1983, and the arcade division was turned into Atari Games Inc. Atari Games received the rights to use the logo and brand name with appended text "Games" on arcade games, as well as rights to the original 1972–1984 arcade hardware properties. The Atari Consumer Electronics Division properties were in turn sold to Jack Tramiel's Tramel Technology Ltd., which then renamed itself to Atari Corporation. In 1996, Atari Corporation reverse-merged with disk-drive manufacturer JT Storage (JTS),becoming a division within the company.
In 1998, Hasbro Interactive acquired all Atari Corporation related properties from JTS, creating a new subsidiary, Atari Interactive. Infogrames Entertainment (IESA) bought Hasbro Interactive in 2001 and renamed it to Infogrames Interactive, later Atari Interactive in 2003, when Infogrames Inc. licensed the Atari name and logo from the latter and changed its name to Atari Inc.,a name used for a company founded in 1993 as GT Interactive, which IESA also renamed to Infogrames, Inc. and acquired a 62% controlling interest in by 1999.After IESA's acquisition of Hasbro Interactive, Infogrames, Inc. intermittently published Atari branded titles for Infogrames Interactive. On October 11, 2008, Infogrames completed its acquisition of Atari, Inc., making it a wholly owned subsidiary.
A ROM cartridge, sometimes referred to simply as a cartridge or cart, is a removable enclosure containing read-only memory devices designed to be connected to a consumer electronics device such as a home computer or games console. ROM cartridges can be used to load software such as video games, or other application programs.
The cartridge slot could also be used for hardware additions, for example speech synthesis. Some cartridges had battery-backed static random-access memory, allowing a user to save data such as game progress or scores between uses.
ROM cartridges allowed the user to rapidly load and access programs and data without the expense of a floppy disk drive, which was an expensive peripheral during the home computer era, and without using slow, sequential, and often unreliable Compact Cassette tape. An advantage for the manufacturer was the relative security of distribution of software in cartridge form, which was difficult for end users to replicate. However, cartridges were expensive to manufacture compared to making a floppy disk or CD-ROM. As disk drives became more common and software expanded beyond the practical limits of ROM size, cartridge slots disappeared from later consoles and computers. Cartridges are still used today with handheld gaming consoles such as the Nintendo DS and 3DS, as well as the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita.
Atari (from a Japanese verb meaning "to hit the target" or "a success") is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972, currently by Atari Interactive, a subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA (ASA). The original Atari, Inc. founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company's products, such as Pong and the Atari 2600, helped define the electronic entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid-1980s.
In 1984, the original Atari Inc. was split due to its role in the video game crash of 1983, and the arcade division was turned into Atari Games Inc. Atari Games received the rights to use the logo and brand name with appended text "Games" on arcade games, as well as rights to the original 1972–1984 arcade hardware properties. The Atari Consumer Electronics Division properties were in turn sold to Jack Tramiel's Tramel Technology Ltd., which then renamed itself to Atari Corporation. In 1996, Atari Corporation reverse-merged with disk-drive manufacturer JT Storage (JTS),becoming a division within the company.
In 1998, Hasbro Interactive acquired all Atari Corporation related properties from JTS, creating a new subsidiary, Atari Interactive. Infogrames Entertainment (IESA) bought Hasbro Interactive in 2001 and renamed it to Infogrames Interactive, later Atari Interactive in 2003, when Infogrames Inc. licensed the Atari name and logo from the latter and changed its name to Atari Inc.,a name used for a company founded in 1993 as GT Interactive, which IESA also renamed to Infogrames, Inc. and acquired a 62% controlling interest in by 1999.After IESA's acquisition of Hasbro Interactive, Infogrames, Inc. intermittently published Atari branded titles for Infogrames Interactive. On October 11, 2008, Infogrames completed its acquisition of Atari, Inc., making it a wholly owned subsidiary.
A ROM cartridge, sometimes referred to simply as a cartridge or cart, is a removable enclosure containing read-only memory devices designed to be connected to a consumer electronics device such as a home computer or games console. ROM cartridges can be used to load software such as video games, or other application programs.
The cartridge slot could also be used for hardware additions, for example speech synthesis. Some cartridges had battery-backed static random-access memory, allowing a user to save data such as game progress or scores between uses.
ROM cartridges allowed the user to rapidly load and access programs and data without the expense of a floppy disk drive, which was an expensive peripheral during the home computer era, and without using slow, sequential, and often unreliable Compact Cassette tape. An advantage for the manufacturer was the relative security of distribution of software in cartridge form, which was difficult for end users to replicate. However, cartridges were expensive to manufacture compared to making a floppy disk or CD-ROM. As disk drives became more common and software expanded beyond the practical limits of ROM size, cartridge slots disappeared from later consoles and computers. Cartridges are still used today with handheld gaming consoles such as the Nintendo DS and 3DS, as well as the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita.