An Atari 2600 Inside of a Cartridge

With advent of the Raspberry Pi Zero (and Zero W), we’ve seen emulation systems stuffed into interesting places, such as this emulator in an SNES cartridge. On the other hand, if the SNES or NES doesn’t go back far enough for your tastes, then check out this setup, where hacker PJ Evans packs a Zero into an Atari 2600 VCS!

This particular hack started out with Evans rediscovering a 2600 console that he purchased a few years ago, along with a pair of 9-pin joystick ports. He also had a stack of games to go with the console, including one called f-14 Tomcat that no longer worked. With these parts in hand, the idea to cram a Pi Zero inside of a cartridge to create a virtual Atari was obvious!

The build itself was fairly straightforward, and after settling on Adafruit’s Retrogame setup to pattern his controls after, he set to work stuffing everything inside. Interestingly, upon opening the cartridge he found quite a bit of empty space surrounding a chip and connectors, ample room for the needed wiring. He made a template to help him cut out holes for his connectors, as well as the needed buttons and switches, and even printed out new graphics to complete his system!

You can find more deets on Evans’ project in his blog post here.