Possible you think with Carvewright?

[yuppicide]

Does anyone think it would be possible to design an Atari 2600 Cartridge shell with the Carvewright?

The cartridge would be two halves held together by wood screws.

Here's a picture of the outside of a cartridge shell.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/83/PacManCrt260007052004.jpg/180px-PacManCrt260007052004.jpg

Unfortunately I can't find a picture of the inside, but maybe some of you have seen it. Inside it has a little notch like thing where the cartridge rests against.

I did manage to find this picture:

http://www.burnkit2600.com/thom/wopd%20cart/wopd3clear.jpg

That is so you can get an idea.. the 2600 cartridge sits in there.

[Dale in Anaheim]

There are quite a number of people on the net who are into restoring those old consoles and even more that are into running the console games off an emulator. You would probably be better off getting a hold of one or more of them and asking if they can supply you with a plan or dimensions for the part you want to reproduce.

That, I would think, would be the place to start.

Having had an Atari at one time, I can tell you that IIRC, the cartridge seems reasonably sized so that it should be a suitable project for the carvewright/compucarve machine especially if, like you said, you are producing it in two halves. I can't imagine that the tolerances would be beyond what the machine could handle.

Best of luck,
Dale

[Gman_Ind]

Get one and scan it. clean up the scan and go from there.

[yuppicide]

Well, I have cartridges here to go off of. I just don't have a Carvewright yet. I am interested in getting on early next year to make crafts, but this seemed like a great idea also.

I just didn't know if it might be something the machine is capable of.

I am active in the Atari 2600 community online for many years now and am programming my own Atari 2600 game even. I will need cartridge shells to put my games in and I thought this might be a great idea. Kind of fits with the woodgrain finish that the Atari 2600 has.

[Traveler]

It may be possible to make a cartridge case from wood on the carvewright, but unless you can make the wood a quarter inch thick almost everywhere, the case would be weak and prone to breakage. Also, it would be best to use a hardwood for the same reason.

On the other hand, if it worked, you could make a mighty handsome cartridge.

A good compromise is to make a one quarter inch thick carving and attach it to the top of a purchased plastic case.

T

[pastime106]

Being an avid gamer since the days of the 2600 I am thinking that a wood case wood make a nice display, but probably not hold up like you might want. A possible diffrent solution would be to scan the cart then carve the shell into some type of plastic then use this as your mold to make resin casts of the cart. You could make many out of one mold and the the price would probably be a reasonable amount. Not to mention a shot of flat black paint from an airbrush a new sticker on the outside and you getting pretty close.

Tom

[yuppicide]

Well, it's very expensive to get plastic cases made I am told. It's not cost effective unless you are making a lot of them. I think the mold is expensive or something. Someone had made some once, but they're long out of production. They came in colors as well as clear.

What people do nowadays is buy common cartridges and clean them really well.

I was thinking it would be cool to have 50 regular edition cartridges for sale.. they would come in a box with instructions.. and then 25 "special edition" which would come in a wooden shell, with special box, and maybe a special patch too or poster.

I was going to do one of two things.. either sell the special edition seperately for more money, or just make it every 3rd order gets a special edition or something.

Was just trying to think of different ideas "out of the box" and something unique.

As for plastic, I'm actually looking into get some shells made.