We internally started this series based on an internal Will It Scan event, where we put random objects into our Northstar X5000 225kV Computed Tomography (CT) scanner and see if our staff can guess what the object is based on the recovered images. The format of this series consists of evidence packages every Wednesday, releasing a progressively more detailed set of information recovered from the devices. These evidence packages will contain artifacts from CT images, photographic images, bills of materials, recovered firmware, recovered memory, and more!
This week, we will continue to look at Object 003. In the past post, we exercised a little more caution with the CT scanner and this device because this one, in particular, is an interesting challenge. We researchers often choose some hard paths to solving some fairly easy problems. This device continues to teach us that.
It doesn’t take a CT scanner to realize that this is a very simplistic device. That was proven with some immediate correct guesses after Evidence Package 1, correctly guessing this to be an Atari game. The challenge did not stop there. We wanted to know what game this was. As of today, nobody has correctly guessed the game…
Answers/guesses can be sent to: [email protected]
Evidence Package 2 (Everything else)
Artifacts
Figures 1 and 2 show the front and back images of device 03 PCB. As you can see from the photos, it is in fact a very simple device. It is an Atari 5200 Cartridge from around 1983.
The BOM is also very simplistic with only 4 components:
| Device | Part Number | Manufacturer |
| U1 | CO18308-03 | |
| U2 | CO18808-03 | |
| C1 | 50V | |
| C2 | 50V |
This BOM was another device that led us down a bit of a rabbit hole. The logo on the two main ICs was not in our database. After a bit of research, however, Wikipedia informed us that Synertek, Inc. was an American semiconductor manufacturer founded in 1973. The initial staff consisted of Bob Schreiner (the CEO), Dan Floyd, Jack Balletto, Gunnar Wetlesen, and Zvi Grinfas. Schreiner, Floyd, Balletto, and Wetlesen were all formerly of Fairchild Semiconductor, and Synertek is thus one of the many “Fairchildren.” The company became a major vendor during the late 1970s and early 1980s on the strength of its licensed production of the MOS 6502, one of the most successful microprocessors of the era. Synertek won supply deals with Apple Computer and Atari, who would produce millions of home computers and game consoles with Synertek 6502s inside. Personally, all of the Atari games I have opened had ICs that were a bit older and released before what appears to be more mainstream manufacturing. This one was pretty cool to see.
After this step, my immediate reaction was to dump the ROM out of these ICs. If you want a copy of that, shoot us an email and we can send it over. This was clearly one of the first ways to identify the game without looking at the label that was on the cartridge. Without doing anything else, if you simply run strings on the ROM, you will see some good indication of what this is.
Is that it? Is it that easy? Well, dumping the ROM was not actually that easy. Surprisingly tedious for a game from 1983. We will get into that at another time, though.
Let’s go back to the beginning when we had Evidence Package 1. At that point, the cartridge wasn’t even opened yet. Yes, there is a label on it, but what if there wasn’t? What if we were afraid to open it? What if we were afraid to connect to its board connector?
If you look very closely at the original CT scans, you will see some part numbers.
With a minimal amount of effort we can go to the internet for those board and part numbers. Quickly we find the Atari Engineering Information System Item Master List. Cross referencing CO18289 we get that this is a 08 ROM cartridge board.
Going a little further into the Item Master List we can look up CAO18280 where we will find that this specific board is for 03 CARt PCB ASSY CX5208 PAC-MAN. So without ever opening the cartridge, without ever putting any power (directly) onto any pin we have fairly high confidence of what we are looking at.
With the cartridge open we can pull the thread a little further and see that CO18308-03 and CO18808-03 link to 32K PAC-MAN (ROM #1) and 64K PAC-MAN ROM #2 respectively.
In case you wanted to see the actual device in its production format below is the original image we took of device 003. Clearly on the label you will find the numbers 5208 which one can correctly find with a search engine in 5 seconds linking back to the Atari 5200 Pac-Man game.
Tooling
Northstar X5000 225kV consisting of a multi-axis, high resolution digital x-ray system providing advanced real-time 2D digital radiography (DR), and 3D computed tomography (CT) imagery in multiple formats integrating a powerful CT reconstruction and visualization software that generates user-friendly executables and deliverables. We can scan up to 1um resolution for CT scans on low density parts allowing us to reverse engineer legacy devices with a high degree of non-destructive precision on devices up to a nominal 32 x 48 in [81 x 121 cm] part envelope. Long gone are the days of us using highly toxic chemicals, hours of manual test point and trace mapping, or highly destructive de-layering in order to understand and recover the original electrical schematics.
