Chip Tester with DIY CartRip Atari/Coleco Adapter

The BackBit Chip Tester Pro paired with the DIY CartRip™ Atari/ColecoAdapter is a highly versatile, community-favorite hardware diagnostic and digital preservation system developed by Evie Powell of BackBit. This hardware combo serves a dual purpose: it tests vintage logic chips inside your computer and copies physical game cartridges into digital ROM files.

1. The Core Tool: BackBit Chip Tester Pro:

The BackBit Chip Tester Pro is an intelligent, USB-C powered testbed used to diagnose and save vintage computers and arcade hardware.

• Logic Testing: It automatically routes 5V or 3.3V power to test digital logic gates, DRAM, SRAM, and CPUs (up to 48 pins) in a custom zero-insertion-force (ZIF) style socket. It verifies whether components are fried or functional.
• Safety Protocols: It features short-circuit detection and automatically discharges chips after testing to safeguard fragile vintage silicon.
• ROM Ripping Mode: Beyond simple pass/fail diagnostics, the tester can read the contents of vintage ROM chips and write them directly as raw binary files to an onboard Micro SD card slot.

2. The Expansion: DIY CartRip™ System:

To avoid forcing collectors to desolder ROM chips just to back up their physical media, BackBit engineered the DIY CartRip main board expansion.

• The main CartRip daughterboard plugs right into the Chip Tester’s primary socket lines.
• It serves as a universal bus interface that accepts hot-swappable, system-specific cartridge slot adapters.

3. The Atari/ColecoVision Adapter Combo:

The specialized Atari 400/800/XL/XE & ColecoVision slot adapter configuration sits inside the main CartRip unit. This addon delivers an accessible avenue for backing up your personal library:

• The Slot Interface: It lets you plug standard, physical retail or homebrew cartridges directly into the testbed.
• Data Extraction: When booted into its "Rip" firmware suite, the Chip Tester walks through the cartridge address banks, pulling an exact 1:1 image of the game code—supporting standard unmapped 8K/16K/32K titles up to advanced bank-switched layouts—and outputs a clean .BIN or .ROM file to your SD card.
• The "DIY" Solder Aspect: BackBit distributes these CartRip variants as budget-friendly "DIY Kits". The bare PCBs come with the slot surface connectors already mounted, but user assembly is required to solder the header pin arrays that marry the adapter down onto the primary CartRip logic plate.

The Preservation Connection

Once a cartridge is successfully ripped using this combination, the resulting game images can be mounted natively inside Coleco ADAM computer emulators or deployed back onto your real hardware setups via multi-carts, such as the BackBit Pro Cartridge for ColecoVision/ADAM or the open-source pi-coleco Pico flash cartridges.