Bumping.

Something a bit weird about this proto.

1) Why would an opening be cut in the cart, when it's clear that the memory chips are soldered in place.  I've only seen cuts where removable EPROMs were present.

2) Darkman uses an SLROM chip.  It's clear from the picture that this is not a proto board, but rather a production board.  If that's the case, then those are ROMs and not EPROMs  (even back in the day, EPROM pinout was different from ROM pinout!) 

3) Seeing that these are ROMs, then why do they have stickers on them?  There's no window to cover.

Sorry to be an ass, but a new member with user ID "test11", buyers beware.

Leonki: Buyer beware? That's nesman85, he has been selling protos for years. 

Some more information and history about that particular proto.

Leonki wrote: 1) Why would an opening be cut in the cart, when it's clear that the memory chips are soldered in place.  I've only seen cuts where removable EPROMs were present.

That was how it was when I got it from Video Games & computer Entertainment Magazine. It's a review copy. I can guarantee its authenticity.

Leonki wrote: 2) Darkman uses an SLROM chip.  It's clear from the picture that this is not a proto board, but rather a production board.  If that's the case, then those are ROMs and not EPROMs  (even back in the day, EPROM pinout was different from ROM pinout!)   

I'm sorry, there are TONS of protos that use production boards. I'm not sure how many YOU have handled, but they don't all come on TKEPROM boards. Also, those are EPROMS, not ROMS on that board.

3) Seeing that these are ROMs, then why do they have stickers on them?  There's no window to cover. 

See above, they are EPROMS.

I admit that I would have been suspicious too, so I don't mean to put you down leonki.  I'm sure that many on the board already know that I tend to cast doubt first and ask questions second.

I'm sure you know it's just as easy to cut traces as it is to bend up eprom pins to make production carts eprom compatible.  If you cut traces, there's no absolute need to show wires.  I could be wrong here, but I also don't remember ever seeing a nes rom where the notch went all the way through like the one in the picture (the notch in the right side of the chr).  I wouldn't have noticed this without knowing that they're eproms, but they seem to fit tighter (eproms are often a little longer than roms) and they seem to have eprom rounded corners...

It also looks like the resistor on the left above the CIC was moved to the back of the board.  I'm completely making guesses here, but perhaps the resistor was moved to make room for sockets that were removed before the sample was sent out (since the socketed eproms wouldn't fit in a regular nes).  That would explain the hole.  It sounds like a lot of soldering/unsoldering work, but even nes game donors weren't always $2 a pop...

Thanks for the clarification folks. 

I guess the bottom line is at the time PCB's and cart cases weren't as cheap as they are today, and development reused a lot of their stock.  Hence the strange mix we see above.

It's been sold already

Apparently soon to be sold again:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Darkman-NES-Nintendo-Sample-DEV-DEMO-Development-Game_W0QQit...

Didn't hold onto to that one very long, wish I had gotten a crack at it in this thread.