June 1, 2003

Frans van Egmond came across a bootleg Q*Bert PCB that had some interesting labels on it.

"I got the board with about 50 other pcb that I picked up in Belgium yesterday, I have no idea of the origins. Eprom number 5 is piggybacked onto what I assume is Eprom 4. All they appear to have done to piggyback the eprom is solder an extra socket on top and leave pin 20 of the top Eprom disconnected to the bottom one but wirewrap it to pin 11 on the 74LS138 at N5. I've got sound, some graphic glitches (however not everytime I start up the board) and I've also played the game now. Not that I really know what I'm doing. I've seen the queen character and I am of course the Jester, just like on the [Tylz] drawings. The pinout is not entirely the same as the bootleg Qbert pinout.

I made a scart adapter and hooked the board up to an Amiga Monitor that I could put down on the floor in front of my camera, the sync was a little off so forgive me the fact that not everything is straight and there are small distortions in the pictures..."

PCB	title screen	high score	playfield
PCB detail	instructions	level one	game play
[click images to enlarge] All photos by Frans van Egmond

Very strange indeed.