Power LED mod

[mamejay]

Hi Guys,

 

I am wanting to put a power LED on my Atari 2600 6 switch.

i am sure it would be a matter of sourcing positive and negative power from the board and using some sort of resistor.

 

My question is has anyone done this and if so where did you get the power from and what resistor should I be using?

 

Any advise will be appreciated.

[tetrode kink]

I've read here that some people have done it, but I hadn't looked into it.

 

A quick Google search on "Atari 2600 power LED" led me right back to AtariAge!

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/69592-2600-mods/page__st__75

 

It's an old thread in the Marketplace forum where someone was selling his modding services, but near the end of that page it evolves into discussion of how to do a power LED.

 

Looks like you'd need a resistor around 80-150 Ohms depending on the LED you use and how bright you want it, assuming power for the LED is taken off the 5V side of things.

 

I would imagine there are other examples sprinkled around the web, it's not exactly a new idea. Google is your friend. I'd search more myself, but I've already reached the end of my interest on the subject (for the moment). Perhaps it's enough to get you started?

 

-tet

Edited June 9, 2010 by tetrode kink

[lgallair]

I did a power led mod to my Atari 2600 a while back. I had it apart today to install the pause kit so I took some pix for you. The resistor is under the shrink wrap in the first pic so I can't tell what it is ... it may be a 1K. The second pic shows where to connect the Vcc / Gnd wires. The third pic is where I chose to install the LED. Hope this helps.

[mamejay]

Thanks for that Igallair. That is exactly what I was looking for. i didn't think it would be too hard to do. Will look into what resister is required.

[lgallair]

I usually go here to calculate resistor value for my led's

[GroovyBee]

Its better to work it out from first principles.

 

Resistance R = (Vs-Vf)/If

 

If Vs = 5v (2600 regulated supply), Vf = 2v and If=30mA

 

Therefore R = (5-2)/30e-3

 

R = 100 ohm

 

The values of Vf (forward voltage) and If (forward current) come from the LED's datasheet.

 

Next calculate the power dissipated in the resistor using the formula P=VI

 

Where V=Vs-Vf and I=If

 

So P=(5-2)*30e-3

 

P=0.09W

 

So a 0.25W, 100 ohm resistor will do the trick.

[A.J. Franzman]

Those calculations work just fine, but be sure to substitute actual specs for your LED. 2 volts at 30 mA is a rather uncommon (probably something like a super-bright green) LED. Most standard indicator types are 20 mA or less, with red usally a bit under 2 volts, and blue at about 3 volts or a bit more.

Edited June 10, 2010 by A.J. Franzman

[tetrode kink]

Those calculations work just fine, but be sure to substitute actual specs for your LED. 2 volts at 30 mA is a rather uncommon (probably something like a super-bright green) LED. Most standard indicator types are 20 mA or less, with red usally a bit under 2 volts, and blue at about 3 volts or a bit more.

Sacrilege!

 

When (if) I do a power LED it's gonna be a big hurkin' RED one! IMHO, red's the only way to go!

 

• Red: The original LED color.
  
• Red: The MAN's LED color.
  

 

Blue, indeed. Why don't you add SMS texting capability to your VCS and dress it up in frilly lace panties while you're at it?

 

 

-tet

 

Note: The above micro-rant was directed at no one in particular; it was inspired by the mere thought of a blue LED in vintage hardware.

 

Another Note: No, the irony of ridiculing putting panties on Stella is not lost on me.

[mimo]

^^

[Trinity]

I have thought about doing this for a while now. If I was gonna do it , I would get about 5 or 6 amber led's and install them (recessed) in the bottom edges of my 4 switcher. This way the Atari would seem to hover on nice mellow amber light. And I think they would match the orange paint around the switches. And blend with the woodgrain nicely.

Edited June 10, 2010 by Trinity

[Video]

Instead of an LED (which was new tech back then, and hella expensive) why not go the real light bulb rout? You can get 1.5 volt bulbs all day long, and some of those "rice" bulbs are uber cheap ( resource wise) to run on your system

 

What? Why's everybody looking at me like that

[A.J. Franzman]

Hey t. k., blue was just an example. How could I guess your taste in console hacking was for period-accurate mods? I've seen at least one photo posted here of a blue power LED hack on a vintage console, so it has been done. Kinda like those "resto-mod" classic and muscle cars with the digital dashboards, custom billet aluminum wheels and steering wheels, megawatt stereo systems, hyper-graphic paint jobs and who knows what other travesties that some people perpetrate upon their vehicles. (BAAAAAARRRRFFF!)

Edited June 11, 2010 by A.J. Franzman

[tetrode kink]

Hey t. k., blue was just an example. How could I guess your taste in console hacking was for period-accurate mods? I've seen at least one photo posted here of a blue power LED hack on a vintage console, so it has been done. Kinda like those "resto-mod" classic and muscle cars with the digital dashboards, custom billet aluminum wheels and steering wheels, megawatt stereo systems, hyper-graphic paint jobs and who knows what other travesties that some people perpetrate upon their vehicles. (BAAAAAARRRRFFF!)

 

 

Yeah, my missive was a little messy, it could easily have been construed as a direct volley at you, what with all the direct quoting of your message and all. Hence the fine print...

 

For the record, my taste in vintage console hacking isn't strictly period-accurate. After all, I'm all for the new Pause Kit for the VCS. I've been interrupted 45 minutes into an Enduro game too many times by things requiring me to abandon it. For me, a Pause function has been too-long absent, and is pretty much a requirement now.

 

My comment was mainly fueled by my opinion that, while the advent of the blue LED is great, it is much overused lately. Seems like anything with an LED indicator, accent light, or any other excuse to jam a blue LED in something, it's gonna happen. It's one of my current minor peeves.

 

Your mention of a blue LED as an example wasn't the topic of my sarcastic post, it was merely the trigger.

 

[geezer] With you on resto-mods too, BTW. Either restore the thing to Factory or build your damned abomination from scratch! [/geezer]

 

-tet

Edited June 11, 2010 by tetrode kink

[JingleJoe]

I've been considering doing this for a while! I'm a big fan of green LEDs though, if you look at the back of your computer you should be able to see one on the power supply - That's my favorite green LED I've got one or two which I will definately use on my 2600 now.

 

Just to clarify, could someone confirm for me if the LED is connected to the output of the voltage regulator in Mr lgallair's mod, correct?

(EDIT: this thread explains all! http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/69592-2600-mods/page__st__100 Thankyou chaps!)

 

 

As for using an actual light bulb like Mr Video suggested, you must be careful to take into account how many milliamps it requires. LEDs will work off just one or two milliamps, but filament bulbs often require a few hundred. However it is possible to find some that will work from about 50ma or less!

Edited June 13, 2010 by JingleJoe

[JingleJoe]

Success! My green LED is installed, I used a 220 ohm resistor but I think it would still have addequate brightness with a larger resistor, I may put something close to a 500 ohm resistor in tomorrow, I don't want to draw too much power away from the rest of the circuit.

 

 

 

Can anyone spot something else different?

[A.J. Franzman]

Hmmm, let's see...

 

The cartridge says "VANGUARD P", but you gave your location as Liverpool, England, so it's expected that you'd have a PAL cartridge. The panel legend says "color" rather than "colour", but I don't know if Atari made that particular regional change...

 

Hang on, is that front panel REAL wood?

[JingleJoe]

Hang on, is that front panel REAL wood?

 

Quite the sharp eye you have there, you got it I'll take better photos in the light tomorrow.

 

Wiring up this mod was so easy! I'd love to do it to some more Ataris, additionally I feel the need to say that the voltage regulator was so old

Edited June 13, 2010 by JingleJoe

[BDW]

Now you guys aren't the only ones with a LED mod! Step one to create the ultimate Atari is complete!

[Video]

 

As for using an actual light bulb like Mr Video suggested, you must be careful to take into account how many milliamps it requires. LEDs will work off just one or two milliamps, but filament bulbs often require a few hundred. However it is possible to find some that will work from about 50ma or less!

 

I just think the actual light would look cool (and period appropriate, most electronics that had lights used bulbs at the time)

 

Yeah, like you said though, look at the Ma rating, the rice bulbs I got come in a bundle of like 100 for $5 and are rated at 10mah at 1.5 volt (or was it .5 volt)

 

DONT confuse these with micro flashlight bulbs (like solitare bulbs, those take several hundred Mah to run and probably won't work, unless you get a bigger PSU and leach directly off it )

[A.J. Franzman]

If someone were REALLY clever, he could put a 3mm LED in the tip of the power switch lever!

[tetrode kink]

Sorry, Video, I have a minor disagreement with something you said.

 

While it's true that incandescent lamps were still in wide use in the late '70s, LEDs were also in wide use, and not particularly expensive. I still have several pieces of equipment from the era, including a stereo receiver (which I still use!), with several LEDs as indicators. Somewhere around here I also have my old Radio Shack catalogs which listed a modest variety of LED lamps and displays.

 

I do agree that an incandescent power indicator would be cool.

 

mmmm, Radio Shack catalogs. I used to pour through those repeatedly, even when I wasn't looking for something specific. A combination tech-release gazette and wish-list catalog. Remember Steve Martin in "The Jerk," raving about the new phone book? That was me every year when the new Radio Shack catalog came out!

 

[nostalgia] See, kiddies, they used to give them away. You didn't have to buy it, nor buy some RS merchandise to get one free. They were just free. [/nostalgia]

 

-tet

[Video]

Maybe your're remembering a different 70's than I am (or had a hell of a lot more money) But I remember LED's being a LOT back then, I mean, even in the 80's they were still going for several bucks a pop.

 

Remember bli[? That came out, what? 78 or so? And the LED was half the cost of the unit.

 

Yes you can hide the cost of the LED's in more expensive equipment, like thousand pluss pieces of sterio equipment, but most companies, even in the late 70's early 80's would put a light in instead of an LED for cost reasons (and I hated it when the light would die in something that actually needed it)

 

Anyhow, it's kinda like Blue/Withe LED's now. They aren't insanely expensive, but where I can get a good Green or red for just a few cents, even cheaper blue's and whites can go over a dollar easy. (and if you want good ones, be prepaired to pay for them) And both of those are 15 year old tech at this point.

 

If someone were REALLY clever, he could put a 3mm LED in the tip of the power switch lever!

 

Now that would be cool, hollowing the switch and running the wire though would be the hard part IMO, the LED, well, most are just shitloads of plastic, and you'd be amazed at what you can shave off without damaging them (most seem to have extra plastic just so you can pull them to a board and they'll be "level" for lack of a better word)

 

Does anybody know if the switch in the atari is solid metal, or if it's plastic inside? If it's plastic, it will be easier to hollow out, but may be to week after hollowing it out to still use.

[A.J. Franzman]

The metal switch lever is hollow, but is peened to a plastic stem which is part of the sliding contact contact shoe casting. After disassembling the switch (to remove the lever and sliding shoe assembly from the switch, but NOT remove the lever from the shoe) and drilling an LED-sized hole in the top of the lever, one could then drill a smaller hole through the plastic stem and shoe, then drill a larger intersecting hole through the shoe from end to end. Then, one would need to thread some fine wires (such as enameled magnet wire, or phonograph pickup wire) through the intersecting holes (this would probably be the most difficult part) so that they go down the lever, turn 90 degrees, and exit one end of the shoe. From there, installing the LED, reassembly and installation of the switch, and making final electrical connections are all simple.

 

One could also drill the cross-hole through the bottom part of the plastic stem, so that the wire would exit above the switch body (but under the foam dust cover disc) instead of traveling through it, but IMO that would probably weaken the stem too much.

Edited June 16, 2010 by A.J. Franzman

[tetrode kink]

Maybe your're remembering a different 70's than I am (or had a hell of a lot more money) But I remember LED's being a LOT back then, I mean, even in the 80's they were still going for several bucks a pop.

OK, I'll concede the point, but only because I'm too lazy to go digging up my old RS catalogs. In the late '70s I was in my teens, still on $5-a-week allowance (was that a lot back then?) and I don't remember LEDs being out of my reach like, for example, a fully-loaded TRS-80 computer for $2,999.99. Three Large might as well have been $1 million for a kid on an allowance! But I still don't think LEDs were 'several bucks a pop' because I once bought one of RS's LED "Grab Bags" for a few bucks in the '80s. Maybe it was mid-'80s.

 

Remember bli[? That came out, what? 78 or so? And the LED was half the cost of the unit.

No, I don't remember 'bli[.' What was that?

 

Yes you can hide the cost of the LED's in more expensive equipment, like thousand pluss pieces of sterio equipment, but most companies, even in the late 70's early 80's would put a light in instead of an LED for cost reasons (and I hated it when the light would die in something that actually needed it)

The receiver I mentioned was bought in 1980. It's no piece of crap, but it's not a Nakamichi either, and it's loaded with LED indicators (in addition to the incandescent-lit dial light).

 

Anyhow, it's kinda like Blue/Withe LED's now. They aren't insanely expensive, but where I can get a good Green or red for just a few cents, even cheaper blue's and whites can go over a dollar easy. (and if you want good ones, be prepaired to pay for them) And both of those are 15 year old tech at this point.

OK, maybe blues are 15 years old, but not whites. Really? If so, I must have been asleep for the past 10 years or so. I swear, the older I get the faster time flies.

 

...

 

One could also drill the cross-hole through the bottom part of the plastic stem, so that the wire would exit above the switch body (but under the foam dust cover disc) instead of traveling through it, but IMO that would probably weaken the stem too much.

Wow, that would be über-cool! But man, with such fine wires, how would you handle metal fatigue with repetitive switch movement? Seems like they would break in less than a hundred flips.

 

-tet

[BDW]

He is referring to the Tomy Blip. It was just a typo.