mytek

Already exists in your 1088XEL and 1088XLD

ST Mouse Alternatives This works well for USB mice: Atari-Quadrature-USB-Mouse-Adapter I also incorporated this chip into one of my projects CV-NUC+ to take the place of the roller-controller. I found that quite a few Logitech wireless mice functioned properly. And for those that don't wish to build their own, there's also the MouSTer.

I missed this question. Assuming the check is only made once upon SGM initialization, your plan seems like it should work. Actually that's pretty ingenious 👍

I think there were a few, but you're right in assuming this wouldn't be much of an issue. Most likely you can just leave the 32K RAM as always active, and the SGM games will work just fine, as well as most of the others. It just ends up looking more like an Adam.

Nice project. First of all I gotta say you out did me on the smallness factor for sure. That first version board is so small and cute, plus it looks fairly simple circuitry-wise 👍 I don't know if this helps or not, but here's what I did for SGM capability... Protel CPLD Schematic CV-NUC+MSX V1.5.pdf MSX_mmu_V1.5.pld Although it looks like you already have a handle on it. I did run into an issue with my implementation where some physical SGM carts didn't see a valid SGM. However those same games when run as a digital download on an AtariMax Ultimate SD cart worked just fine. Aww you're now getting closer to my board footprint. Adding features tends to do this I too tried using that chip, but it failed to work with virtually every SGM game I threw at it. Too bad since it drastically reduces the size required.

Just my 2 cents... I agree with what has already been said about the time involved prepping parts and soldering, plus if you are doing it yourself there's a lot of different parts that need to be ordered. It all takes time. However if you want a challenge, then opt for DIY. there's nothing better than the feeling you get seeing it boot up for the first time knowing that you built it.

The Brewing Academy used to make pre-assembled and tested units. However I don't think they ever sold just the assembled PCB. Of course anyone can submit the board gerbers and BOM to any PCB manufacturer with assembly services to have it made, but it won't come back complete or tested (its those pesky Atari made chips like Pokey that'll be missing). I would also suggest pricing this with a few different vendors such as JLCPCB, ALLPCB, PCBWAY to compare prices. Hint: PCBWAY is not always the cheapest.

I picked up some of these recently for another project, but it should work for this as well. They are break-away right angle pin headers that can be reduced down to whatever number of pins is required. This style is slightly raised off the PCB, thus better clearing surrounding chips and components. eBay LINK

Yep that's what appears to have been the problem in this case as well. Nothing but a plastic bag, a piece of Styrofoam with the chips pressed in, and a couple layers of cellophane wrapping. No padding or bubble wrap. After I soldered it up, I soaked it in pure Acetone to remove all the flux but nothing what-so-ever came off the chip in the process. So quite genuine. The original price was $40 per chip. After getting a third one as a replacement and counting the fixed one, I'm now at approximately $26 a piece. So it's like going back in time a couple years.

Well I needed a replacement VIC-II for one of my machines, and even though it was originally an NTSC NMOS chip, I opted to buy a couple of HMOS versions off of eBay after failing to succeed on AliExpress (order got cancelled by seller). I have an adapter to go from NMOS to HMOS, and generally prefer the HMOS for its lower power requirements and far less heat. So it took several weeks, but the chips finally arrived. However one had a sheared off ground pin. There was nothing sticking out to solder it back on to, so I contacted the buyer explaining the situation and asked if it was possible to get a replacement sent. They agreed. So although the broken chip is being replaced, I just couldn't stand the thought of not at least trying to repair it. So out came the dremel and I used that tool to both dig out a whole pin from a defective chip, and dug out the spot on the VIC-II chip where it would get attached. Since several of the other pins didn't feel very strong, I opted to solder the whole chip to a machine pin socket to act as a carrier. Then I popped it into my test computer and fired it up. It lives!!! 👍 So now having essentially gotten 3 chips for the price of two, the overall cost per chip wasn't half bad. BTW, the other eBay chip tested good as well.

Good question, and something worth investigating.

Yes I agree, and I have several of these much cheaper alternatives laying around my house just for this use. However I'm intrigued by the LumaCode product and will be investing in at least one to test it out. If it works well, then I'll buy a few more of the GTIAdizer part only at I believe $35 a pop and use the single decoder on a single HDTV. This should be pretty economical when used on multiple computers who share a common monitor. LumaCode only requires an RCA jack to feed out the signal, so the unneeded RF modulator's jack is used for that (no additional holes). I used Luma for the XEP80 output, and then gave the user the choice of either Composite or S-Video (Luma/Chroma) for the normal Atari video. Of course the separate Luma/Chroma was the way to go if at all possible, yielding a much better image over the HDMI output. Audio could either be the stock output fed into the HDMI converter with a 'Y' adapter or stereo if you had that upgrade installed.

@foft that BGA chip scares me How do you know when all the points are soldered? Be next to impossible to do a visual inspection.

Not as good as LumaCode or Sophia because you are converting the analog video to HDMI, whereas the LumaCode digitizer is directly reading an interpreting the GTIA digital signals. Unless I'm mistaken, all you've done is repackage an off-the-shelf S-Video to HDMI converter. So I doubt that the video will be crystal clear since it's reliant on the quality of the stock Atari analog video circuits. I did something similar in this project (XEP80-II).

So using the joystick port to read a USB keyboard would have required a driver on the Atari side (your VB routine). I would think it would be much better to go through Pokey and mimic the stock keyboard matrix so as to be transparent to the Atari, and thus no need for a driver to interpret it. Curious as to why the console keys couldn't be made to work via your original idea. Seems like the same driver could have poked the appropriate registers.