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Wooba

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    Seixal - Portugal

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  1. So I just looked into that and it seems like a great option! I've also tried fiddling with the 2 capacitors and that didn't change anything, I've also re-flowed a little bit of solder because that had helped me with before but it also didn't do anything. So they're either completely dead or they're not the problem. I'll replace them anyway. I've also had a look into the capacitor replacements, does it matter the type of capacitor used? For example, this store sells polystyrene capacitors, but they're radial, would that make a difference? Could I use any other type of capacitor that isn't even polystyrene?
  2. I've already posted here that I can't get sound through RF and the only solution I've found is the composite mod which I was probably going to end up doing anyway. However, I'd really like to not just rip out stuff out of the board completely or at all if possible. I was thinking of just lifting one of the legs of the resistors and lifting the vcc leg of the transistor that I need to remove and doing the same to the modulator. Will this work or am I completely wrong about everything I just posted here?
  3. Combat PAL vs NTSC differences A week ago I bought my first atari 2600 on ebay, I got a light switcher with a (tatty) boxed copy of combat. I never owned an atari 2600 but I had played a couple games on an emulator so I knew what they'd look like, especially combat with its light brown sandy color, so you could imagine my surprise when I pop in my combat cart, hit reset and the game screen is mostly a vomit green. What is this? I've played this game a few dozen times, I should be blasting tanks on a desert, not a football field! On and off for a week I searched this forums and the internet in general and the only thing people advised was adjusting the colour pot. I must've adjusted that potentiometer a dozen times before I gave up, I'd rather shoot tanks on a grassy hill than on a pink field, that just wouldn't do. Next I tried adjusting the tiny little pot on the RF modulator and while it did give me a cleaner more stable picture, the colours still weren't right. Americans can ignore this since I believe the small pot is a PAL thing only. I remembered reading about PAL and NTSC differences on the go deeper than the refresh rate like in most other consoles and after a little digging I found this page which says that different regions have a different number of colours available and therefore different palettes: PAL - 104 colours NTSC - 128 colours SECAM - 8 colours The difference in colours between PAL and NTSC isn't that great, but the guys in SECAM regions really got shafted. After this I downloaded PAL and NTSC roms of combat and tested them in an emulator. PAL is on the left and NTSC is on the right Game 1 Game 6 Game 15 Game 25 (Note that the PAL images are bigger than their NTSC counterparts, this is not an error, PAL and SECAM ataris have 100 more scanlines but run 12% slower. In most PAL consoles the opposite happens, but the framerate is still 12% slower than in NTSC regions) As you can see, the palette differences in some games are very striking, in game 1 there are the already mentioned differences of the brown vs green but the tanks are also different colors, in the NTSC version the tanks are red and blue(such patriotism) and in the PAL regions the tanks are a pastel baby blue and pink which when displayed over aerial almost look like the same colour which makes it a little hard to distinguish which player you are, at least to me, but I'm slightly colourblind so YMMV. Game 6 also has a completely different pallet, but this time I think the blue background looks much nicer than the weird red shade they chose for the NTSC version. The tanks are also different, but this time the it's easier to distinguish the PAL tanks. Game 15 is almost unchanged although the colours in the PAL version are a little bit brighter which makes the NTSC version look slightly better in my opinion. Game 25 is where the NTSC version completely drops the ball, why is the magenta? And why are the clouds green? It makes no sense! This time the PAL version gets the edge with a navy blue sky and gray-ish clouds. And just for fun, here's what game 1 looks like in SECAM regions, with a neon green background, pink borders and black and white tanks, this really is the ugliest version of the game, I really feel sorry for the French. So that's it for the differences between PAL and NTSC combat, now I know that my atari isn't messing up the colours. Now if only I could get sound that isn't just static...(I suspect this is because I'm in a PAL B region and my console is PAL I). Thanks for reading. Sources: Spiceware Chinavasion AtariPreservation Screenshots captured with z26 emulator
  4. I have all my consoles including the older ones hooked up to a Samsung 22inch LCD. If I need to emulate something I usually do it on my MAME cabinet. I'm want to find a CRT, just haven't had the time to start searching.
  5. Hello, today I became the brand new owner of a six switch atari 2600 which I got from an auction on ebay. I never owned an atari before, so I have a few questions about mine. When I got the system it was a little unstable, but that was fixed with a little solder to hold the power jack in place. Then I wasn't able to get a stable picture, but a bit of fiddling with the RF modulator and fine tuning the TV the atari is now functional, it however still has a few flaws. First, the sound doesn't really work, all I hear is loud static, I assume that this is due to the fact that my atari is from a PAL A region and my TV is PAL B. The colours are also off I think, combat game 0 is supposed to a beige(I think, I'm a little colourblind) but in my TV it's a puke green and neither of the tanks have any colour. Any help with these issues? I've attached a picture of combat game 0 as it appears on my TV. On a slightly different topic, I'm using the aerial lead that came stock with the system, but I'd like to have it output composite. If any of you have ever messed around with a ZX Spectrum there's a very simple composite mod and since both Spectrum and the 2600 use an RF modulator I was wondering if that mod would work on the 2600. Obviously it wouldn't have any sound, but I can always pull that out of some pad in the console if I'm not mistaken. The ZX Spectrum mod consists in disabling the RF modulator power supply and splicing the video input of the modulator and connecting it to a composite cable since the Spectrum RF modulator is converting composite to RF, is this also what's happening on the 2600? Thanks for reading all this, I'm a bit of a noob, I know.
  6. Of course there is a way to play PAL on NTSC and vice versa. Most standard consoles usally use standard power adapters and most have simple mods, but the ones you listed are more niche so you'll have to spend a bit of money to get them to work. First you'll probably need a UHF Aerial to RF converter, which are fairly cheap and is what most of those consoles will use since they are so old. Next you'll probably need a step down converter because European consoles run at a different voltage than what Americans have at home, these can be a bit pricey depending on what you want to spend. If you have an LCD or plasma it probably supports PAL, but if it doesn't or you want to run your consoles on a CRT then you'll need a PAL to NTSC adapter, the good news is that if you buy them from china they can be cheap. Do keep in mind that the consoles will still run at 50Hz.
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