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One more four the road

This is going to be a lot shorter than the last couple of projects. You can pick out details from those blog entries if you need to install a UAV mod of your own, but I'm not going to go over it all in detail again here - much of it is the same. One last console to mod, and no repairs needed! This time - a four-switcher. Or as I like to call 'em, a four-banger: Somehow, I don't think my console nicknames are catching on. 4x4? Foursider? No? Anyway... here's its

March 30, 2023

2600 Chewnyor Fixit & Mod kit - pt. 3

Time to cut stuff up! Choppity-chop! And yes... this part is non-reversible. But the cables have to exit the Jr. somewhere. There aren't many places to do this, unless you repurpose the RF jack, or remove the RF modulator and the channel 2-3 switch. Neither is happening here, so I need to cut a hole. Because of how I routed the cables and the location of the mods, I decided the space between the channel 2-3 switch and the corner post of the case was the best spot. So I me

February 25, 2023

2600 Chewnyor Fixit & Mod kit - pt. 2

So, it's time to throw a UAV mod into this 2600 Jr. As far as installing mods, this isn't exactly my first rodeo. But it is my first time installing a mod into a Jr., and it's my first time installing a UAV mod into a 2600. When I installed a UAV mod in John's 7800, I had the advantage of using an auxiliary board from -^CrossBow^- that served as both an audio board and a mount for the UAV. This made installation pretty simple. For the Jr., though, the UAV inst

February 25, 2023

2600 Chewnyor Fixit & Mod kit - pt. 1

So, remember how Sean Connery would pronounce "Junior" whenever he was talking to Harrison Ford in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"? Well, there you go! I'll be repairing and adding a UAV mod to John Champeau's 2600 "Chewnyor". Let's take a look at this crusty, disgusting thing, shall we? In all fairness to John, he thinks he picked it up like this either as part of an eBay lot or from a yard sale. It looks like it had been buried in a yard... It'

February 23, 2023

The 7800 Mod Mess Mixup Fixup - pt. 7

A friend and I decided to check out a place the other night that reportedly had classic arcade games: Let's Play Cafe in Monroe, WA. Admission was $20 and everything was set to free-play. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of actual classic arcade games they had there - most of which actually worked! I played: Joust, Defender, Robotron: 2084 (all three part of a Williams multi-game cabinet), Qix (which had a slightly wonky joystick), Gorf (very reassuring to see that we nailed

January 29, 2023

The 7800 Mod Mess Mixup Fixup - pt. 6

Get comfy! These next two entries are going to be a bit on the long side. There's some saying in some profession or something somewhere where they say something like, "the first rule of whatever is to do no harm". Or something. This poor 7800 has been through enough grief without incurring any more damage. But as they say, "You can't break any eggs without making an omelette". Or something. As I was cleaning up the case of the 7800, I decided to try to polish

January 29, 2023

The 7800 Mod Mess Mixup Fixup - pt. 5

Well, this blog entry just about ended very differently. But it's all-good now. So close to the finish line... just a couple more things to do after this. But first, here's where we're at now. When we last left this poor, abused 7800, I was about to install a UAV mod, using one of -^CrossBow^-'s 7800 UAV Mount Boards. First - I need to install the wires (or a header, but in this case, wires). I soldered the first one, then held each successive wire in place

January 17, 2023

The 7800 Mod Mess Mixup Fixup - pt. 4

So... the 7800 isn't back to "working" yet, although I have made some progress. In the sense that "I've spent more money on it" and "I took it more apart". Let's look at the pretty pictures! Here are some fresh parts from Mouser: I may not use the RCA jacks... I'm more inclined to use the short "pigtail" type cables I used on my own 2600 as well as John's. You just plug them into your monitor's (or AV system's) cables using barrel connectors, saving wear-and-tear on 40-year

January 10, 2023

The 7800 Mod Mess Mixup Fixup - pt. 3

When we last left the 7800 Mod Mess Mixup Fixup™, alex_79 helpfully suggested: We'll get back to the transistors in a minute. Meanwhile, I decided to rip out the HDMI "mod" as a first step, because: 1) It's horrible, and 2) I did find a short between ground and the composite video output that I traced back to that mess. I didn't take pics of the process, suffice to say it involved cutting wires, desoldering and re-soldering, chewing through a glued-down HDMI connector with side-cutters, a

January 4, 2023

The 7800 Mod Mess Mixup Fixup - pt. 2

So when we last left "John's" 7800 , I still needed to test the audio, and look into the joystick problem. To hear audio on my Sony monitor, I have to munge any stereo signals together into mono (each input has only a single audio connector). Since this 7800 has a stereo mod (or two audio outputs anyway), I needed such an adapter. My other two inputs on the monitor already have adapter cables plugged into them that I made, but now I'm using the third input, and I want to minimize ca

December 22, 2022

The 7800 Mod Mess Mixup Fixup - pt. 1

The 7800 really needs a nickname. The 2600 has several: Heavy Sixer, Vader, Jr., etc. The 5200 is... uh... the Boat Anchor? Well, we'll go with that for now. But the 7800? As far as I know, it never got a nickname. So I'm going to bestow one upon it: The Wedge. It's cool. It's hip. It's trendy. And I'm sure that nothing ever nicknamed The Wedge ever had any bad connotations whatsoever. Anyway, it's time to 7800-up my blog with my next fixit proje