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Do-it-yourself A/V Cable for 800XL

Xuel

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Last year, I wanted to make an A/V cable for my PAL 800XL that would support S-Video, Composite and Audio. After doing some research I found out that the DIN connector on the back of the 800XL is the same as the one commonly used for MIDI. So I bought a 5 ft MIDI cable from Best Buy and an S-Video plug from Radio Shack. I cut an RCA cable in half. I then proceeded to splice all of these components together to form the Frankenstein A/V cable pictured here:

 

blogentry-21021-128250500122_thumb.jpg

 

I wrote the following text document to help me remember how to hook things up:

 

Male MIDI cable from Female Atari DIN connector's view:
------------------------------------------------------
black      - pin 3 (Audio Output)
shielding  - pin 2 (Ground)
red        - pin 1 (Composite Luminance)
yellow     - pin 5 (Composite Chrominance)
white      - pin 4 (Composite Video)

S-Video     Atari DIN    [1]
----------------------------
pin 1       pin 2  Gnd
pin 2       pin 2  Gnd
pin 3       pin 1  Chroma  (right top)
pin 4       pin 5  Luma    (left top)

[1] http://www.wolfpup.net/atarimods/svideo.html

 

Here is an image taken from a capture card for the S-Video output:

 

blogentry-21021-128250568562_thumb.png

 

Here's one for the Composite output:

 

blogentry-21021-12825066683_thumb.png

 

There are similar cables on Ebay sometimes. This one only has composite.

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2 Comments

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PUCK MAN

I have recently acquired an atari 800xl and have been searching for a way to connect it using the a/v cable i have. I am not familiar at all with how retro computers such as this work but i am pretty sure that my atari is not a PAL and most likely a NTSC. would this setup still work for a NTSC type?

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Xuel

Sorry I didn't see your post sooner! It should work for NTSC as well. The only caveat is that many XL/XE models don't have a connection from the internal Chroma signal to the DIN port, so the S-Video won't work. However, those signals are present internally and can be routed to the DIN port if you're willing to make some modifications:

 

More info:

 

FAQ: http://www.atarimani...y-atari_17.html

FAQ: http://www.faqs.org/...section-17.html

S-Video mod instructions: http://www.karaokepo...d.com/svid.html

 

Another person who made a cable:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwomI7iGD3w

 

Someone who made the S-Video modification to a 130XE:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb3eR5v1wF4

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