Leaderboard

I was told that crystals are very sensitive and you should use shorter wires even for testing. I went to Radio Shack and got a set of smaller Breadboards and hooked this red one up . The wires are MUCH shorter than the old wires were. Hopefully this will help with testing once I get the CPU's in.

Top view so you can see how it looks.

Screwed together.....Did I say that the F18A is awesome yet....well it is!!!!

I took this shot so you can see that the little screws have plenty of room to go into the Colecovision.

Place your cable in the hole. I recommend that you make the hole go down a little lower than I did so that you won't have any issues putting the top of the Colecovision back on. Now find a drill and a drill bit that fits the 2 small holes. I moved the guts of the Colecovision over upside down on a folded towel while I drilled into the plastic. I recommend drilling the holes while holding the cable in place. What I did was pull the Black plastic housing of the Cable back about 2 inches to protect it from getting drilled and then I put 1 finger on top of the cable end where it meets the Colecovision plastic and then drilled with my other hand. Drill slowly. If you don't have an adjustable speed drill, just tap the drill on button so it quickly stops. Worked like a charm!

Drill, cut, dremel or burn your way through the back plastic. I used a soldering iron and kept testing with the cable to see how it looked and to get a great fit. The way I did it is fairly slow, but did the job. Remember that the little screws are going to go through the plastic of the Colecovision, so don't make your hole too wide. The whole point is to hide a scraggly looking hole with a nice looking piece of metal.

Take the screws off the plate of the F18A's cable. Now separate the metal from the black plastic housing of the cable and straddle it across the Colecovision's edge to see where you want to put it.

This Colecovision has 5 mods: 1) Yurkie's AV mod 2) Heavy Duty Rocker power switch 3) Pause Mod 4) Red ON indicator LED 5) Custom Reset button I'm going to take a break from this and see if I can figure out the Speed boost switch mod.

This is my Colecovision Speed Boost Test Machine w/Breadboard so I can easily swap crystals out. This machine has some issues. 1) No player 2 port? 2) Graphics are a bit garbled when playing games. Mods on this machine: 1) Power Switch Mod (made the machine go from "broken" to working....still has garbled graphics a bit though) 2) DIY AV mod so I could test with and without the RF 3) I guess easy Crystal change Mod? More for me to just test.

My camera doesn't do the brightness of the led justice. I figured it makes more sense to put the led right beside the word "ON" instead of the left side of the switch like most mods have. I chose a red color LED to match the color of the Power switch.

My camera doesn't do the brightness of the led justice. I figured it makes more sense to put the led right beside the word "ON" instead of the left side of the switch like most mods have. I chose a red color LED to match the color of the Power switch.

When the Colecovision is OFF but plugged in, it still draws power. This can be a problem if you have an illuminated Switch you want to install in place of the old Power switch. The problem is that the led will stay on even when the switch is turned off. The location indicated in this picture near the expansion slot seems to be a good point to use for a led (remember to use the correct resistor with the led or it might burn out).