Ian Primus

Ah. I get it. Too tired to translate ASCII values...Too tired to think. Mental note: never post to AA unless fully awake... Ian Primus [email protected] I think I'm going to go get some Mountain Dew...

Yes, I did. I take it that it's a running joke that must have started before I rejoined... Either that or it's blatently obvious and I just don't see it because I'm running on a bottle of Jolt cola and no sleep... Ian Primus [email protected]

OK, yeah. Let's not do that any more.... When I went to view the message, I seem to have lost my horizontal scrollbar in Safari... Did this happen to anyone else? It's either a problem with the bullien board or with Safari. (Or, more likely, the crazy people that are using it..) Oops. Ian Primus [email protected]

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0101010110111110101010? 100111010101.... 10110010110101! 101101010010101110010011110100010010101001100101001010010101100000101101011111101010001100011010010101001011010110101011001101010111101001101011001101111010101011110000101001010101011000001010101011110010010111111101010101100100010101011010101101100010101111010001100010010100110001100010101011011001010101100101010001111101101010100001010101001010101010101010110110001011011010101010101000001100001011111001010010001010100101001011010101001000010010111010101000100100001000111110100110010111010000110101001010100101010010001110101000101001010010111011010101101010101011110100010100110101001011010100110100001010101001000010100100101000001011101010010101010001010010001010100111000010100100101010101011010100010100101010101010101011011010101010101010101010100010101001010100001011110100000100110100011010010000010101000010100010001010100010. Ok... I know, enough's enough... Ian Primus [email protected]

Just commandeer a closet. Set up an old color TV on top of an old dresser or something in a closet. Store the games and stuff in the dresser drawers, and have the Atari connected next to the TV, and put a couple folding chairs next to the dresser. That way, when you want to play, just open the closet, unfold the chairs and go. You'll probably need to run an extention cord out, since most closets don't have electrical outlets. Of course, you could always get one of those light bulb socket to power outlet adapters, or just wire in an outlet. This works really well with the closets with bifold doors. I had something like this set up for a while at my old house, and it worked out very well. An old dresser is a great way to store and organize carts, joysticks, etc. Of course, it won't hold an _entire_ collection, but it will keep handy and neat the games you like to play, and the controllers, etc. You can store the rest of your stuff in plastic tubs on the top shelf in the closet. Then, when you're done, just close up the doors. There isn't really a way to lock this sort of door well, but some good strong rubber bands between the door knobs of the two bifold doors should keep it shut enough to keep out a toddler. Ian Primus [email protected]

Yeah, pretty much, Atari controllers are nothing more than a box full of switches. Ian Primus [email protected]

The switches in an Atari keyboard controller are just normally open contacts. I drew up a quick ASCII schematic from memory, I _think_ it's right. --------------Pin 5 | ---------Pin 9 | | ----Pin 6 | | | | | | Pin 1 -- 1 -- 2 -- 3 | | | Pin 2 -- 4 -- 5 -- 6 | | | Pin 3 -- 7 -- 8 -- 9 | | | Pin 4 -- * -- 0 -- # Pin 5 -///------- 4.7k |---- Pin 7 Pin 9 -///------- 4.7k Pin 8 - No Connection Ian Primus [email protected]

You could alway get a box that they fit in that is too tall, and cut it down. Just cut down the corners of the box with a box cutter until you get to about the right height. Then score along the sides so the new 'flaps' fold nicer. Trim the flaps down if they are too long to fold on top of each other. You can also make boxes smaller in either dimension by cutting the box in half down the middle, sliding the halves together until they're overlapped enough so it's the right size, then tape it back together. The latter method isn't quite as stable or easy as simply shortening a box, but it should work. In general, shortening them works a lot better. If you can't find boxes big enough, just tape two together, top to top, overlapped, like a plastic easter egg. Just shove them together until it's the right size and tape. A lot. Either that or just get a box that's way too big and fill it with lots of foam. ("$82 for shipping on an Atari??? What?!!?") Ian Primus [email protected]

Wow. That's not even a _good_ fake. It looks like someone printed those on a cheap inkjet and glued them on. I would have to think that the seller knows it's a fake. Stll though, he has good feedback. The only negative he has is when he was buying something. So, it looks like this seller expects the items to be properly represented when *he* buys, maybe he just found it somewhere and assumes it is real? Ian Primus [email protected]

Yeah.... It's the same principle, but on an Atari 2600 Jr, you'll have to desolder every single pin, one at a time, to remove the chip. It's a pain. But, once you've gotten the chip out, put a socket in to save your sanity in the future. Desoldering large IC's is not something for the faint of heart, or at least not for those who have done a lot of this sort of thing. The problem is, that to remove the chip, every pin must be free, and that generally requires sitting down for an hour with a soldering iron, solder sucker, and a steady hand. Now, if you're _positive_ that the chip is bad, you can take a small pair of dikes and clip all the pins off as close to the chip body as possible. Then, you can heat up all the pins, one at a time, and pull them out. This is definitely easier, but you want to be sure the chip you are removing is bad. There was one revision of the Atari 2600 Jr. that used one single chip as opposed to three. I haven't had to work on one before though. Something tells me that tracking down _that_ chip would be nearly impossible. Ian Primus [email protected]

No, I just think he's a moron. Of course, there are many people out there that don't know classic gaming hardware as well as we do, so it's quite possible that the seller found this thing somewhere, remembered the Intellivison, and figured that it must go to that. I don't think the Atari 5200 was as well known as the Intellivision. Ian Primus [email protected]

Yeah... I think it's the top half of an Atari 5200 controller... Ebay is always good for a laugh in the morning. Ian Primus [email protected]yahoo.com

Gah, I hate my ISP... Their newsserver is terrible, and it only seems to keep posts for about three days. I checked a.b.e.misc the day you posted this, but it wasn't there anymore. Not only that, but even if there are things there, 90% of the time, they're misssing parts out of the middle. How, I'm not sure. Ian Primus [email protected]

OK, for basic Atari repair, you need the following: Phillips head screwdriver needle nose pliers (to get the RF sheild off easily) small flat blade screwdriver or butter knife (to lever chips out) soldering iron multimeter time Start by taking the cover off, and removing the RF sheild. If you get a totally blank screen, the first thing to check is the power regulator. It is located on the lower left side of the board. The Atari uses a 7805 voltage regulator to step the 9 volts from the AC adapter down to 5 volts for the logic. Without it, the Atari can't do anything. The first test would be to measure the voltages at that regulator. Plug in and turn on the Atari, and set the multimeter for DC volts. The voltage regulator has three pins. Touch the negative lead of the multimeter to the RF sheild, or to the metal square where the RF shield was. This is all ground. Touch the positive lead of the multimeter to the pin on the voltage regulator closest to you (looking at the board from the front) If you get anything other than five volts, the regulator is the culprit. Replace it. If it is putting out five volts, the start looking elsewhere, it's probably a blown chip. Further problems are more complicated, you can try testing the voltage at the cart slot, pin 23 is +5v (second pin from the upper left, looking down into the slot from the front), but test it from the solder pad on the back, it's a lot easier to get to. If that pin reads five volts, then the power part of the system is good. Try swapping chips with another working Atari, one chip at a time, and see if you can find the culprit. (Hint: start with the TIA, then the CPU) To remove chips: Before removing the chip, note the orientation of the notch, which indicates pin 1. To remove the chip, insert a thin, flat object such as a butter knife or a small flathead screwdriver between the chip and the socket at one end. Lever the chip up a tiny bit, and then repeat on the other side. Do this until the chip is free. To insert a chip, line the pins up with the holes in the socket, and gently press it until it starts to slide in, making sure that all the pins are going into the holes, and not bending out or in. Press firmly until the chip is seated. A couple of tips: Don't force the chips out of or into the sockets. You don't want to bend or break off pins. Don't use one of those "IC Extractor" tools that Rat Shack sells. It's not going to help, and often makes the problem worse, since the chip will suddenly pop loose at one end and not the other, almost always resulting in bent pins. Always remember the orientation of the chips. There will be a notch in the chip in the form of an indentation on the top, an indentation on one short side, or a large cutout on the top of the chip. You'll know it when you see it. If you're paranoid, mark the tops of the chips with a pencil. Careful of static electricity. You don't want to zap your any of the chips. Ground yourself by touching the screw on a lightswitch cover, or the metal case of your computer. There is a lot more to fixing Ataris than just swapping chips around, but that will generally narrow down where the problem is, and in many cases, help solve it. Ian Primus [email protected]

Determining what is wrong with an Atari takes intuition and a good familiarity of how the machine works, and what common symptoms are. Also, opening up the Atari and measuring voltages is a good start. Sometimes the voltage regulator dies, and can fail in different ways. Controller port problems like an Atari that always thinks the joystick is pointing some direction, or that a fire button is being held down, even when there is no joystick connected is usually the RIOT, video problems like flakey or garbled graphics is generally a TIA failure, etc. Ataris don't normally break often, but I am seeing more and more problems as time goes on. Diagnosing and repairing Ataris takes a good knowlede of basic electronics, some basic tools (a good multimeter is your friend), the ability to solder, as well as just general familiarity of all the innerworkings of the beast. I have actually sat down and traced out most of the circuits on a 2600 before, most are pretty simple, and the fact that the Atari only really uses three chips helps also. But, most importantly, I love fixing things, and I love electronics, so Atari repair is something I really enjoy. It's hard to get good at something if you don't like doing it. Ian Primus [email protected]

I've never plugged a chip into an Atari backwards, but I know what happens if you connect TTL logic chips backward. They get really hot, and generally are destroyed, since the +5v pin is now connected to ground, and the ground pin is now connected to +5v. In general, hooking things up backward is a Bad Thing. Based on this, I would imagine that the TIA is likely blown, but check the connections to the component you bent down, and make sure there aren't any short circuits, and that the things that are supposed to be connected are still connected. Also make sure that the TIA is properly seated in it's socket the correct way around. If it still doesn't work, you can try once again swapping parts from a working Atari, to verify that the rest of your parts still work. I wouldn't imagine that the rest of the Atari was damaged by plugging the TIA in backward, but I'm not sure. Good luck. Ian Primus [email protected]

The gray thingee is probably the clock crystal. Provided that you didn't break it off, it should be fine. As for the TIA, it's probably fried if you put it in backward, since the power input would no longer be feeding into the power input pin, so it probably burned it out. I would imagine that the rest of the Atari is still working, since the TIA would have been the only part affected, but then again, it could have fed power through the bus to the other chips, so I don't know. I'll have to look at the pinouts of the TIA to figure out what might have happened. Ian Primus [email protected]

If you have a modern TV, your best bet is svideo, provided, of course, that it has the proper input. As for the audio, it connects seperately to the television through an RCA plug. Most TV's these days will have a row of three colored RCA plugs on the back - yellow red and white. The yellow plug is for composite video, the red one is for the right channel audio, and the white one is for the left channel audio. Most TV's will also have an svideo connector right near this row of inputs on the back, which can be used in place of the composite video connector if the device you are connecting has svideo. Note that there normally won't be an svideo connector on the front of the television, it is normally only on the back. Also, you can't use the svideo connector and the composite video connector on any givin input (i.e. Input 1), at the same time, since the audio connectors are shared between them. But, if your set has more than one set of inputs, you can use the svideo on one, composite on the other, etc. Ian Primus [email protected]

Well, yes, and no. The Atari 2600 used mostly off the shelf parts, but the main chips (TIA, CPU and RIOT) are not quite as easy to find. There are still places that have new, old stock 2600 chips, like Best Electronics, as well as some of the people here on AA. That 2600 could be built from scratch relatively easily, provided you have those three chips. The rest of the parts are common resistors, diodes, capacitors, etc... and can be obtained at any good electronics store. I would imagine that with modern FPGA technology, it would be possible to recreate the three main chips, possibly even on a single FPGA. It is also no doubt possible to create an "Atari on a chip" with modern technology, that would require very little additional hardware to work. I think those little joysticks with 20 Atari games in them that they sell these days have something like that, but I don't think that it is a true "Atari on a chip", I think therre is some sort of microprocessor based emulation, or at least a different implementation of the system, since I heard that one person that has one noticed that Asteroids doesn't flicker. I have never taken one of those joystick consoles apart, however, so I'm not sure how they work. I know that the Atari could be created with off the shelf parts back in the 80's, since Coleco made clones, as well as their Atari 2600 adapter for the Colecovision, and IIRC, didn't Atari lose some lawsuit over those things? I've never taken a Coleco 2600 cart adapter apart, so I don't know how they did it, but I do know that it's basically a complete Atari 2600 that just pipes the video through to the Colecovision. Same thing with the adapter for the 5200. Anyone know if the Coleco adapter used the same main chips as the real 2600, or did they use something different? Ian Primus [email protected]

A fan would be really overkill. I have, however, fitted a better heat sink on the regulator before, since the original design just had it screwed to a metal pad on the board, but if you put on a small metal heat sink and some thermal compound, it helps dissipate the heat a little better. Heat, however, is not a big deal, the 7805 heats up, that's just how it works. It doesn't really need better cooling. If you regulator is heating up too much, hoewver, it should be replaced. Ian Primus [email protected]

reply Ian Primus [email protected]

PM sent. Ian Primus [email protected]

Composite video is what is used by most modern TV sets, as well as many older computer monitors like those meant for the Apple II. Separate chroma and luma was used by the older Commodore monitors, as well as most modern TV sets. S-Video _is_ seperate chroma and luma. It just uses a different connector. The Commodore monitors took two RCA plugs, one for chroma and one for luma. Modern TV sets take a 4 pin mini din plug for S-video, which contains the seperate chroma an luma signals. Composite video is nothing more than the chroma and luma lines tied together. So, in essence, the video board only needs to generate two signals, and depending on how you connect them and what connector you use, you can get composite, S-video or seperate chroma and luma for a Commodore monitor. By keeping the chroma and luma seperate, you get a crisper picture in many cases, since the signal doesn't have to be combined on one end and then uncombined on the other. The same prinicple goes for why composite video is clearer than RF. With RF, the signal has to be converted from the video signal through an RF modulator in the Atari, then piped to the TV, then converted back into a video signal with the demodulator in the TV. Composite and s-video cut out these steps, and as such, produce better picture. Ian Primus [email protected]

It could have been such a thing that the Donkey Kong cart was just dirty, and it was becoming dislodged slightly, either that, or your voltage regulator is on it's way out, and it just happened to present problems while playing Donkey Kong. It's really hard to fry a cart, I have actually tried. I wanted to see just how static sensitive these things were, so I took a Pac-Man cart apart, and held the circuit board in my hand, and shuffled my feet (wearing socks) up and down the carpeted hall about ten times (this was in the winter, so I was able to build up quite a charge.) Then, I held the board by the contacts, and brought the solder pads on the back of the ROM close to the screw on the lightswitch cover. When I was an inch away, a big blue spark jumped the gap, and I could easily feel it through the board. Plugged it back into the Atari, and it worked fine. I did this three times, and then finally killed it on the fourth. Those critters are pretty hard to kill, as are the consoles themselves. I wouldn't worry too much. Ian Primus [email protected]