vcsrocks
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Posts posted by vcsrocks
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Hi all. Happy new year!
For the past ten years or so, I have been fixing Atari consoles and often I install AV mods as part of the process.
At the beginning I was using a simple amplifier as many projects on the internet do, but I was not very happy with the video quality, so I quickly moved to the digital buffer approach.
As I convert a far number of consoles every year, from time to time I will run out of PCBs and, instead of just re-ordering the same design, I try to improve it and make it easier to install, better video and audio quality, etc...
Around 2018 I joined my AV design with my game pause mod:
Here are some examples of my previous mods:
The last PCB on the right is the one I used until mid last year. There were a few things I liked about it:
- It had AV and pause integrated, so it was easier to install than two separate mods
- There was no need to modify the console case for the AV cable
- The pause was controlled by the COLOR switch, so no extra switch installation
- The pause could be completely deactivated and the COLOR button could be used to switch the game to BW
- It could be mounted directly on top of the TIA and the labels on the pins made it easier to know which pins to connect for NTSC and PAL consoles. The connections were made straight down which avoided making wrong connections
As it was time to order PCBs again, I started working on a new design to include some features I collected on my wish list:
- An easier way to configure the board for NTSC or PAL. On the last board I made, a resistor network for this, which meant I needed to decide if I wanted it to be used for NTSC or PAL as I built the mod and it was not possible to change it afterwards
- Gemini support. As the Gemini has a different TIA, I had to reroute the connections manually, which made the installation much more complicated and error prone
- An LED indicator for the pause state
- Better connections for the AV cable
- A better solution for the audio and video chaos while the game is paused. The old board had addressed a lot of the problem, but that was a lot of room for improvement
So I came up with the design above which has a single jumper to configure PAL, NTSC and Genesis and the legends next to the pins show which TIA pins should be connected for each console type.
This makes it easier to install the mod and also change the console type after the board was build.
The other features are also included:
This is how it looks like installed in a Gemini:
So far I have converted a couple of dozens of PAL, NTSC and Gemini consoles with this new mod and I am quite happy with the result.
This time I ordered a larger number of PCBs though, so if anyone would like get one of these mods, I will soon put them on eBay for 29€, or you can pm me here.
Cheers.
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Didn't know that. Now I HAVE to check which ones I have ?
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8 hours ago, alfredtdk said:
POPEYE NG - COLORS ARCADE FINAL (PAL)
Very cool! I can't stop playing it!!
Thanks for sharing.
Grande abraco!
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19 hours ago, rbairos said:
Okay I got the above version in.
I made the PCB so you can attach the top cartridges in two ways:Good job!
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I guess the question is... when can we play it
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17 hours ago, jer10571 said:
Did you ever figure out what was wrong with this? If you have (or know someone who has) another unit, you could try swapping the chips 1 at a time like Crossbow suggests.
It probably landed on the bin by now, but before replacing the chips which can take time, the TIA can be tested by checking if the game reacts to reset/select/joystick with changes in the pattern shown on the TV (or even the audio if that is working). If the changes are timewise consistent with what you get on the working unity, the program is running properly and the problem in indeed likely to be the TIA.
If it doesn't though, you may want to check the cart edge connector soldering and metal connectors. I had a console where the problem was one of the data lines and the image on the TV was very similar.
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Read that this morning on the BBC app. Very much like a video game indeed.
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Also, you may want to try a more descriptive title. Tags also help attract the right attention to your post.
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I took a slightly more generic approach to my dev board and put a prototyping area on it:
The signal headers are similar to yours, and help if I have to use a quick jumper here and there.
I also included an inverter for CE and a connection for low voltage step down module if I am working with anything lower than 5V (marked as LV above and step down module below)
With copper tape is also very easy to run multiple pads with the same signal or power in one go.
I had a whole bunch made in 2020 to keep the price low, so I am sticking to this design, but maybe you can use some of the ideas also on yours.
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amazing!
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Very cool and thanks for sharing!
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Is there a manual/schematics to guide the assembly? The PCB seem to use different components from the original JR.
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9 hours ago, JM Games said:
Hi everyone, I remade the Doom 2 map Dead Simple in Unity using RTX raytracing, so I thought you guys might be interested! I wasn't sure what sub-forum to post this in, but thought I'd try this one.
Doom 2 But RTX is ON | Dead Simple Remake | (PC/PS1 to PS5) | WIP - YouTube
It seems like I can never get videos to embed! I pasted in the link, which I thought was the way to go, but no luck!
Really cool!!
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7 hours ago, clh333 said:
Yes, I agree, I have a problem. The long delay but eventual display suggests to me that one or more capacitors are out of spec. Having never taken one apart and having no schematics I really wouldn't know where to start; I would have to shotgun everything.
It doesn't seem worth it and I think I will return the unit.
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I have a TV/monitor in my workshop that takes forever and a minute to actually sync with a 2600 JR. Everything else works fine with it.
For a while I thought the problem was with the console, but at the end the TV just did not like the signal coming out of it.
This should be very easy to test: just turn on the console and, even without video, get a game started. Not just inserted but the actual game-play started. You can check how to do this with the image on first, but usually it involves pressing the joystick button or select on the console.
Once the image appears, if the game is playing, the console was likely running fine all along. There may still be a problem with the RF circuit, but that should be easier to figure out.
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1 minute ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:
A tip, which makes debugging with Stella easier: Let each bank have a different address. E.g. bank 0 = $1000, bank 1 = $3000, bank 3 = $5000 etc.
That way Stella can resolve labels much better.
True, but it is important to point out that the most significant nibble of the address should be odd (i.e. A12 = 1) to stay within the address space of the cards.
Your example is correct in that sense but it may not be obvious to a newbie.
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10 hours ago, DaveM said:
Good info. I was actually a bit confused on all that.
That whole topic can be annoyingly confusing. I made this for a friend a while ago:
Should probably have posted it with the text ?
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7 minutes ago, Enduro75 said:
Please may I ask if anyone has any info on how a ntsc cart behaves in a UK 2600...
Thank you...
In my experience, with a modern TV usually only the colors will be off as the TV will adjust to the frame rate delivered by the game. I have tons of NTSC games I play without any issues.
NTSC and PAL consoles also have different crystal clocks (3.59MHz for NTSC and 3.54MHz for PAL if I remember correctly). This will be divided by 3 to tack the CPU.
The clock is not impacted by the cart region though, but some games you will notice a slightly different audio output when playing the same cart on NTSC and PAL consoles.
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1 hour ago, CPUWIZ said:
@vcsrocks Der Kleine Bruder von dem Junior!
Danke nochmal fuer die PM!
Sehr gerne ?
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1 hour ago, Enduro75 said:
EU.. Im in the UK..
eBay is definitely your friend here. There are tons of Pitfall for sale but again, a boxed version will run for about 100€, a cart only will be around 20€.
As far as a PAL version goes, I think the closest you can get is Dschungel Boy which is essentially the same game with changes to the graphics.
Activision did release some PAL versions of their games, but Pitfall does not seem to be one of them:
https://atariage.com/company_page.php?CompanyID=11&SystemID=2600&SystemFilterID=2600
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There are some carts available but I honestly never used any of them.
Here is some documentation on how to use one of them:
http://hozervideo.net/atari/2600.html
He also has an online shop.
Years ago I was also looking for this and ended up designing my own board and controller.
I will get a new batch next week. PM me with your address and I can send you a couple of them.
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Very interesting.... What's that??!! ?
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The web page and redirect work for me. Looks very nice and professional too.
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very nice!
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18 hours ago, Enduro75 said:
I searched for pitfall as its a game I would like... But I wasn't really finding any cib pal versions... Is it hard or expensive to buy?
Where are you looking? US? Europe?
Usually CIBs are as expensive as it gets for a game, but if all you want to for now is play Pitfall, there are plenty of carts available.
Danke nochmal fuer die PM!
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Inside the Retron 77
in Atari 2600
Posted
The 2600 cart has two ground pins (12 and 24). Some systems use this to detect if a cart is inserted (and this may well be the case here) but it may be worth trying to swap one of these...