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Hacking and breaking stuff is always a guaranteed fun way to waste time. :-) @Sloopy - I have an Ouya also.. It's pretty cool.

Sounds like a great idea! Better get on that! :-)

My Sunday project.. Using the Peroxide trick on my Atari 800 case. I pulled the entire thing apart. The people that used it or had it in their house before me must have been heavy smokers because it was really, really yellow and gross. Boards were dirty and gross as well. Here are my results after using 20% peroxide paste from the local Hair Salon depot store. There's some weird coloring on the cartridge cover. The lighter areas are where light is reflecting off the cartridge cover and the grill behind it. There is one dark spot which is a small burn of some sort. All in all, I thought it was pretty good results! I've been cleaning all the boards with Isopropyl. (More on those)

Sloopy helped me get it working again. But it is something useful to know in case others are really wanting to pull their unit apart! After seeing it, things all clicked.

Hi, Over the weekend I did the peroxide trick to my A800 case. The good news, is that worked. I'll be posing pictures on to that thread. The problem I'm having now is that while cleaning the cartridge door and top vent, the entire thing came apart. I have no idea how to put it back together. Do any of you have ideas on what I should do to fix this? Thanks in advance! Joe

Well, I think I want to get the 4 port model and then mod the heck out of it. Just seems more fun! Thanks for the link to the WIKI. It will be on my list of reading tonight! Groovy! I looked up Gremilns (and the story.. very interesting). It is a pretty good looking game. I think the game I would look forward to playing most is Adventure II. Looks really good!

I never thought the "Lucky Charms" were stupid. At the time I thought it was cool that a company was doing something different than variations of ABCXYZ. I liked how the PC Engine did things with the I II III IV, select, run.

It was actually our conversation on the 5200 in the chat that got me looking into it. My wife thanks you for adding yet another unit to my obsession. :-) So, in that case, I'd be better off with the two port model vs the 4 port model or are there modifications to change the 4 port model to the convenience of omitting the special switchbox?

Well, I just got an Atari 800. I was just surprised that the architectures was so similar. The A800 seems like a very capable unit. I'm just surprised that more wasn't done by Atari with the 5200 considering it's based on the Atari 800. I've thought about buying one since reading about this. I guess I was more curious whether someone created a compatible gamepad for it. I've seen people hack already existing controllers. I'm just from the generation that prefers gamepads vs joysticks. :-) Don't worry. I won't argue. I'm looking at a few auctions now to see about getting one. That seems to be the consensus from many that I've heard from. I guess my questions are based around the idea that if the 5200 was based on the 800/400, why wasn't more done with it? Being that the 7800 came out in response to the NES, I'm surprised that the 5200 wasn't just upgraded to more memory and more games. It was already superior to the 7800 in terms of sound. Also, many of the games when compared look very similar to the 7800. Probably a little less graphic quality, but I hope you see my point.

Yesterday in the chatroom, a few people peaked my interest in the Atari 5200. I always heard bad things about it (IE: controller easily broken, unit was HUGE, and it didn't really offer much). Needless to say, I wasn't interested in the unit I read how closely related it is to the Atari 800 computer. This made me ponder a few questions to ask.. 1.) Is there a way to expand the memory from 16KB to say.. 128KB or more. 2.) Would it be capable of the performance that an A800 would have? IE: Project-M, a Wolfenstien 3D remake, looks really impressive. So does the Space Harrier remake for the A800. Would the 5200, given it had enough memory, be capable of producing that kind of animation? 3.) Was there ever a gamepad made for the 5200? Or are the only options that one has is using a joystick?

lol.. I'd only be interested if I got so far in the game that it revealed some super secret code that an elderly couple would hire some two bit thugs to kill me over.. If it made me hallucinate about an imaginary special forces friend, I'd be sold! The movie was horrible. I can only imagine that if the movie was that bad, the game would be worse. Being that it's a fake makes this all the more laughable. Thanks guys for reporting it to Ebay.

Awesome! Thank you very much! "Mapping the Atari" is definitely on my list. (I made sure to bookmark this thread.. So much useful info) Thanks again everyone!

We may disagree.. But I do like your signature.

Well.. There are some things that are close enough that we can compare. (IE: Sound, CPU, Graphics) So far, I like the POKEY vs the SID when it comes to sound and music. (not flamebaiting here). The CPU are both 6502 based, although the Atari's is close to .79 MHZ faster. Both the VIC-II and ANTIC are pretty impressive for the time. I guess in the end, it comes down to personal preference. Both are able to be modded heavily, both had subsequent versions that were nifty and both had great production runs. Both also changed the world... and both are better than an Apple II. To be honest, I have reverence for both units.

Found a great website with many things I would need for connecting to a PC. Thanks a lot for having me search for the APE! Bookmarked it! Sounds great! That's where I'll start then! I may just do that. I tend to leave things like that open when testing carts. It's more an annoyance than anything, so maybe I'll devise a way to disable the switch permanently. I downloaded this book via torrent. To be honest, I hate doing things that way. I would much rather buy and have a real copy. Any suggestions on where I would buy them? The D Version says "Rev. D" on the CPU board. No idea what the difference is.

I haven't put it back together yet. It's still in pieces until I get the board from Toad.. I figured since I already have it apart, what's the point in putting it back together again only to disassemble it? In the meantime, I'm taking the opportunity to soak the casing in 20% peroxide solution so that the yellowness goes away. (Using the guide in the root of the Atari 8-bit area).