Nathan Strum

Probably still Free Fall. There's contact info here, and they openly encourage licensees (for "contemporary platforms" anyway). But that site hasn't been updated since 2008. The last ones (listed) to have licensed Archon were React Games. But they don't claim to own it - they're a development studio. The link for their version Archon goes nowhere.

It does! A massive improvement over the mess I started with, and far sight better than the inevitable mass of spaghetti wiring I would've ended up without it. It's about at the upper-end of my ability to solder small things, but much of that comes down to the form factor of the UAV itself. I'll check with John, since it's his console. Hadn't considered using a switch for that... those are for other purposes. But it's an interesting idea.

Sadly, not an option with this 7800. 90% for any NTSC device is probably 20% better than normal. I'm using an actual POKEY. RevEng mentioned in the comments there that the issue (in this case) is the header in the ROM file for the Utility Cart needs to be updated, which will be included in Trebor's next ROM pack update. Cool - thanks! When I get to my 7800, I'll give you a nudge about it. Thanks again for all the help in getting this particular one working again - especially for the Mount/Audio/Chroma board. That really simplified the process a great deal. (And thanks to alex_79 as well!) I'll be modding a couple of 2600's as well, so I'll be able to do a comparison of what it's like to install UAV's in those systems.

Sorry - I should've been clearer: The UAV jumper vias are what I had the most trouble working with. Bad close-up vision + ham-fisted soldering skillz aren't a great combination for soldering things that are right next to each other. It's through the Concerto. There's a hacked ROM that works with some consoles. It runs on my 7800, but not John's. I'm hoping the next Concerto firmware update addresses it, but there's no final release version of it yet - just interim builds.

Well, this blog entry just about ended very differently. But it's all-good now. So close to the finish line... just a couple more things to do after this. But first, here's where we're at now. When we last left this poor, abused 7800, I was about to install a UAV mod, using one of -^CrossBow^-'s 7800 UAV Mount Boards. First - I need to install the wires (or a header, but in this case, wires). I soldered the first one, then held each successive wire in place with some little copper clips I picked up somewhere ages ago. Probably Radio Shack. Anyway, they're super-handy. I also recently picked up a bigger magnifier, because age. Here they are, all soldered sort-of neatly in place. Note to self: next time you install one of these, switch out your soldering iron tip for a smaller one. In case you're wondering what each wire color is, here's a diagram I've made so I can be consistent when installing these: Next - I have to add a few wires to the Mount/Chroma Fix/Audio Circuit board: Time to bust out the Radio Shack "Helping Hands" I bought eons ago. The electrical tape keeps the alligator clip from marring things: This is a really tiny pad... but I was able to make a good connection. (As a side note - if I were designing mods/boards and such, I'd make the pads bigger, and space the vias further apart, so people like me who are a bit ham-fisted with soldering irons have a little easier time with them). And the power wires are in place (they can attach to either board - nice feature there, Jesse!) Everything is all wired up! Now at this point, I had a choice to make. The Mount board is designed to sit alongside the resistor legs, and be soldered to them. Alternately, Jesse suggested I could desolder those resistors (since they're for RF, and RF is long gone from this 7800), and just install the mod directly where they used to be using their vias. While that had some appeal, I decided I wanted to leave as much of the 7800 intact, just in case someone, someday wanted to try to put an RF modulator back. Plus, I wanted the practice for my own 7800, and the RF is definitely staying intact there. One potential downside to soldering the Mount board to the resistors is that Jesse said it would be a bear to remove. Desoldering those connections would be a pain - but I think you could instead just desolder all of the resistors from the board, and pull the entire thing out as a unit. Then you'd have pretty easy access to remove the resistors, and could reinstall them later. Anyway, in order to solder onto the resistor legs, I needed to reinstall a leg that had been unceremoniously chopped off by the previous modder. So I did that: Then used the little clips to hold the audio side in place: And the video side: Then, I soldered everything up (note to self: re-read previous note about installing a smaller soldering iron tip next time): The audio legs were particularly hard to reach. Removing the resistors and just plugging the board in their place would make soldering easier - but you'd have to go through all of the desoldering first. But eventually, I got the board in place: Now, to add the UAV board on top (again with the clips to hold things in place): And soldered! (Note to self: soldering. iron. tip. smaller. next. time.) I went through and tested continuity on everything, to make sure it was all properly connected. Some points weren't easily reachable, but that's easy to fix - just wrap a thin piece of wire around your multimeter probe (add tape if necessary) and you can reach pretty-much anything: Then, I connected the power and ground. There are a couple of points closer than this to get power from, but the previous modder outright ruined them. For some reason. But this worked fine (they're poked through, and soldered from the underside): Right! Now to test! I grabbed my handy test board, and wired it up. Usually I have separate left and right audio, but this mod is mono, so I repurposed one of the RCA jacks as composite video (for reasons which will be revealed eventually): Much to my surprise, it booted up first try! Looked great, too! Nice, clean, crisp display! And it's not totally washed out by the LED anymore, either! But... here's a question I have for all o' you tech-heads out there, and this has been bugging me for years. This 7800 Utility ROM says to "Match Color" between both sides of that bottom color bar (note: I haven't made any color adjustments): Similarly, the 2600 Color Bar Generator instructions also says to match the two background colors at the title screen: The 2600 field service manual has somewhat contradicting instructions for Atari's Diagnostic Cart, saying to adjust the colors so "the bars immediately above and below the reference line are within one shade of each other." But in the diagram, it points to them and says they should be the "same color". Here it is, running on this 7800: Maybe I'm being picky, but "within one shade" is not the same as "same color". More to the point, these aren't the same color. Stella shows the top color as F6, and the lower one as 16: So the question is... is the whole "match these two colors" thing wrong? Seems to me, if they're different colors, they shouldn't match. I wonder if Atari put that in their service manual as a quick "close enough" adjustment instruction, and everyone has just copied it ever since? The problem I've found, is that when I've adjusted 2600's so those two colors match, everything is shifted too much to be green. The browns effectively disappear from the palette. I don't think that would've been the original designers' intent. Wonder who we could ask about this? Anyway... back to the 7800. While the video worked first time out... sadly, the audio was not so lucky. As I ran the audio test on the 7800 Utility ROM, I got zip. Nada. Nothing. At least, not from the TIA side of things. Great. So... what did I break? The TIA audio worked with the earlier mod - but that was completely ripped out and gone now. Did I mis-wire something? Fry the audio board? Is the TIA borked? Is some component still missing? I thought at this point, I'd just end this blog entry with non-working audio, and see if alex_79 or -^CrossBow^- or someone would chime in with some ideas. But... Then I thought, "I wonder if the POKEY works?" So I fired up Ballblazer, and the audio there worked! (Love the THX-like intro sound.) Okay. The audio board is okay. My output wiring is okay. The stuff I replaced earlier (C10 and R5) are okay because they tie into the cartridge port for the POKEY. The TIA audio just isn't getting where it needs to go. So I dug through the schematics, and started tracing. Pins 12 and 13 of the TIA are combined, and then eventually run over to the base of C14. Pins 12 and 13 were tied into directly for the previous mod. So lets see where that leads us... Hmmm. A hole. There's not supposed to be a hole there (I checked this against my non-mutilated 7800): What's on the other side... What the fluffernutter?! The entire trace has been obliterated! What kind of a nincompoop does that? He only needed to clip the leg of the capacitor! $#%!! Ugh. Okay, well at least that explains it. So I bridged the missing trace with a purple wire (one of the few colors I haven't used yet): And presto! AAUUGGHH!! What happened? Heh. Forgot to plug in a cart. Okay. Back to the audio test. Well... Channel 0 works. But nothing from Channel 1. Back to the circuit board. There should be trace joining TIA pins 12 and 13 (there's one on my 7800). But it's not there. There's no continuity. I'm guessing the previous modder cut that trace so the TIA would be "stereo"?? I guess? Anyway, I bridged the two pins... A little further-away look at it: And while I had the soldering iron out, I also re-anchored the power jack. It wasn't sitting flush to the circuit board, and I was concerned about there being too much force exerted on the connection. The plastic tabs which are supposed to hold this in place are loose or missing. Not sure what do do about that... maybe a little epoxy? Anyway, back to testing. And this time - full TIA audio! And video! And POKEY audio as well! After the console warmed up, the colors changed slightly (to be expected): The right side of the bar is now warmer than the left side. Previously, the left side was warmer. So we're almost there! Now, I just need to fire up Tower Toppler, and adjust the... well... crap. Eh... who plays Tower Toppler anyway? Guess I should report this in the Concerto Firmware thread. Up next: Final wiring and patching up the case. Then we'll get around to what those switches are for. Published 1/16/23, 5:44PM

Thanks! I was trying to get Tower Toppler to run, to no avail. This did the trick. Much appreciated!

So... the 7800 isn't back to "working" yet, although I have made some progress. In the sense that "I've spent more money on it" and "I took it more apart". Let's look at the pretty pictures! Here are some fresh parts from Mouser: I may not use the RCA jacks... I'm more inclined to use the short "pigtail" type cables I used on my own 2600 as well as John's. You just plug them into your monitor's (or AV system's) cables using barrel connectors, saving wear-and-tear on 40-year-old brittle plastic. But I figured I'd buy the jacks anyway, just in case I decided to go that route. It's not like John's 7800 doesn't already have a gazillion holes in it (gratuitous JB Weld action, coming soon). Another item needing to be fixed on John's 7800 was the heat sink. The only thing holding this massive piece of aluminum in place was the voltage regulator. The previous modder drilled an extra hole in it (maybe to attach another voltage regulator?), and either desoldered the heat shield to drill it, or just worked it loose through repeated abuse. So I desoldered the old regulator, fully removed the heat sink, cleared out the vias (or as I like to call them "solder holes"), and clamped the heat sink back in place: Super-handy, those little clamps... Then I swapped out my soldering iron tip for a big ol' honkin'-sized one, and gave it what-for, until the heat sink was firmly in place again: Of course, I had to wait for my soldering iron to cool back down before I changed tips again. How do I know when it's safe to do so? With a cool toy! (Thank you, Amazon Prime Day.) I should really take some pics of the interior of the 7800 while it's running. That would be cool. Or hot. Or something. With the heat sink anchored, I installed a fresh voltage regulator: All done, and rock-solid! I also replaced the two bad transistors, and while I was at it, replaced the other 2N3906 for good measure. A quick test showed that this did indeed fix the joystick issue. So with the console now properly working, it was time to rip out the rest of the composite + audio mod. Snip-snip-snip! I also took this opportunity to clean all of that adhesive gunk off of where the HDMI connector had been glued down in place of the RF modulator. What an icky mess that was to get through! Unfortunately, there was some collateral damage... capacitor C3 was caked in the gunk, and I couldn't remove one without destroying the other... But I did get the gunk off. At least everything that could come off without ruining the circuit board: And the old mod was finally, fully removed: Now then... to find a replacement capacitor. I didn't really want to place another order just for one thing. Fortunately, according to schematics in the Atari 2600 Field Service Manual, there are a bunch of 1nF (.001µf) caps used on the 2600A. So I dug out a couple of spare boards. This board only had ceramic radial .001µf caps, which don't have very long leads, but I grabbed one anyway. Plus, this still had a variable inductor for tweaking audio on it - just what I needed to replace the choke that had been ham-fistedly added to the 7800. Score! This donor had axial capacitors - so I grabbed one of those as well. The stuff at the lower right... not my doing. This was sent to me as something to add to my Mods Comparison Page umpteen years ago. It never got added. But the parts have come in handy. So, here are the two potential replacement caps. Let's see how they actually test out! (Yes... I could just try to decipher the color coding.) Well, the axial cap isn't exactly 1nF... The radial one, even less so: Fortunately, I had some spare caps in a bag o' parts lying around. After some testing, I found these which were pretty close. Close enough! (Hopefully. If in the end it needs replacing, I'll order a proper part.) Right, so, C3 and C10 are both replaced, as is R3 and the variable inductor, the heat sink is anchored, the voltage regulator is replaced, the three transistors (not pictured) have been replaced, a re-cap kit installed, the blinding rainbow LED is no more, and the gunk is finally gone. The board is pretty abused-looking in places from the previous mod though, but serviceable. The still-missing R5 doesn't need to be there - the UAV mod picks up its signal on "this" side of it (gesturing with hand, as if anyone could actually see what I'm pointing at): Now then... onto the goodies! At the top are a terminal block and S-video/RCA hookup board I use for testing connections when installing mods. Below that (in the bag) are the Molex connectors I use to connect the mod wiring to the audio/video outputs, so the main board can be removed without being tethered to the video/audio cables (or jacks), or vice versa. Beneath that is... something! Then the UAV mod (with the unused kit parts off to the right), and below that, my favorite hookup wires, ready for tinning and crimping and stripping and soldering and tangling and cursing. So... just what is that aforementioned "something", and where does it go? Well, it's a new 7800 UAV Mount Board from Ivory Tower Collections. -^CrossBow^- kindly sold me a couple of one-offs for use on this (and my own) 7800. This includes the Chroma Fix circuit, an audio circuit, and provides for a mounting platform for the UAV mod. Just solder it to the legs of the resistors on the board, add power and ground lines, add one UAV mod and some wiring and boom! Done! I haven't actually soldered any of this yet. That's next time. But the pieces are here anyway. Thanks Jesse! Meanwhile, I spent even more money, this time with Best Electronics. One thing that became painfully apparent while testing the 7800 was that my Pro-Lame controllers were pretty-much shot. The joysticks are sloppy to the point of being nearly unusable and the fire buttons aren't far behind. Fortunately, Best has a 7800 joystick upgrade kit. But with required tools such as "two sliding desk drawers", "a chair" and "a cigarette lighter", the installation process seemed a bit sketchy to me. So I ordered a pre-upgraded one instead, before making any such attempt (or spending money) on my old joysticks. I also ordered one of their new 7800 power supplies. I still have my original 7800 one, which works fine, but I really like the beefier power cord of their new one. Less prone to failure, and at the moment, I'm plugging/unplugging that power supply a lot. And I also ordered two switches. For something. I would've ordered a few more items, but at the moment, you literally can't. Best is so backlogged, they're only allowing you to order three unique items per order. No more. Fortunately, I don't think I need anything else at the moment. As for this order, I can definitely recommend the new power supply. I really like the build quality of it. But the upgraded Pro-Line controller? Well, there's good and bad. First, the "good": it probably feels more responsive than these controllers ever did when they were brand-new. I played a few rounds of Baby Pac-Man and a few other games with it, and the Left/Right/Up/Down movement is super-precise. Very tight, accurate, reassuring. And the fire buttons? Well... they work fine. But the problem with the Pro-Line controllers is that the fire buttons are probably located in the least comfortable positions possible for someone to actually use. This is not Best's fault. You can't fix bad design with better switches. That's not the "bad". The "bad" is, one of the diagonals just simply will not work. Down/Right works great: Down/Left also works great: Up/Right... less so. Sometimes it doesn't quite register. But mostly it's fine: But then we come to Up/Left. It goes from Left... To... nothing. There's a dead zone where the diagonal should be: To Up: Now, if I press REALLY hard, I can make the diagonal connect, if I angle the joystick just exactly in the right spot. But clearly, this one didn't get tested enough before leaving the shop. Maybe it needs more cigarette lighter. Published 1/10/23 at 12:03AM

My Pro-Lines weren't working in either mode - the only way they'd work in 7800 mode is by booting with a CX-40 plugged in, then swapping it with a Pro-Line. Anyway (spoiler alert) the replacement transistors have arrived, are installed, and now the Pro-Lines work properly. From my (admittedly limited) experience with LEDs, the 800Ω shouldn't do any harm, just make the LED dimmer (which is the sole intent here). If it causes things to 'splode, John has my address. Yeah... that choke is funky. It was clearly installed when the mod was. I wasn't sure I should do anything about it since everything is (presently) working. I figured if I had audio issues post-mod-install, then I'd dig up a replacement. I'll be replacing C10 when I remove the old mod. I'm finally to the point now where everything else has been restored enough so I know the 7800 is working, so I can rip it out, and put in the UAV.

When we last left the 7800 Mod Mess Mixup Fixup™, alex_79 helpfully suggested: We'll get back to the transistors in a minute. Meanwhile, I decided to rip out the HDMI "mod" as a first step, because: 1) It's horrible, and 2) I did find a short between ground and the composite video output that I traced back to that mess. I didn't take pics of the process, suffice to say it involved cutting wires, desoldering and re-soldering, chewing through a glued-down HDMI connector with side-cutters, and lots and lots of prying to remove epoxied-on crapola. Here's the debris field: Good riddance to bad rubbish! The "mod" was stuck down to the RF shield with some sort of clear, sticky goop. Still haven't cleaned it all off yet. They also soldered ground wires to at least four places on the RF shield. For some reason. Still have to de-glob those as well. All of the prying resulted in some minor denting. I'll try to smooth them back out before final reassembly. And maybe try to remove those fingerprints. They'd replaced the stock 2200µF cap with a big, honkin' 4700µF one. They'd also screwed a second voltage regulator to the RF shield to supply power to the HDMI "mod". I reconnected the basic composite + audio mod, just enough to make sure the 7800 still worked (to the degree that it did before). Here's the bottom of the 7800, where they attached the TIA audio: I still need to clean off the snot (or whatever) they used to glue down the HDMI cable. There are also a few components they removed when they ripped out the RF module. Jesse (aka -^CrossBow^-) has been kindly answering a bunch of my questions and made some helpful suggestions about what needs to go back and what doesn't, in preparation for the UAV mod that will be going in there. Unfortunately, even though removing the HDMI "mod" did fix the short, it didn't fix the joystick problem. After this, I also installed a recap kit from Console5. I didn't expect it to do anything about the joystick issue, but it was on the "to-do" list. Yes... the whole case needs a serious cleaning. Also patching - there are a lot of holes in it. Also on the "to-do" list, was getting rid of that obnoxiously bright "rainbow" LED: By comparison, here's the original LED in my stock 7800 (I had to adjust my iPhone's exposure to make it appear as dim as it does in real-life): Here's the replacement red LED. Better, but still too bright: -^CrossBow^- said he usually adds a 460Ω resistor, in place of the stock one to drop the brightness down. I tried that, but felt it was still too bright: So I stepped it down further, with an 800Ω resistor: Much better! More like a power indicator, less like Laser Pink Floyd. Now then, onto the transistors. Both of the ones in question (labeled Q6 and Q8 on the board) are 2N3906 PNP transistors, but I didn't have any spares lying around, so I couldn't just replace them. So I desoldered those two transistors from my own 7800, so I could test and compare them with the ones from John's console. I marked them to keep track of which was which. John's are on the left (white dots), mine are on the right (orange dots): It's been awhile since basic high school electronics , so I had to look up how to test transistors with a multimeter. So here are the results from my 7800: Q6 Collector to Emitter OL Q6 Emitter to Base .691v Q6 Collector to Base .686v Q8 Collector to Emitter OL Q8 Emitter to Base .689v Q8 Collector to Base .682v Well, that all looks good. And from John's 7800: Q6 Emitter to Collector 11.6Ω Q6 Emitter to Base .703v Q6 Collector to Base .701v Q8 Collector to Emitter 67.9Ω Q8 Emitter to Base .659v Q8 Collector to Base .659v Well, that ain't right. So, I transplanted my transistors into John's 7800, and re-tested it: And lo-and-behold, that fixed it! The 7800 Pro-Line buttons now worked properly in 2600 and 7800 modes. Much easier than having to desolder and swap a RIOT. At least, it was finally working... for all of five minutes. Then I desoldered my transistors, and put them back in my 7800 where they came from. I've ordered some new ones from Mouser (along with some other parts), and will install those... next time. Published 1/3/23 at 11:46PM

Hmmm... maybe we could do a "film noir" version in black and white?

Aerlan is going to dress up as Elvira?

Chrome has always been a resource pig. It got so bad for awhile, we had to tell students to stop using Photoshop and Chrome at the same time.

I made an edit to it - I wonder if that’s why?

When writing blog entries, I started making offline copies because the blog software would periodically barf an entire entry while attempting to post or edit it. I'd similarly suggest doing the same for your show listings.

So when we last left "John's" 7800 , I still needed to test the audio, and look into the joystick problem. To hear audio on my Sony monitor, I have to munge any stereo signals together into mono (each input has only a single audio connector). Since this 7800 has a stereo mod (or two audio outputs anyway), I needed such an adapter. My other two inputs on the monitor already have adapter cables plugged into them that I made, but now I'm using the third input, and I want to minimize cable swapping, so it's time to make another one. You shouldn't just use a stock "Y" cable though, since you should attenuate the two signals when you mix them together. "Y" cables are meant to split, not combine. A simple mixer circuit can be found in this article: https://www.epanorama.net/circuits/linemixer.html I've used this to make my own simple AtariVox mixer for my 2600: https://www.cheeptech.com/atarivox.html Effectively, I'm doing the same thing here. But instead of mixing four channels down to two, I only need to mix two into one. So I only need half the circuit. And I'll just make it inline, using a "Y" cable and a couple of 10K Ohm resistors: Now, I just had these sitting around in a box of parts. So how did I know these were 10K Ohm? Why, because I've memorized resistor color-coding, of course! Not really. I used my recently-purchased Fluke multimeter on them. Then I looked up the color coding to confirm it. (I bought the Fluke multimeter because my ancient Radio Shack one was literally falling apart.) Man, I miss the days where you could just walk into your local Radio Shack and buy a pack of resistors. So, let's make a cable! First, chop it in half, and strip the ends. I use a stripper similar to this. But mine came from Radio Shack. The two ends on the left are sitting on top of each other - but there are two wires there. Bad photography. Twist the ground (bare) conductors so you can solder to them. Next, strip the ends of the center conductors (the red and white wires), and re-strip two of the cables to expose more wire because you realized after-the-fact that you didn't leave enough room to put on the heat-shrink-tubing : Before getting too far, be sure to slide on larger diameter pieces of heat shrink tubing (blue, in this photo) that are going to cover up everything later (and yes... I've had to desolder things because I've forgotten): Solder the resistors to one side of each center conductor. Leave one of the resistor leads intact so it's easier to work with (I use some "helping hands", also from Radio Shack): Before soldering the other side, be sure to slide on the smaller heat-shrink tubing (yellow here) that will cover the resistor and exposed wire: Then shrink it into place. Nice and neat. Since the bare conductors will be too short to meet, bridge the gap by soldering one side of each conductor onto some spare wire. I stripped off the insulation, since it's all going to be covered anyway and it's easier to work with: Trim it to length, and solder the other ends: Slide the heat-shrink tubing over, and shrink it into place! Job done. You now have a proper stereo-to-mono-munging-mix cable! They make great Christmas gifts! So, time to plug the 7800 back in and test the audio. Just one little problem... with 7800 Pro-Line controllers plugged in, I can't get past the Concerto's start-up menu. Pressing the fire button does nothing: To get it to work, I had to plug in a CX-40 joystick, which works fine. Once I got past the menu and was able to load the 7800 Utility Cart binary, I plugged back in my 7800 Pro-Lame controllers. Apart from a sticky right button on the right controller (it is the controller - not the console), both controllers worked fine. That said, both joysticks are terribly sloppy. I really need to get rebuild kits from Best. I'm also thinking of converting my old Gravis Mac GamePads over to a switchable Sega/7800 controller. Anyway, the rest of the switches and buttons all worked fine. And the whole point of all this was to test the audio. So I did, and it worked: Just pretend that's a video, and that you can hear sounds. Now that I knew the audio worked, it was time to dig further into the joystick issue. Weirdly, while the Concerto still refused to recognize the Pro-Line fire button at startup, my Pole Position cart did. It worked just fine. So maybe it was the Concerto? Well, most of my carts are still packed away, so I tried my Harmony Cart. Same results - Pro-Line buttons wouldn't work, but the CX-40 would. (As an aside, With the Concerto, I can't navigate without a working fire button. But I can with the Harmony cart, using Select and Reset. But it's being worked on... just not finalized yet.) Since I had the Harmony plugged in, here's the 7800 showing the 2600 Colors binary. Yeah... that's really dark... Since the Harmony had the same issue, I thought, "Okay... maybe it doesn't like multi-carts." Some weird issue with the HDMI converter and the cart drawing too much power or something? So I plugged in my go-to lowest-common-denominator: 2600 Pac-Man. But the Pro-Line button wouldn't work there either. I could start the game with Reset, and found that the directions worked just fine, but the fire button was a no-show. Yet again, with a CX-40 plugged in, the fire button worked fine. To try and further troubleshoot this, I popped in the 2600 Testcart. Since I own the cart (rather than loading it from a multi-cart), that would remove the multi-cart variable, and I could leave the Pro-Line plugged in, since after just a few seconds, the Testcart switches to the joystick test screen. The left Pro-Line, left fire button reads as: Left Keyboard * and Paddle 2 far-right: It reads the left Pro-Line, right fire button as Paddle 1 far-right: For the right Pro-Line, it reads both buttons as it should: Left fire button: ]\ And right fire button: It shows a CX-40 fire button correctly in both ports, left: And right: On my 7800, both Pro-Lines read as they should. left Pro-Line, left button: Left Pro-Line, right button: Right Pro-Line, left button: Right Pro-Line, right button: So John's 7800 is reading Pro-Lines plugged into the left port all wonky. Could be the RIOT, but I think before I go ripping that out, I'm going to completely remove the HDMI-converter mess, leaving just the AV mod in place, and see what that does. It's got to go away sometime, and now seems as good of a time as any.

The 7800 really needs a nickname. The 2600 has several: Heavy Sixer, Vader, Jr., etc. The 5200 is... uh... the Boat Anchor? Well, we'll go with that for now. But the 7800? As far as I know, it never got a nickname. So I'm going to bestow one upon it: The Wedge. It's cool. It's hip. It's trendy. And I'm sure that nothing ever nicknamed The Wedge ever had any bad connotations whatsoever. Anyway, it's time to 7800-up my blog with my next fixit project: repairing a 7800. My first! Not my first 7800. My first attempt at repairing a 7800. This is someone else's 7800. Now then, some time ago, someone sent me a pile of consoles to fix. I just wish I could remember who that was... ? Guess I'll never know. But I do remember what's wrong: after a lightning storm (which took out two 2600s which I previously fixed here and here), the joystick buttons on the left port didn't work, and the right port didn't respond at all. So the first suspect is the RIOT. Also, there was a mod installed (by some random person on eBay apparently) that had composite and HDMI that... Wait. An HDMI mod? That can't be right. There are no HDMI mods. There are HDMI scalers, adapters, converters and transcoders... but not "mods". Huh. Anyway, the owner, let's call him "John", didn't like the dull (aka "normal" on a 7800) colors of the composite video, and said the HDMI looked terrible. So he was interested in having that improved, in addition to fixing the other problems. Anyway... let's take a look-see underneath. Video/audio mod jacks on the left. Magic "turn on the HDMI mod" switch on the right. And a close-up of the HDMI port. Yep. There's an HDMI port there. Weird. And extra holes for... ventilation? Well, let's see if it works. First - checking my monitor's composite input with color bars: Annnnnnd... nothing from the 7800. But man... that is one BRIGHT LED. Obnoxiously so. But at least it's getting power. Next, I'll try HDMI. To set up my LG 4K monitor, I'm first sending my color bars through a Gefen scaler. Besides scaling S-Video video very cleanly, you can also make sure you're keeping the proper, original aspect ratio. Very robust options menu with lots of adjustments too. It's a bit bulky, runs quite warm, and tends to be kind-of expensive. But I've used these at work for years, and never found a better, more full-featured scaler (outside of professional broadcast gear). And presently, Amazon has used ones for around $100. Dirt cheap! So the HDMI into my monitor is properly set up, but no love from the 7800's HDMI output: Did I mention how obnoxiously bright the LED is? And it color-cycles, too. That may need to get replaced. Well, it ain't gonna fix itself. Let's open 'er up and see what's what. Umm... okay. That's a thing. I guess. It's a bit of a hodge-podge. Like a leftover wire bin at an electronics flea market. The soldering is... amazing. Well, there's your problem!™ At least one of them. That wire will need to go back. Let's look under the hood... if we dare. The HDMI "mod" is actually a cheap AV to HDMI converter from Gearbest. The product page is no longer there, but you can find it on Wayback. (If you Google "AY29J Mini AV to HDMI Converter" it will still return a picture of it. Basically, it's one of these.) Basically, they removed the board from the converter, desoldered all of the jacks (except HDMI) and grafted the output from the composite mod to it. And pulled power from somewhere. Small wonder the thing worked in the first place. The wiring is... amazing. The rest of the AV mod looks like a mix of this and this. And hot glue. Lots of hot glue. I mourn the poor RF modulator that died a horrible death for this. But wait! Another loose wire. What might this have been haphazardly attached to? Looks like the center pin of the video jack. Well, that would explain the complete lack of picture everywhere. It's not long enough to easily reattach, so I grafted a wire onto the end of it, and heat-shrunk some tubing onto it using my new toy, which I'm totally digging. Fast, quiet (for a heat gun), and precise. And less fussy than using the soldering iron for heat-shrink tubing. Then I soldered the other broken wire back onto the switch of destiny. It magically enables HDMI somehow. Maybe it supplies power to the converter? Would it work? Much to my surprise, it fired right up. The composite picture isn't awful. Or rather, it's not any worse than my RF 7800. Color looks pretty-good. A touch brighter than my RF 7800. Did I mention how bright that LED is? And so... many... fingerprints. Well, let's take a look at the HDMI output. It works... but it's pretty awful. It just stretches everything out to 16:9, and there's a ton of artifacts from over-sharpening. Ugh. Ick. But then, this is composite video, being barfed through an $11 converter. Here's the 7800's composite scaled through the Gefen. Notice the appropriate aspect ratio: But blowing up composite is never pretty. The Gefen makes no attempts to hide anything. Lots of fun bleeding from the composite out. And for comparison's sake, here's the same composite out through a RetroTink 2X-Mini: It sharpens the video a bit more than the Gefen, but it's also stretching it - something you can't alter with the 2X-Mini. Maybe the 5X-Pro is better. One of these days I should order one, and do a shoot-out with the Gefen. Tons of bleed. Garbage-in, garbage-out. Yeah... we can do better than this. I haven't checked the audio. I probably should before I get any further into this. So, what's up next for this 7800? Well... here's a peek: Stay tuned, as we rip this thing's guts apart, and put it back together. Properly.

I remember seeing these at my local game store (Video Hut in Seattle). I distinctly recall knowing that Chopper Command, Starmaster and Pitfall! would be coming out, and fully bought into the hype. Love going through this thread and seeing all of this stuff - most of it for the first time. Thanks to everyone posting in it!

Thanks for the info. Adding that variant would be helpful. I kept looking through Trebor's utility collection for something that would just tell me, "Yep. There's a POKEY here." Thanks! And thanks for sending me the POKEY. That was a pretty long-shot repair, but it was fun to try something different and I'm pleased it worked out (and that the Ballblazer cart didn't die a horrible death in vain ).

Some time ago, I was planning to order a Concerto cart for my 7800. I didn't have a POKEY to install in it, but figured I'd either order one from Best, or wait until the HOKEY was available to order the Concerto. Around that same time, James mangled the daylights out of a POKEY, trying to remove it from a poor, unsuspecting Ballblazer cart. I offered to attempt to fix it, if he wanted to send it to me. So he did, presuming it to be DOA anyway (he subsequently bought a replacement POKEY from Best). I didn't have anything to test it in though (and I wasn't about to mangle my own Ballblazer cart for testing), so I used the excuse of sort-of now having a POKEY to order my Concerto. A year-and-a-half later, I finally got around to attempting to fix the chip. Now, I didn't hold out much hope for success. I figured at best, I'd have a 30% chance of this working. Thirty. Percent. I think that was pretty optimistic, if you look at the pictures of the aftermath linked above. When it arrived, I didn't think it looked all that bad. Although that was the pretty side. This side... Yeah. Ouch. It looks like James desoldered about 2/3 of the chip successfully, then just lost patience and tried ripping it out the rest of the way. (Just speculating... I'm sure James would never get impatient. ) So first things first - a little desoldering wick and some tweezers to clean-up and gently unbend the pins: So that all cleaned up pretty well, and just left me with one completely-broken-off pin, and one half broken one (third from the left): So to fix it, I decided to graft on a donor pin from another (dead) chip. I have a pretty-good collection of them now, from fixing up a few 2600's. Here's one from one of John's consoles: For ease-of-access sake, I picked a corner pin that looked particularly stout, and chipped away at the resin with side cutters until I got a nice amount of the leg exposed: Then I broke off the chunk underneath. Neatness does not count here - I'm just making sure I don't damage the pin that I want. Then a couple of quick bends and presto! Donor body part! Now I had to expose the top of the leg on the POKEY. I carefully scored the resin with a razor saw: I had to be careful not to cut too deep and damage the part of the leg I needed to get to: Once scored, I figured I could just pop the piece off with a pair of side-cutters, as I'd done on the donor chip: No such luck. I spent about 20 minutes gradually chipping and scraping my way down to metal: Next, I cleaned and tinned the contact: And used a spare chip socket to line up the donor. Sorry for the blurriness. iPhone 6S. (I refuse to upgrade.) A quick touch or two with the soldering iron, and the leg was attached! Next, I had to fix the half-broken pin (again - third from the left): I forgot to take a picture of clipping the donor pin off, so I craftily Photoshopped one. Nobody will ever be able to tell the difference! I then forgot to take a picture of clipping off the broken half of the POKEY pin, and again was forced to show off my mad Photoshoppery skillz: I used the socket again to line them up, and grafted the new pin on top of the old one: Done! And the other side, because of course I remembered to take a picture of something I didn't need to: So would it work? Remember - I'm giving myself a 30% chance of success, so I'm not expecting much. First though, I figured I'd better see if the Concerto cart itself actually worked. I'd never tested it, POKEY or not. I popped it into my 7800 with a fresh SD card (since I can't find my old ones), fired up a 7800 test binary, and presto! No POKEY! Because I hadn't installed it yet. But hey - the cart works. I tried a few other binaries just to make sure, including Ballblazer (which was deafeningly, and unsurprisingly, silent). Time to install the Hacky POKEY! Opening the shell, I somehow managed to break off a tiny little alignment pin. Bummer. But that's what screws are for. I gently (or gingerly even) seated the POKEY in the socket, and carefully squeezed it into place: Everything fully seated, and no bent pins! I considered throwing a little JB Weld over the corner to tidy it up, but I kind-of like the look. It has a history to it now. And also, I didn't want to spend the time on it (thirty percent chance of success and such). Before doing anything else, I checked continuity from the chip through the board. Just to make sure that if the chip still worked (thirty percent), that the signal paths were good. I then reassembled the cart... And fired it up! Would it work? Well... first I had to wade through the Concerto's startup sequence: Looks pretty good for stock RF. Then I loaded the test cart binary... And... nothing! Still no POKEY. Thirty. Percent. But then I thought, "What if the test binary doesn't see the POKEY because it's in the Concerto?" The Concerto isn't exactly 100% compatible. So, I fired up Ballblazer... And was met with some reassuringly jamming tunes! The POKEY worked! Take that, other 70%! You'll just have to pretend this is video. But the music is there. Just to be sure, I fired up Commando: And that worked, too! (Again, you'll have to pretend.) So I managed to revive James' mangled POKEY! And now I have a working POKEY for my Concerto cart! Unless he wants it back. That would be awkward. I'm kind-of attached to it now. Anyway... And yes, my 7800's video is a little bit lot on the dark side: But my monitor is calibrated properly for NTSC: It's hard to get a good picture with my iPhone (refuse to upgrade), but yes, the PLUGE is clearly visible in person: Not sure if adding a UAV mod would address the brightness issue, but I'll likely try that at some point. After I experiment practice on John's 7800, that is. You think this POKEY was a mess? Just wait. But that's a story for another time...

Old gig, just remote. Same email address. Definitely should catch up.

There are condos everywhere. It's like driving down canyons made of ugly architecture. Funny you should mention the missing Blockbusters though - I passed by a couple of former locations the other day, and was kind-of lamenting them. Well, maybe not Blockbuster in particular, but that era of home video rental. Discovering new favorites, hunting for elusive rarities, binge-watching cartoons or sci-fi, or just renting really, really awful movies for the sake of making fun of them. Speaking of which... I wonder if I should go see the new Avatar flick?

I need to dig my Vectrex out of storage. And install a de-buzz kit. And get a new controller for it.

As I was getting my 2600 setup set back up, I ran into another issue. I used an old Pelican S-Video switch to connect my 2600 (along with other S-Video components like my LaserDisc player and Dreamcast) to my HDTV. Well, I no longer have the HDTV, and the LaserDisc player and Dreamcast are likely to stay in storage for the foreseeable future, but I wanted to re-use the switch with my Sony PVM-14M2U monitor so I wouldn't have to keep swapping cables. And while it still switched S-Video just fine, the audio wasn't fully working. Most notably, the right channels were intermittent, and cut in and out any time I moved cables that were plugged in. So, now it was time to take this thing apart, and see if I could fix it. (Or spend 15 bucks to replace it.) What I found out, was that when the right (red) audio jacks were installed, even though the tops of them (where the ground connector is) were seated flush against the circuit board prior to being soldered in place... ...the center connectors were not. Several of them were just short of being fully pressed into place prior to soldering, so when you plugged in a cable, it pushed on the middle of the jack, and without the support of the circuit board behind it, it would eventually push the pad off the circuit board, breaking the trace. So, for those where the trace was broken, I had to install jumper wires to go from the center post to the nearest available solderable point on that trace. Fortunately, just at the base of the green board, there were little gaps of bare copper I could solder to. The other two inputs didn't need to be fixed since they hadn't broken, but I went ahead and re-flowed the solder on them, pressing the jacks firmly against the circuit board so this wouldn't become a problem. I then tested all of the connections with a multimeter for continuity and shorts, and it was job done! Except... it wasn't. When I plugged in actual audio to test it, the last three inputs still didn't work! And not just the right channel, but the left as well. After a little more testing, I found that the ground trace had broken between inputs 2 and 3. So I soldered a jumper there as well, checked everything again (including ground this time ), and now it was fully fixed and working again. Here it is in place, on top of my Sony monitor and TU-1041U tuner (which I use for RF), with new pushbutton labels for my color bar generator, 2600, 7800 (S-Video mod pending), and an auxiliary cable. Being a nearly 20-year-old switch, it's a little clunky, and it needed a little TLC to keep going, but it still does the job!

So, remember when I foolishly wrote this? I guess two years counts as "some longevity". Because yesterday, after recently moving back to Seattle*, I finally unpacked my 2600, hooked it up for the first time, and got this: Looks suspiciously like the pics in that other blog post, doesn't it? (I'm assuming you clicked on the link. If you didn't... how do you know I'm not lying? Or maybe there's something really spectacularly awesome you're missing over there! How can you even sleep at night not having clicked it? Do it! Do it now!!) Right... so it looks like I get to take my 2600 apart again. Not sure what happened. Hopefully something just worked loose. I really packed my 2600 well, so it shouldn't really have been bounced around any. But what happens in a POD, stays in a POD. Or something. (The world's briefest 2600 repair later...) Well, that was easy. Three of the chips (including the mod board) had worked themselves a little loose from their sockets and just had to be popped back down. Probably because of the rather extreme temperature differentials between Southern California and an unusually snowy Seattle, plus being jostled around for 1100 miles during the move. Anyway - it's all back-to-normal now: Usually I have my 2600 hooked up to my 46" Sony HDTV, but that didn't make the trip. It was over 16 years old, the backlight was starting to get spotty, and the thing weighed 90 pounds! (Just about ruined myself getting it off the wall.) I can pick up a newer, bigger, lighter, better, and faster-responding HDTV for a fraction of what I paid for that one. Besides, there just wasn't enough room in the POD for its box. But I kept my Sony CRT, tuner, and various and sundry gaming-related sundries (s-video switcher, color bar generator, etc.), so I can get back to playing (and helping develop) homebrews. Now then... all I need to do is figure out in which of the 70 or so boxes I packed, are my AtariVox and Harmony cart's SD cards. *After a brief absence of only 31 years. I'm much happier now.