hex65000

That's pretty odd. Unless you have a bunch of those auto-switchboxes chained up you shouldn't have video problems. Perhaps you should describe your setup. Also realize that this project is good _only_ for the 4 port 5200 machines. Since they are 'special' and have DC power and RF running on the same chunk of cable. I'm saying this because It sounds like you want to replace ALL of your RF switchboxes with this thing -- and that won't work. I mean I could design a manual switchbox to replace the autoswitchboxes, but it would not be pretty. (the design) And much more expensive -- a power supply would be needed to drive the relay(s). Although... It does give me another good idea... muhaha! Hex. [ Why yes... I am a supervillian. ]

I woudn't expect it to be critical... I think the clock speed is around 16MHz or less (I don't have one cracked open and handy. I'm pretty sure that's a period of around 62ns. Even then, async parts may be affected -- point made. Still, 0.5ns is pretty tight timing for 1984 technology. I _do_ suspect that cable length is his problem child though. If I was a bettin' man, I'd get my grubby paws on two genesis decks and a good scope; preferably something with some storage and at better than 100MHz, and start comparing signals that are going through your cable to signals attached directly to the board. Use a similar model Genesis and the same cart so that the signal pattern will likely be identical. If your signal coming through the cable looks notably crappier than the one on board, it's noise/signal strength and you are prolly gonna have to look at hardware to buffer the I/O to the cart. If the signals look fine and it's still crapping out, Artlover may be right and it could be a timing issue. You could be a real maniac and swap out any std. ttl parts with high speed ACT parts... In fact I'd recommend that you use the ACT family if you do have to design a buffer. I think the ACT family has rise/fall times that are sub 10ns -- hence reducing any MORE timing issues that could spring up. One of our customers uses a bunch of ACT244 buffers to drive all of their FPGA I/O so they get sharp signals. Why not just use a shorter cable length and stack the 32x on top of the genny and permanently fix it to the system? Hex. [ Go Getter-1 ! ]

Pictures of the board. I lack a digital camera. Anyway, if you want to test the second one out and report on it w/ pictures PM me. Admittedly, I have a certain batch of folks in mind for this one. Hex. [ You have no IDEA how happy I am about this project working... ]

You might be losing signal strength and/or getting crosstalk if you are running a peice of cable that far. Those data lines aren't supposed to go that far. You could try adding a batch of digital buffers to crank up the signal strength to/from the system. I'm reaching a bit, but that would be my first guess. Hex. [ Off to tweak... ]

Cool! What was wrong with it? Hex. [ Has two 'dead' decks that he's just slowly cannibalizing... ]

I've finally got my switchbox project up and running 100% ! The original msg I posted about it... http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=36384 The next problem is a board enclosure. I _was_ going to use an EA Genesis cart, bit it's not tall enough. What had to be overcome... - I botched the SMD pad sizes for all of my reisistors. I wound up just getting some smaller resistors and I'll fix the board for the final revision. - Oops! forgot to run power to the relay... duh! - some of the through-holes were too small. I wanted to use heavier wires than what would fit. - The board house neglected to mill out a few spots... Dremel -- I choose you! - The relay would trip to the 5200 at power on, but never toggle back to the antenna; It looks like the Omron relay I selected doesn't need as much voltage as its predecessor. I wound up adding a pot to the circuit and just tweeked until everything worked right. If I add about 180 ohms to the circuit, it works fairly well. A smaller resistance works (~150 ohms) but the time delay for the relay to toggle from game to antenna is notably long. If I go too high, the relay won't toggle to the game mode and the picture is crummy. This gave me the biggest fits of all. What's next: - An enclosure. - I would like someone here who is clueful to evaluate my second prototype board. - If all goes well, I'll place an order for at least 24 more boards and attempt to sell them off. Comments? Hex. [ "Rabbits aren't cool!" --Rintaro; Medabots ]

povlok1 said... don't sand on that board.. that is just flux seapage.. - - - -- - - - He's right, it's just an abundant amount of flux. You can clean it off (if you want) with either rubbing or denatured alcohol. However, bear in mind that unless you put a lot of work into it, you'll get flux _everywhere_. I cleaned up a vader 2600 once and it took me three sweeps to get everything tidied up. (not fun) Perhaps you should start with what the deck is not doing besides not working. Cleaning flux off it will make the board pretty, but prolly won't fix anything. Hex. [ Really needs a good scheme for fixing all those damn 2600 sticks.. ]

I agree, Ikaruga is insanely hard... I was nice to get the english language version from the cube though. Had I known that it would be <$20 for the Gamecube, I would have held out for it. I like Mario Sunshine, but I got pretty stuck on a lot of the levels and haven't gone back to take it on again. Perhaps someday... Right now I'm playing Medabots Silver Rokusho on the GB-player... After logging 10+ hrs on it I just realized that I have scratched the surface... oh boy... And I still have a review I want to do on Medabots : Infinity. (Hint: Pay $15-$20 for this game not $30.) Hex. [ Our mission: To take over the world in the weirdest way possible! ]

Just to follow up on this... I took a 50MHz scope to this thing and took some measurements. My conclusion is that it's not perfect, but nothing was made worse. The setup: 2600 system (light 6 switch) Factory 2600 power brick (9V ~500mA) A Space Invaders Cart -- to make the system do something. V(in)(ripple) = 0.4Vp-p V(in)(DC) = 10.4V to 10V V(out) = 4.93VDC (1.4% difference from optimal 5V) Now something that I couldn't figure out is a series of very small pulses showing up on the output. (0.2vp-p) At a frequency of about 31.25kHz. Every time I tried to get a better look at these pulses, I just got a big clump of noise. So I can't tell if this was a problem I created or pre-existed before I added the post-regulation caps. Hex. [ Making the best he can with what he has... ]

You can dooooooooo it! Hey, where's Adam Sandler? - - - -- - - - Hopfully getting p!mpsLapped by Bob Barker again.... While I wouldn't mind a port to the 2600, I don't think it will happen in a cart. format. The system isn't on retail shelves anymore and we are (technically) the minority. If someone creates in mass quantities the killer 2600 replacement that doesn't result in the designer going into litigation hades we _might_ see something like commercially available 2600 carts. The homebrew aspect has promise... IE : "Pitfall Hairy : the only adventure" Hex. [ It took 16+ years to get Unicron on the shelves... and now they just sit there... ]

yor reasoning on a 1960's projecytile sounds reasonable. However there is a great big difference between mil/aerospace parts and commercial grade parts. Things such as temperature and in some cases radiation tolerant parts make things extra exciting -- and expensive. I heard earlier this month from some guy who claimed that a PS2 could run an entire rocket... Once I stopped laughing at him, I tried to enlighten him with what little I know about the aerospace industry while at the same time not broadcast anything important. Hex. [ Sometimes thinks that in the human race, you occasionally have to get out and push. ]

The Genesis. Really. With the exception of the 'everybody wants' games, they are pretty cheap overall and is a competent gaming system. Oddly, there are a bunch of odd cartoon franchises for the genny that I never realized before. I picked up today from Game-Rob(stop): The Tick, and Gargoyles. I don't expect top-shelf action, but it's something different. Last year I also grabbed Exo-squad for the Genny too... Hex. [ Last seen Metabee Bop-Bop Boppin'... ]

Dead or Alive Volleyball... I hope my girlfriend never notices it amonst my X-crate games. Oh, and I'm __Terrible__ at it. I played it for 45 mins in practice mode and was trashed by the cpu many times. I haven't been motivated to play it since... Hex. [ Ready to curl up with his new Medabots game... ]

Honestly, you aren't missing much with Mr Driller 2. It's very much like the first Mr. Driller. Buy Mr. Driller Ace...it has a wider range of game types than Driller 2. As CPUwiz said, Gameboy/advance games are totally region free. The only thing that makes playing import gameboy games tough is the language barrier. This applies to the Game boy player on the Gamecube as well. Hex. [ Last seen about to bust out the Dremel... I _AM_ Mr. Driller! ]

The thing that isn't cool here is that Bloatedmonkey should have been more forthcoming in the auction itself. You can _just_ squint out the water damage on the slot racers box, but the damage to that racing pack box is completely omitted. I'm glad it got sorted out though. My advise is this: be thorough. It may take more time, but if it's done right the first time you'll have fewer people in your face. My $0.02 .... Hex. [ Waiting for Mr. Referee... ]

MegaManFan said... Oh, and I just bought a Mr. Driller Ace for GBA on eBay. - - - -- - - - You have chosen wisely. Let me know if you manage to beat the south pole. That's _HARD_. Oh well, that's what the GB-player is for. Hex. [ Can't find his DC version of Mr. Driller... and is breaking into a mild sweat... ]

You're close about my reasoning. I swap out the regulator because it's just as old as the rest of the system (~20 years). Since it gets hot, it just seems smart to toss in a new one. The heat sink was a reaction to the 4 switch systems which have a crappy heat plate. Since I have a box of 7805s with heat sinks this mod was just easy. The addition of the caps was just inspired whim. However the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. The other part of my attitude is that if you don't have a good supply voltage to your system, you are just abusing your system unnecessarily. Yes, I am dropping in new 7805 regulators. As for the overkill, it might be, but I was surprised to not see anything on the output side of the 7805. On the 4 switchers they place a 0.22uF on the output side for filtering. My conclusion is that Atari was experimenting with the power design between revisions. I can think of 4 different setups off the top of my head -- all similar, but slightly different. Hex. [ Making a mess over the little things... ]

Now look closely folks. I think he took 2 pictures of the same setup and is just recycling the pictures. I hate that. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=3073333704 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...&category=41009 Also notice with that "complete" system the power brick is missing, but it IS pictured. Hrmmm.... Hex. [ I'm sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone who will put up with this lame crap... ]

I've been mucking around with a couple of light six-switch 2600s and I'm doing the usual thing with any 2600 I get: replace the voltage regulator and bolt on a real heat sink. I was looking at the board and noticed spots for more caps across the regulator and realized I could improve the regulation / filtering with the addition of 3 caps. So I added a 10uF to the 9V side and another 10uF + 0.1uF cap on the output of the regulator. I need to hook it to a scope to get an idea of the ripple going in and out of the regulator, but I think things are flatter now. Comments from the gallery on this change? Hex. [ Doing what he can with what he knows should happen... ]

Susuwatari is right. The rating on the power brick is just a maximum rated current draw. If you draw too much current, one of two things will happen: 1) The Transformer's voltage will start to drop off -- a lot. In the case of a 2600, it needs about 8V to happliy drive the 5V regulator further down the power chain. If that input voltage to the regulator drops too low, then the regulated voltage starts dropping off too. At that point the system won't get the correct voltage input and you can get glitches and the like. 2) The secondary coil burns up from the current draw and you now have an attractive paperweight. I honestly think you'll be okay, but if you start seeing weird problems, swap that brick. Hex. [ Bringing 1980s technology up into the 90s... It's a start. ]

I too have one. Another victim of age though. I had to replace that 68ohm resistor. I also managed to get 1 heaver sixer joystick, but no Atari inlay. oh well. Hex. [ Who knew having circuit cards laid out could affect the war on terror? ]

Today was a mixed day for finding neat things... I got my paws on a copy of Chrono Trigger for a nice price. However, it refuses to save the game state. I checked the obvious thing (the battery). It appears okay, and is putting out 3V and is getting to the big RAM chip. My inclination is to replace the RAM bug and hope for the best. The question is does anyone have any experience messing with these things on a board level? Or what the actual part numbers might be? Hex. [ Experiencing the 'joys' of console repair... ]

I'm pretty much with Cryptik on my 'dream machine'. As much as I love M$ bashing, I have to admit that the XBOX did a lot of things right. Just a baseline spec: --Lots of system memory; Think 256MB or better. --USB ports; for use with a keyboard, mouse, other USB joystick. AND the ability to have the attached devices aliased as a joystick. --A hard drive to eliminate all those overpriced flash-ram cards, but you can always copy to a mem that is attached to the controller. --Composite/Svideo/VGA video output --stereo / 5.1 dolby sound --A very good development kit (This is one of the things that helps Sony is their development tools) -- not to mention the true source of revenue! --A good balance of proprietary technology and user servicability/expandability. IE: The lan adapter would come with the online package, and perhaps a basic multiplayer release title. Where the adapter is plugged in is also where you can replace the lithium battery that keeps the time and date. --High reliability. This is something that hacks me off about consumer electronics; they aren't built to last. I'd rather spend a bigger dollar and get something that borders on being a tank than save $50 on something that's gonna cough up its skull after a year of use. Not to mention, my experience has been that most consumers don't take really good care of their stuff. If you build it tougher, the product is more idiot-resistant. Of course, once you start picking out industrial/mil rated parts the price goes through the roof. Hex. [ Cringes at the thought of FPGAs that are more expensive than a car. ]

It will be a bit of work, but it's possible that corrosion did occur. Just tear the decks down and use a credit-card-like object with a paper towel with windex on it. That should get the crud off the connector contacts. Now put the thing back together and reclean your test cart. Life should be good. Hex. [ It's time to start the 'dumb' version of the "golden brick" project... ]

I have no idea what the complaints are about the blue cubes. At least it was'nt a "spice" colored cube. That orangy controller was loud to me. Hex. [ Gave up and matching accessories to his cube... ]