towmater

Sounds like you've been Shanghai'd. Are the mosquitoes gone yet? When Matt updated the firmware on my F18A I just threw the 99's RF shielding into the recycling bin, as I consider it to be a worthless heat trap coated with Erin Brokovich-upsetting-hexavalent-chromium. I actually watch TV from a rooftop antenna, (so much cleaner than compressed cable) and haven't seen any interference from the TI. Anyways so I didn't really think about the vertical fit. I guess I'll need to use the surrounding componenents to judge clearance, as long as we're no higher than the highest existing item we should be OK. Also hadn't yet given any thought to finding the least hot area near the potential board placement, offhand I'm guessing that somewhere near the 74 ic's is cooler than over the ram. I didn't see the switch suggestion (I don't have a NanoPeb) but the Eagle file should be easy enough to modify.

Coincidentally, I didn't put two-and-two together until I put the creator's name on the silk screen, Mike Brent, then it sunk in, I work with the guy who created this mod. Small world.

I can post the brd file if you want. I wish OSH didn't make you order three. The reason to do it this way will be the simplified installation, IMHO, even if it is a rather simple board. Although I'm paying for two layers here, I kept the bridge on top so that one can make a self-etched, single-sided version from the same layout.

I'm going to do the 32K mod this way, there will be a few extra wires to solder, but i don't need to worry about the pin-bending, snipping, etc. Also each pin is simply soldered to whatever the label says, so no head-scratching. I will add a simple paper overlay to lay on top of the 9900 so that pin-counting is not an issue as well. (Don't use this until I have tested I have "proofread" it by building one!) If it's OK I will put it on Osh Park so that you can just order on-line. I don't think Osh (Orchard Supply Hardware?) claims ownership for public projects, nor shares any profit, so someone might feel free to also sell populated boards with Kynar wires preattached. Since the Amazon order I made for the chips were not "prime", in fact they are probably slow-boating from China, I won't be able to test this for a few days or weeks.

Tiny teeny suggestion, supply the label separately in case people want to swap or clean the cartridge case of sticker residue.

Ahh, the fastloader. I tried a !! on the sx64 without it and received nothing but syntax error, so it must be a feature of the Epyx Fast Load cartridge I had inserted. It actually just needs a single ! to activate, I guess the second ! I typed was ignored.

I'm in the midst of adding a second drive to an SX64, and I actually couldn't remember how to backspace as I fumbled through typing 'Load "*",8,1' about a half dozen times before I got it right. Anyways, I thought it would be great if the machine had a bang-bang sequence like the old Silicon Graphics Irix machines had, so for the hell of it I typed '!!' and was left in a strange environment, some kind of monitor maybe. A search on Google yielded no explanation. Does anyone have a link to how to use this monitor built into the SX64 rom?

I gather I need this 32K to use the Basic 2.7 that I recently purchased. (Aside, I wish ArcadeShopper's order tracking link actually linked to something so I can find out where it is.) I just ordered the two chips needed for this mod from Amazon. Has anyone considered an Osh Park board to make mounting and soldering this a little easier? There may be a few more wires because you'd not be piggybacking, but it might be a bit easier than bending pins. We could even put some silkscreening on to make it easier to identify which wire goes where. If not, let me know and I'll put one together.

• "FPC" means nothing to most people. You might find out later in the instructions what it means, but you are now much earlier in the disassembly process. • Using a blow-dryer our heat-shrink heater blower - lightly - might make removing the FPC easier, it worked for me because it softened the glue. • "Now solder one wire to VCC..and one wire to GND." followed by "Solder a second wire to VCC" is confusing. We are on wire three(?) at this point. I was about to solder two wires to the same VCC contact on the Lynx pcb, but guessed that you meant the first VCC wire went to the LCD VCC. You don't explicitly mention doing the same for GND. • Soldering the connection to ground and menu is dangerously close to the flexible harness. You mention that it can be disconnected, but not why you want to. • The two-x ring washers need to be fairly small so as not to interfere with rubber power button placement. • It is not clear where the washers and screws go on either the LCD or the Lynx. • Numbering the CLK_A1, D0, etc would have made it less confusing to figure out what they connect to. • When I was done the d-pad no longer made contact with the Lynx, because the board depth shifted a mm or so. This seems to be very dimensionally critical and I had to glue four more of the homemade ring washers to the d-pad buttons to make it work again. This doesn't seem right, but it worked. • Leaving out the menu-button wire for non-external VGA option versions still leaves one with the scanline emulation as well as full mode, but also a "screen off" function that serves as a screen-saver of sorts. I also made at least five serious dumb mistakes with the other Game Gear mod, but the device still worked fine once corrected. Having photos of the resistors and caps to remove would help locate them more easily, because the silk screen markings on the pcb are kind of crammed in with little squigglies that are supposed to point to the right components, but are hard to follow. All said, you have done an excellent service to the community!

Wow, the Game Gear mod was nowhere as easy as the Lynx1 to pull-off. I finally gave up on the VGA out and scan-line mode and just reassembled the GG without those features. Perhaps one day when I work up more nerve I'll go back in and complete those features, but it works just fine without them. McWill has done it again, the GG is now light-years ahead of even my older recapped GG. I will buy any other screen he offers.

I played a game of pong with it after fitting the lcd screen, and the ball simply bounced straight back-and-forth between letters perpetually! I'm starting the mod for Game Gear next.

I hope that doesn't mean my credit card was declined.

Fitting this mod was like the before and after of the Hubble telescope repair, it has gone from dim and blurry to blazingly clear. The instructions were a bit confusing (like "fit a wire, a second wire, then a second wire" to paraphrase) but after reading three times and making some guesses as to what McWill really meant finally led to success.

So far it's been incredibly useful. I looked at my //c, thought "hmmm..." and five minutes later had completed an upgrade from ROM v255 to ROM v4.

Not any more, thanks for the heads-up.

Could I not then just buy the EB2.7 Suite instead of the bare board?

I have a TL866A that I've used for the Vectrex, is there a TI design that uses Eproms I can use to burn an editor/assembler cart? Everything I read about is Groms, which seem an odd beast.

My regular Lynx was painted grey, by the factory, and it is flaking - so that does not necessarily confirm/deny authenticity. In fact, I may re-spray it when the new screen arrives. Does anyone have experience with automotive quality paint vs. spray paint?

I dunno if Shapeways is the best place to put our nascent library of retro-refurb 3D printed part files, or will they get lost in the noise? Perhaps the sysops at AtariAge could create a repository for 3D print files.

That's what 3d printers are for! Well, that and engineering jets.

I'm tempted to bid, if only for the Indus, but I don't really need all of that junk, however here is the keyboard you seek: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Atari-400-Computer-Game-System-w-joysticks-Books-/151896504093?hash=item235dbcb71d:g:yg4AAOSwv-NWV235 and oddly, the same keyboard, although a tad more expensive: http://www.ebay.com/itm/WORKING-Atari-400-Computer-System-Floppy-1050-Disk-Drive-Power-Adapter-Acs/252180285995?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20150604093004%26meid%3De5c3d04c15f044e2bfc3c3f58f1a9f35%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D151896504093&rt=nc

A but scary, true, but it worked. I'm using xp on Parallels but had no problem. I don't see any obvious differences in capabilities, though you mentioned an ICSP programming ability, do I have to add some hardware to make that? D'oh, I just re-read your first line.

I thought that might be the case, because Autoelectric only has the one download, but heeding your warning I didn't want to mess up the firmware. I tried every variation of 27256 to read the mystery chips to no avail, but reading and writing the Vectrex roms went without a hitch so I don't think it is the TL866 hardware at fault. The 27256's I have are UV erasable, but I have another 27512 that has no uv window. Is this an "EEProm" I wonder? Maybe the TL866 can erase those. I could fit every Vectrex game on that (maybe) and put some form of logic on it to bank-switch, I think we've gone off 8-bit topics here, though something similar could also work on an Atari with the right circuit board. -I have an Atarimax so I don't have a super-compelling reason to do that at the moment, but what intrigues me about this is that the programmer and eproms can be bought at Amazon for less than $100. I'd have to figure out how the dual-chip layout works in Atari cartridges, they seem to be just the two chips on a board without anything else required so I'm not sure yet how that works.