cowdog360

Or, I just figured out an alternative! Gut the Lynx's power and start button circuitry. Tie both the On and Off button in parallel to a LTC2950 pushbutton controller chip, which is tied to the enable pin on the powerboost. The pushbutton controller IC uses 20uA of power and when you push the On button, it would send the enable to the regulator, firing it up. Then if you hold the On or Off button down for a second, it powers the whole thing off. Now you've saved your buttons, and power too. http://www.linear.com/product/LTC2950 I may have to try this!

The screen shouldn't even be a question. Do it. In fact if you do the McWill screen and don't do vga out, you can remove the contrast knob and fit in your power switch there with no case mods. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

Exactly, its a pretty safe bet. The problem is that it only goes into quiescent mode when you shunt the enable pin to ground. In other words, you're going to need to have a power switch to do that. Otherwise, it's just going to be on idling at 5ma. You could probably remove the LED and reduce drain another 1-2ma. I'm just not sure of a way you could have the stock lynx power button enable the unit and disable the unit, since the circuit that does the lynx power buttons needs 5V to watch for those button presses, which means you'd need the regulator on. If atari had just used a freaking physical power switch like every other console... soft power is cool, but such a pain to mod around.

Well, the big problem is what the draw at idle on the powerboost will be. Most likely it will be around 5ma, so just sitting there with the lynx "off" it would be sucking out 5ma, so after a week of just idling it would probably drain the battery pretty significantly. Ideally it would be nice to use the soft power switch somehow without the draw.

What side do you need, the side on the PCB or the side inside the plastic housing? Either way, I have a pile of dead Lynxes and can send you what you need, just PM me.

Yeah, you'd have a take a chance on an eBay battery and go for like a 5600mah or something. I use their 2500mah pack and 1000c in my Raspberry Pi Lynx.. works awesome!

Two options on this one: Get another stock LCD (I have a few), or get out the $$ and do the McWill screen upgrade and never look back. Either myself or Krip316 can help in that dept. Check my signature for details.

Pretty common for lynxes to have the following screen problems: Clusters of deal pixels A darker center band (about 1/3rd of the screen) Some splotches/screen rot of the LCD in random spots. Seen this quite a bit. Like Krip says, do that MOSFET and Zener diode. I also have a stash of Lynx LCDs I need to go through and pick out the best ones so that I can send them to folks who need better ones. Done about 15 McWill mods, so I have a lot of originals.

Ah, I recognize those pictures, we've been talking on the Lynx facebook group as well. Speaker looks similar, and it should be louder. I'm not sure if the one I installed really has much more range, sounds about the same as stock, just clearer and louder. I'm not really the best person to judge work, as I'm not a professional, just a hobbyist. That being said, over all I think it looks good. What I did notice is that a few of the joints look cold/dry especially the one from the left side of the recom to the board. I'd wick up the original solder, apply flux and resolder it. In general using rosin core flux would help quite a bit with the joints. What kind of solder you using? I've been using Kester 63/37 with good success. Again, great work. It's interesting that you didn't remove the original LCD socket, that certainly would make it easier on the desoldering front. Also, tacking down wires on the board with hot glue will keep them from coming up over time do to vibration/use. -Aaron

@GoldenGraham: Great write up and great work. Since I do a lot of the McWill mods on the Lynx, I'll just point out my tips/tricks: Wiring: An IDE cable works pretty good, but I got tired of the stripping, tinning, etc. So What I use now is breadboard ribbon jumper cable. I just peel off 9 conductions worth, snip off one end and tin it and solder in order to the McWill LCD screen first. Then I mount the Mcwill screen with the wires attached. From there, I use the breadboard jumper end,and slip them nicely into the holes where the original ribbon connector was. The beauty of it is that the wires I use are the perfect length from the factory, and the multicolor makes it super easy for me to track what I'm hooking up. Speeds up the process, and when you do a lot of these, I'll take the extra 5-10 minutes. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0196G5AEO/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 VGA Port: I do the pin connector mod rather than the port, but you're right, there isn't much info on how to install the port. Lithium Battery: It is next on my list to do, I'll document it completely. Basically I'll be installing a charging controller into the Lynx in place of the "5V mod" and hooking it up to a 3.7V battery. 5V Mod: You'll see lots of argument on this topic now. I've stopped doing it because of cost, reduced battery standby life, and I don't think you're adding much safety. A new MOSFET and zener should last another 20+ years and cost a total of about $1.10 US instead of $7 for the regulator. Speaker: Best Electronics has a pretty good one, but I just buy these on Ebay and they work good. They are much louder than the original and have decent sound http://www.ebay.com/itm/221624580932?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT Got any pictures of the work you did?

Ah you have a Lynx I.. that would probably work differently with a Lithium mod. Same idea/concepts just different execution. It would actually be pretty easy to get a good sized flat lithium pack in a Lynx I.

I haven't done it yet, but it really won't be that difficult. I was planning on one just putting a single 3300mah panasonic cell in, and using an Adafruit powerboost 1000C charger/5V booster circuit. From there, you basically perform the 5V mod on the Lynx. Instead of hooking up the RECOM DC/DC regulator, you wire in the output from the 1000C. Break up some traces near the lynx power jack and you can re-use the stock jack as the input and just build a custom USB cable to play/charge off a 2A brick. I don't really want to mess with series Lipo as that becomes a mess with a balancing charger/etc. The cool thing about the 1000c is that you could charge and play at the same time. The issue you're still going to have to solve though is that you'll need an actual power cut switch to turn off the 1000C when the Lynx is off, otherwise it will slowly suck the battery dry. You could place a switch neatly in the old battery compartment area behind the stock cover in front of the new batt. If you did things right, you could even mount a 18650 battery holder so you could replace the battery when it goes bad over the years. When I find a donor Lynx, I'll attempt it. Here's the battery I'm thinking of: https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-NCR18650B-3400mAh-Rechargeable-Battery-Green/dp/B00DHXY72O/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=atariage&linkId=73ba9ac22cd6229e44f1e7af0280a94f And the charging circuit: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-powerboost-1000c-load-share-usb-charge-boost/overview

Man I hate taking off that metal shield, but the cart port solder job from the factory was a mess. Some dry joints and tons of leftover flux. Cleaned it, hit with flux and new solder, cleaned the points. While I was at it, I reflowed all the SMD chips, and cleaned the cart slot out again with 90% IPA. Fired right up this time, gonna test some more to be certain. At this point, this Lynx has been completely restored lol. Solder joints, caps, new flex circuit, zener, mosfet, mcwill. Not much more to do

Yeah I've done that and DeOxit as well. I'm going to try retouching all the solder points with new Flux and solder. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

Hey all, I have a weird one for you all. I have a Lynx I just finished up a full workup on, new caps, power supply parts, LCD, etc. The strangest thing happens on it where sometimes I put a cartridge in and the title screen is all garbled. If I reseat the cart or reset the Lynx, then it works fine, and it plays just fine for hours and hours. I've cleaned the slot quite a few times, and used different carts as well. If feels like its a slot issue, and the slot doesn't feel quite as good as other lynxes, but I'm just guessing. Its an odd one, I'd love to sort out the issue.

I see the same button press issue on mine as well in multiple lyxnes. A first I thought I had bad flex circuits or pads, but it happens on systems with new buttons. I've tried it with and without preview folders. Like you said, you have to press a couple times on the A button or D pad.

Nice speaker man. Now the next thing to do is unsolder the LM386 amp and put in a modern amp lol.

Ah, pretty cool. So you really wouldn't have to worry about the flash wearing out then. Slick!

@SainT Quick question for you. I know you can hold down A to reload the previous loaded cartridge, but why would the cartridge have to go through "Programming" all over again to reload what was already loaded? It seems both slower and also a waste of a flash cycle. Just curious if this is a requirement or if there is some room for improvement there? Thanks again!

What would be cool is if you can just buy the ROM image for those of us who have the Saint Multicart.

Well, I'm going to put the zeners up for sale here shortly if people want the original 1N5991B's. I bought 400 of them. I could also sell the MOSFETs with them as a package. I'm the the US, so postage would be cheap here, international would be a little more. As you mentioned, the MOSFET is a little tricky to get off, but I do what Leve42 said: I just add some fresh rosin core solder to all the pads and grab with some tweezers, and that works pretty well. I also have hot air, but prefer not to use it where I can. -Aaron

I wonder how hard it'd be to mod the PCB to have a SMD blue led light up on the Lynx SD logo.. because that would just be fun.

Well there's a few versions you need. You need the hand-made version first, then the RetroHQ branded silver pin, and the gold pin models to have em all lol.

Wow @SainT.. over 400 interests so far. Way to go! On a side note, that 400 Lynxes that need new MOSFET and Zener diodes I just happen to have a stockpile now of 400 1N5991B zener diodes that match the original zener's spec (same part number).

So there must be 3 models of button colors then on the Lynx I. Cool!