juansolo

Essentially yes.

The croma trimmers will definitely need adjusting. So it might not look right first plug in. Also might effect your TV's ability to lock S-Video depending on the set. If you've got a S-Video CRT it'll be easier to set it up on that than anything else.

In one regard, the ability to buy a Jag for less than the frankly silly prices they go for would be the reason to do it. However... Even back in the day, the Jag was was hardly loved. There are maybe five great games for it in terms of commercial releases, most of which cost ludicrous money or are borderline unobtanium. It really would only exist for the homebrew scene which is getting to the stage that it only exists in the US as it's so expensive to get carts anywhere else. Even Telegames here are £80-90 a game, AA and others are now comfortably over £100 a game outside the US. We now have an excellent flash cart but a lot of the homebrew out there isn't available in ROM format which is becoming the only realistic way to buy games outside the US these days. So currently I don't see any real market for a Jag+ because there's bugger all you can do with the thing.

Can't do that any more as the Tim Worthington RGB kit is looking like it's gone out of production due to parts shortages.

An open frame phono jack will drop in where the modulator was with no modifications, that's what we use for audio. It requries no cutting or drilling. S-video I'm currently drilling the PCBs to fit as I don't personally like putting them through the case as it makes taking the machine apart a real pain in the butt. All working ok?

The last machine I did was actually really good and I didn't lift a single pad. The one above however is just an utter nightmare. Just look at one funny and they fall off. I suspect that's why the fella had so much trouble modding it. All the wires on the back we added... Only the yellow one pertains to the mod, the others are all fixes. I wouldn't be comfortable ever selling this machine because it's so heavily bodged, even though it does actually work now. Doesn't have a case either, it's in one of Bob's 3D printed boxes.

Indeed he mentioned that the basket case machine I have might have them on the back. This thing is so bodged... I bought it as broken and the previous owner had tried to mod it doing no end of damage requiring multiple bodging.

I can honestly say I've never seen that bodge before. Looks like it might be factory. No idea why, @marauder666 any ideas?

Showing my age here but my first console wasn't an Atari, it was a Binatone Pong TV Game. That got some serious use by me and my older brother. The noise it made used to drive my dad mad so he got us a black and white portable television to get us off the front room TV. The Atari VCS (as it was known then) came next. For the longest time the only games we had were Space Invaders, Combat, Golf and Street Racer. We played the crap out of them, even Golf and Street Racer...

This is not a new thing. I remember back in the day being at a computer club and someone brought one of those new PC Engine things. I was playing a shoot-em-up on it, can't remember which one, when a kid rocks up and asked, "Has it got weapons?", meaning powerups. When I said that I didn't think so his instant dismissal was, "that's shit then," and he wandered off. Whatever it was it was a brilliant game, and I ended up wanting a PCE very badly. Some people just have a short attention span. It's all playlists not albums, TikTok not films, looter shooters that endlessly reward you with new weapons that are just the same thing with different stats. You can have both, don't get me wrong, but it's rare these days that things are based on pure playability. Gotta appeal to everyone.

The VCS is Atari's online platform with downloadable games, I suspect that the 2600+ is their attemped at an offline platform that takes physical carts that they're starting to sell. Like the VCS it's compromised as hell, but people will buy it because it has an Atari logo on it. Atari as a corporation should continue to do what it is doing. The product is obviously done, people are buying them without knowing the extent of it's capabilities. So it's going to sell, maybe even enough to carry on the tradition of churning out cheap emulation boxes that someone must be buying given how many Flashback's there have been. Why stop doing the thing that makes money? Give it a couple of years and maybe we'll have a 2600+2. The model works, why do more?

RGB Kit here used to be about £80. Can usually get UAVs shipped here for £40ish. Seeing stuff like that kit on eBay just makes my blood boil.

If you want to dispair at some of the BS that's out there, click on the link: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/133754808637 Not only does this individual commit the unforgivable crime of assembling veroboard on the wrong side, they're selling less than £5 in parts for £100 and can't be arsed to assemble it. Over 100 'kits' sold... Let that sink in.

For what it's worth, I used to have an extensive collection of games on disc, and after discovering multiple of them had started to rot, I tested them all, and sold the lot that were still good. Nintendo stuff, much like Sony DADC laserdiscs back in the day, seems to fair the worst. WiiU being the most prevalent. I had multiple WiiU discs that would no longer read. It wasn't wear either as when I went through testing them to sell, there was one that was still sealed that I opened up and wouldn't read. I had at least 5 bad discs. Gamecube and Wii were not quite as bad, maybe two or three of each there. I sold up most of my collection when I discovered the rot had started. Moved over to ODE's for just about everything that had one. Indeed only my PC Engine (of the older stuff) still has a drive as that's a DUO and no one's done an ODE for that yet. But when and if they do, that'll be next. Carts I collect, but it's mainly Atari, Famicom and Coleco carts. Later carts I sold up a while ago when the prices went stupid. Indeed I bought a flash cart when I was trying to get an N64 game and loose carts for it were starting to get to £100. That was my introduction flash carts and I didn't look back. All of which just reinforces the need for preservation. You can't trust the media or the hardware to last. This is why we must archive everything so it can live on. Why things like emulation and the MiSTer project are so important.

@marauder666 brought his contraption over to try with my carts. Results as follows: Working Combat Asteroids (got segmentation fault, then worked by quitting and re-running) Enduro Super Breakout Astroblast Crystal Castles Jungle Hunt Ms Pac-Man Battlezone Pole Position Phoenix Indy 500 Space Invaders Video Olympics Maze Craze Midnight Madness Centipede Air Sea Battle Space War Haunted House Adventure Circus Atari Yars Revenge Missile Command MegaMania Sea Quest Laser Blast Keystone Kapers Pitfall River Raid Spider Fighter Cosmic Commuter (got segmentation fault, then worked by quitting and re-running) Chopper Command Kaboom (got segmentation fault, then worked by quitting and re-running) Pressure Cooker Q*Bert (Parker) Amidar Double Dunk (PAL) graphical corruption Sprint Master (PAL) corruption on blue car Reactor Empire Strikes Back Return of the Jedi: Death Star Battle No Escape Laser Gates Demon Attack Atlantis Cosmic Ark (got segmentation fault, then worked by quitting and re-running) Journey Escape Turmoil Solar Fox (got segmentation fault, then worked by quitting and re-running) Star Castle Arcade (graphical corruption) Medieval Mayhem Fall Down Juno First Solaris Tower of Rubble Not Working Bogey Blaster Dark Caverns Stargate Robot Tank HERO Pitfall II Star Master Solar Storm Commando Raid Crash Dive Sea Hawk Marauder Tunnel Runner Berzerk VE Draconian Space Rocks The End (title screen worked, crashed on game start) Wizard of Wor Arcade Galagon

I still for the life of me have no idea who the VCS was aimed at. It certainly wasn't me... It's continued existence and customer base baffles me.

You'll have to import it from the US, it was never released here on cart.

Message me and we can discuss it. For the minute keep an eye on this thread: It's still very early days on this new mod, and I'd like to get at least a couple more people out there using it before I'm fully confident in it. But results are pretty good so far...

Our two PAL 7800 test boards in their new homes. My friend with the printer couldn't get the emblem band to behave and the main print possibly wasn't high enough resolution, or maybe a mixture of the two. So Cleggy just painted the raised bits and it looks fine.

Attempt #2 - Instructions for installing this thing, mainly for @karri. At some point this will probably end up being a PDF, but it's easier to just post it here for now. This is @Frax_Excelsior's machine done barring a load of testing. AJM3 Mod for PAL 7800 DISCLAIMER Let’s just get this out of the way; the PAL 7800 isn’t very nice to work on. It has tiny solder pads that’ll lift if you as much as look at one funny. The solder they often used wasn’t very good and they weren’t all very nicely put together. As such you will likely rip up some pads in the process of doing this mod. If you are uncomfortable with de-soldering and potentially repairing de-soldering gone wrong, DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS MOD. This mod isn’t for people who are not confident around electronics and repairing them. ABOUT THE MOD The AJM3 is, as the name might suggest, the third iteration of the Anti-Jack Mod. A mod specifically for the Atari 7800 to replace the RF output with something better. Like the mods before it, it isn’t perfect. We’re fighting a losing battle against some of the poor decisions made when the PAL 7800 came into being and as such, do not expect this thing to magically fix everything. It also is realistically an S-Video only mod right now. No idea why the composite out is behaving like it is and to be honest as this mod was never meant to go on general release, we’ve not really looked into fixing it as we use S and it looks way better regardless. Maybe in the future there might be a 3.1 version that does, for now just use S-Video. INSTALLATION Unbolt your 7800, extract it’s guts then remove the shield. This machine has also had a service so has got new caps, buttons, regulator and a 2.1mm DC jack. You should be left with something that looks like this: There are two trimmers on the main PCB that set the MARIA (7800) chroma (R42) and the TIA (2600) chroma (R43). On a PAL machine they’re usually just hot-snotted. You’re going to have to adjust these so spray some IPA on the snot and it should come off easily with a poke The audio mod is simple. Lift the left hand pins of R32 and R33, twist them together, then run them through a 10u electrolytic capacitor to an audio out jack. I’ve used a non-polarised cap here because that’s what I had. Using a regular one the positive side of the cap connects to the resistors. How you do your sockets is entirely up to you so I’m not going to go into that here. Here’s where you pull a load of components. Not everything we’ve pulled here needs to come out (like the polystyrene caps for example), but it’s all stuff that either needs to come out for the mod, has a slim chance of causing some interference or is simply annoying and in the way. Pull: R25 R29 C56 C57 C66 R61 R62 R66 Q8 L6 C53 R35 and R74 Install luma bodge wire from left hand pad of R62 to top right pad of T1. Running any of chroma and luma lines near each other or making them excessively long will cause a degraded picture. We run this along the back across the shield to keep it out of the way, and it allows us to pick up that particular luma line from the bottom pad of R73 now. Replace R66 with a 12K resistor. This pulls the sync signal down to a more sensible level. Again ignore how I’ve wired the jacks, do these however you please. Also there’s a cut missing from the pic that I did later with regard to that (the red mark). Install off board MARIA colourburst clock. I’ll make a nice board for this later. As it is it’s the end hacked off a previous failed iteration of this mod. We’re pulling power and ground from the legs of C50, the clock goes to the top pad of R74. Here is the mod board itself with all it’s wires cut to length. I highly recommend fitting it where we have with some sticky back pads. It’ll give the shortest cable runs possible and it’s dead space there anyhow. As it was so wee, I used acronyms for the pads which are as follows: LMO - Luma Out - Goes to your S-Video Jack CVO - Composite Video Out - Unused in this mod as it doesn’t work right. At some point we’ll figure out why… CRO - Chroma Out - Goes to your S-Video Jack GND - Ground - The one at the top. Put there for convenience if you need one for your jacks. We’re getting it from the board in this install so it’s unused. LMI - Luma In - Goes to bottom pad of R73 (through the bodge wire that ultimately ends up on the left pad of R62) TCI - TIA Chroma In - Goes to the right pad of R35 MLO - MARIA Luma Out - Goes to left pad of R61 MLI - MARIA Luma In - Goes to bottom pad of R29 GND - Ground - Goes to left pad of R68 or bottom pad of modulator 5V - Power - Goes to second from bottom pad of modulator MCI - MARIA Chroma In - Goes to the left pad of R25 All done, it should look something like this: SET UP You will have to set the trimmers to get the colour right, the top one is for the MARIA (7800) chroma (R42) and the bottom is for the TIA (2600) chroma (R43). Now this will be a bit of a thing if you haven’t done it before. On the upside the colours don’t drift like they do on an NTSC machine so you don’t have to worry about that. But on the downside you can’t use the utility that exists to set up the 7800 side as that’s geared toward NTSC. Also if you’re trying to do this on a panel, go slow as they can take a while to lock onto changes in the signal. Don’t try and do this through a Koryuu if you can help it as that thing auto compensates for the incoming image. So this is how we do it, we’re so used to how certain things look we can set up a PAL machines colours with BallBlazer and Combat. Please bear in mind that photographing CRT’s is hard and that our cameras don’t do colours well, so I’ll try and describe it and give examples: Left CRT / Right LCD For BallBlazer start a game with two human players, get up to the opponents spinner and hit pause. The top spinner should be a reddy brown (mostly red) and the background blue. These pics are fairly accurate. If you go to the side of the pitch, out of bounds is a burgundy colour. On boot, the logo should be on a dull brown background and you should see even gradients in the lettering. Left CRT / Right LCD For Combat change the game to number two and hit start. The background is a deep green, the left player a pastel blue and the right a reasonably strong pink. The play field surround should be a sandy yellow (not too intense). In this pic the pink is washed out and the surround isn’t quite yellow enough. That’s the camera being a complete arse and refusing to deal with reds properly. That’ll get them close anyhow, tweak to taste and to the TV you’re using also. Commando 7800 is another good test as it’s got a lot of dark greens on the boot screen. The PAL 7800 hates those and it’s where you’ll most see the colour rolling that the PAL MARIA does (nothing we can do about it). But the opening screen should be dark green and the flesh tones browny. The game itself, the background is green and brown. If it looks wrong, it probably is. Slight tweakage might be required. FINAL NOTES The quality of your S-Video cable matters. Try to get one with shielded co-axial wiring inside. Compatibility of old mods with modern sets is completely random. We seem to have this playing well with most things. But we still occasionally find a set that it won’t play nice with. That’s just the way of the world now it seems.

As if it were neccessary to reiterate the variability of PAL 7800's. See if you can tell what's different about these two (which are the reason I pulled my last post): Meet Cleggy's PAL 7800. This is a really early example and of notably better quality than any of the other ones we've had through our hands. It pretty much will run anything. It also was the first to receive the new mod. This machine is mine, I got it for buttons (like about £18 delivered IIRC) because it was very broken. Someone had tried to mod it and had really made a bit of a pigs ear of it. Pads and traces long gone, odd bodges. I pretty much bought it as a parts machine for that money until Cleggy decided to see if he could resurrect it. It took a LOT of effort and it's really ugly up close (particularly on the back with lots of bodge wires), but it lives again. Which is great, but it threw a massive spanner in the works today... As you can see, there's no oscillator fitted to this one. Because we found that if we actually dropped the signal of the colourburst from the shared clock where it goes into the MARIA, it pretty much negated the diagonal interference. Thinking we just made the mod even easier we of course did it to the other two... Which it doesn't, like not even close doesn't. Why this works on this one we just can't explain. The MARIA in it does run hot. Which we've found on the PAL machine can help slow the colour rolling, but that's a separate issue from the interference so it's not that. But that led us down another path with regard to the signal coming out of the Oscillators on the other two machines that was WAY higher than what we were putting into mine... So we tried pulling that down, which actually made Cleggy's machine work on a RGB encoder than only my machine will work with. K, so maybe this is a good thing. So we apply that to the other two machines that need the oscillator and start testing again running through all the TVs we have at our disposal and the bloody intereference is back with the separate oscillator. As you can tell, it's been a fun day. We've backed out the resistor on the oscillator equipped machines and they're back with no interference. Mine we simply can't explain. It's the first PAL machine we've ever encountered that we could dial out the interference with the on-board shared clock by swapping the 2K resistor on the voltage divider to a 1.5K. It makes no sense to us. But we're leaving it as is. It does mean we've had to fettle the machine we were doing the mod on for @Frax_Excelsior and take some new pics for the instructions. Again we're back at a stage where all three machines seem spot on. We did have a moment as I left today where we thought Cleggy's had died, but turned out a pin had broken on the S-Video lead. Hopefully that's not stuck inside something. Anyhow, doc to follow.

Found an error... Will try again later.

The Amiga was huge in Europe, bordering on a religion. Support might have died down, but it never went away. Games, demos and hardware have been in constant development since it's inception by the community (sound familiar?), and it has a very enthusiastic user base. But I'll warn you now, do not expect the same polite responses you've had from AA members. As Dave Pleasence found out recently, just being involved back in the day doesn't mean you can push BS and expect to get away with it. You'll be a lot better staying away from the Amiga until you've proven yourselves here. As for the IP; it's fragmented as hell. I suspect you'll have trouble with getting anything from Hyperion or Cloanto. AmigaKit own the A1200 brand also. No idea who owns Commodore at the moment or has the rights to the hardware.

I'll be swapping those. I volunteered him to do it before I come over on Weds to do some documentation using that 7800, and he declined...

Because people have already forgotten that the purge of the store was caused directly by Atari (that many of us suspected at the time). That some developers have been pushed from this platform and some have decided to stop development for the platform. Yes there are some that are optimistic, but to say that this has had an entirely positive impact on the community as it stands is disingenuous. This itteration of Atari has done some shady stuff in the past and are telling us that they're better now and we're supposed to believe that. The words are nice, but it takes more than words. Again this is why a lot of us aren't particularly positive about this whole thing. Then there's Atari legal, that needs to be controlled for it to work with this community. Watch the ZPH stream regarding Mr Run&Jump, there's still issues to be sorted there. The management need to get a handle on that shit pronto because that's where a LOT of the animosity between this version of Atari and this community is rooted. There absolutely have been positive effects too as AA may continue as Atari essentially lessen the load on Al. That I cannot stress enough as being the one reason I hope this works out. I wish only the best for the dude. This is the part where I accept that this change might be neccessary for AA to survive. Some developers are going to have oppertunities to work with this Atari and good luck to them. I also hope Atari don't screw them over. These are my only real sources of optimism regarding the deal. Finally, probably the most important bit: Corporations are not your friend. They exist for a single thing only and that is to make money. This community existed to keep our hobby alive. Both the hardware and the software. It's been doing it for 25 years without any help whatsover from Atari and they've essentially come in and bought something that was never about making money. There is going to be a conflict of interests. A lot of us are old people saying old people things. This is entirely true.