WhyLee commotari.club

Hi Guys! The Atari 2600 in NTSC and PAL version has 3 digital bits to output the Luma video signal ( = Y ) which is great to have it digitally. However the chroma signal (CrCb) is a bit difficult to understand. I guess the TIA uses the timing from the color carrier (4,43MHz in PAL, 3,54 in NTSC) and does a QAM modulation. I am not sure but I think, the TIA does not do any analog modulation of the 0° and 90° (sin and cos) component of the color carrier. Maybe it does some phase shifting for the Cr and Cb signal and combines that to the chroma output? Does anyone exactly know how the TIA chip does this? Or does it really have a kind of resisitor ladder DAC inside for Cr and Cb and combines that somehow? Does anyone have a scope picture with that signal and the color carrier as a phase reference? I am wondering if there is a way to make a reliable chroma decoder that at the end comes out with 2 bits for Cr amd 2 bits for Cy. Is the internat color register of the TIA exactly a combination of 3 bit Y + 2 bit Cr + 2 bit Cb ? If we can decode the Cr and Cb signal, then we might do an RGB decoding with some digital logic ==> R = Cr-Y; B = Cr-Y ; G = 3Y - Cr - Cb Then we could make a high quality RGB output, but not with a super complicated pcb (as it already exists). Also if we have digital RGB, the way to DVI might also not be that far. for HDMI maybe that could be done with one of these: * ADV7513 from Analog Devices * TFP410 from TI * TDA19988 from NXP * Sii902X from Silicon Image

my personal approach would be a daughter board that has a lot of reserved pins, or maybe predefined for extensions etc. * one daughter board could be almost an empty board with more or less only a socket for the TIA chip. ===> still super cheap and could be made with a generic PCB from every electronic hardware store. * one daugther board with an FPGA on board, logic level interface chips, digital RGB video output (3*4bit and sync/clock lines), more address pin, local memory for sprites, fonts or general video memory etc. supporting higher resolutions, colors layers, alpha channel, sprites, suitable for scrolling, "copper" list etc. that means you have a very cheap starting point, also for people who do not have electronic skills, with a little bit of instruction video, people can hand solder this by themselves and have a lot of fun doing that. on the other side you have an upgrade path. people like to tinker around. upgrading is fun. look at stupid lights in PC cases. people don't do that because it looks good, no, people like to do that because they would do anything to tinker around with their hardware. it is THEIR hardware when they built it themselves. they want to spend time with building. the same with the power supply. you can do a 7805 linear regulator or a DC/DC buck-boost power supply which lowers the power usage of the external transformer. or you want to have a simple USB 5V 0,5A connector, or you want to have a complicated USB PD power supply. how can we find the right was for everyone?? ==> small daugther board than contains the connector and the parts. * people with no electrionic knowledge can solder a simple rectifier, barrel jack, 7805 regulator and a capacitor on a simple daughter board and baam, everything works. * people with more electronic knowledge can built a copy of a DC/DC power supply board, or usb etc. and maybe also sell a few copies for others. the entry-hurdle needs to be very low. from the knowledge and from the financial side. and then they can upgrade and optimize, .......

If I would release something Atari related, like a new case or motherboards or at kind of "Atari 2600 DevEvolution" etc. I would keep the name Atari out of it. I would use the name "Commotari". I think people would get it. And I would not be angry if they would place an Atari - sticker on something like that. I don't want to get in legal troubles. especially when contributing to the community. if you sell something 2nd hand that has an atari sticker on it, i guess that would not be a problem at all. however selling a new product with an Atari logo on it, is too risky. You know, greed and stuff. Especially as an engineer, the management of a big company usually does not give a fuck about you, which is a shame. management think that everything is their baby, because they paid for it, engineers are thinking it is their baby because they engineered it 🙂 🙂 🙂 ...... Some engineers are very well known, Bob Yannes, the founder of the SID-chip. or Jay Miner, who made the TIA chip and much more (amiga chipset,....). but many of the engineers are not known. Who was the designer of the Atari 2600 case with the 6 switches? I don't know. Maybe someone knows. I think it is still the most beautiful gaming console in history. As an engineer myself, I am of course more on the side of the engineers 🙂 🙂 🙂 . Someone has to manage the name Atari, someone has to own it. If someone makes a profit by using the name, they should pay a fee. If someone sells shit by misusing the name, it should be possible to sue them.

well, brand registration is not a universal thing. there are certain category that you need to register your brand for. if you did not register the brand for a certain category, then you don't have a protection in this area. so, if you make a new channel, and atari did not register for that particular category, then this is not protected. however, if it is not clear that this channel is not the official atari brand, then you might still get in trouble. if you have a disclaimer in your videos at the beginning that makes clear that you are not Atari, then I guess you are safe. however, this needs to be dicussed with a lawyer and my information should not be considered as legal advice 🙂

i already looked into big 3D printers which there are from 400€ up. Of course a 3D printed model needs to be designed a bit different to have enough stability. At that moment i am not sure what i should do. it should act more or less as a development platform. on one side it should be compatible with the original atari PCB. on the other hand, it should be designed to have enough space for bigger PCBs. the atari 2600+ is not of huge interest for me as it is more or less a finished system with a hardware that is not good for tinkering around. the end result should be a very flexible and upgradable platform for: * additional flash and ram memory (should be very easy with something like a 1MBx8 AS6C8008 from Alliance Memory that costs less than 10 bucks) * daughter board PCBs for - video, either a more or less empty board that contains the original video chip, or a daughter board that contains something like an Upduino or other FPGA to implement a new video chip - cpu (with the Upduino, a fast 6502 / 65816 and Z80 or others can be implemted, however, an FPGA board that includes some memory would be very cool) - audio (with more than 3 channels, stereo, a bit of sampling or a speech chip emulation like the one from texas instruments or General Instruments / Microchip would be cool) * additional addons, I/O for USB HID devices like joystick, gamepads, keyboard etc. * adddon for WiFi/bluetooth to connect a bluetooth keyboard or other HID-device, connect to the internet,.... * the monochrome/color switch of a sixer could be used as configuration for pure Atari 2600 mode, or running from the internal OS on the flash 🙂 of course this "system" can be made with or without an Atari 2600 compatibility. but as it turns out the Atari 2600 compatibility makes a lot of sense: * the atari 2600 case is still the most beautiful case of ALL videoconsoles and home computers. period. * starting with a minimalist version that more or less contains the original hardware is a very easy milestone for people. - maybe someone has the boring Atari 2600 verison and wants a new beautiful case. - maybe someone wants to have a USB power interface, HDMI, and the joysick port on the front as kind of a minimal upgrade - or someone wants to go the full path but in small incemental steps with easy to add modules. the hurdles for people to go/join this route needs to be low. that's the most important thing.

Hi guys! I am wondering if there is a new version of the Atari classic heavy/light sixer case available somewhere? Or a 3D printed version. From the outside, the case seems very big, but the original PCB ist pretty small compared to the outer dimensions of the case. Is it possible to put a much bigger PCB in the original case? A 3D printed version of the case - even if not 100% the same - would be great as well. But I guess this is probably a lot of work. It probably needs multiple parts and maybe it is not easy for 3D printers that have a limited print space. The reason behind that is to have a kind of tinkering platform for extending the 2600. There are HDMI solutions available like the RGB2HDMI for the Amiga with a Raspberry Pi zero, that could be an interesting approach to get HDMI. Also the Upduino is an interesting platform to replace the graphic chip of the 2600 and more. For that, a bigger PCB is needed which rises the question of space in the case 🙂 Thanks for your thoughts on that.

I guess this was also needed to distiguish if it is a 2600 or 7800 cartridge. Before starting a 2600 cartridge they had to shut down other hardware in the 7800 to stay compatible. Chip select logic for example.

can you make a picture from the other side? something is already soldered on this UART pins. or is this already a cable that you soldered in? what can also be seen here is two different JTAG connectors - U1 and U2. maybe they have one JTAG connector for the ARM application MCU and a second one for an auxiliary microcontroller that does some other stuff (access to the cartridge, ports, switches, leds etc.)

TDI, TDO, TCK, TMS are pins for a JTAG connector. a JTAG connector is used to program the flash on microcontrollers or to control/debug a CPU. it is the connector that the developers where using. ( i am for example using a Segger J-Link to program/debug STM32 microcontrollers at work which uses a JTAG connection ) however, the RX, TX pins are the most interesting. it could be a linux serial console to get access to the running linux.

you are not alone. if you look at ebay, a real 2600 costs 3 times or 4 times the price of a Jr. And there is a reason for that. The old 4-switch or 6-switch 2600 is iconic because it is still to this day the most beautiful gaming console of all times. everything else looks like shit. maybe the playstation one could be seen as acceptable, but that trapezoid star wars industrial trapezoid design of the 2600 is fantastic. and real switches are beautiful, independent if they have a real function or not. all that reminds me of the 70s hifi systems with real metal frontplates and many many switches and knobs and meters and stuff. really beautiful. you always want to push a button or flip a switch just for the sake of pushing a button or flipping a switch. the same goes for me about the inside of the machine but that is a more nerdy thing because i am an embedded systems (software) developer. i want to have a bus system with a cpu, a sound chip, peripheral chips, a graphic chip etc. and the possibility to change something. not 8 layer pcbs and only ball grid array chips and encryption everywhere. after buying it, it should be mine which means i should be able to control 100% of it and not being locked out of a system that I own. and this is phantastic with the consoles / systems from late 70s to late 80s, maybe even early 90s. you don't need expensive special tools from NASA to maintain / repair / change them. i guess the single chip 2600 system is something for collectors to 'just' have them, other than that, i don't see the point to having it.

i agree, i found something similar here https://www.amazon.com/Geniatech-XPI-3128-Development-Card-Sized-Performance/dp/B09LV46V5Q In high volume, Geniatech sells this from about $25. And reducing it to the bare minimum without the USB and network stuff you get down to $20. This probably gets very close to the hardware that is in the Atari 2600+. Maybe exactly that Geniatech hardware could be used if having the same software like Atari. The software will leak out at some point if no encryption mambo jambo is stopping the hacking. And if it can't be hacked/copied, a reimplementation with a linux core and the stella emulator is probably not that difficult to make. I think it could be very interesting, if people would make a C-library that contains restrictive functions (low resolutions, low amount of colors, a few sprites, reimplementation of characteristic retro-audio functionality) and running it in native arm code on that system. people could make new games and put the game on a cartridge. A cartridge with a 5V MCU and an SPI Nandflash is cheap. I just looked at mouser: a 512Mbit Nand flash costs below 3€. a 5V MCU from microchip to do the interfacing is probably in the same area. That means you can make a cartridge with memory interfacing for less than 10€ / $10. That could be interesting for mass production as a universal Cartridge. In the MCU there could even be some active game code to slow down pirate copies.

Who has an Atari 2600+ and can open it up and making detailed pictures of it and post it here? Thank you!

Hello Guys! The new Atari 2600+ has an all-in-one processor in it: Rockchip 3128 It is a quite powerful chip with 4 ARM7MP cores and an ARM Mail400 MP2 graphic core inside. Memory for these kind of "raspberry pi" is a bit low but enough for retro applications. For the software there is an eMMC memory on the board. i guess the eMMC is some kinde of embedded memory card compatible to other MMC memory cards but suitable to solder it on the board and saving money instead of adding a card slot and a card. My question: * Is someone already trying to hack that system? - trying to make a copy to check if this is an encrypted memory card - trying to replace it with a normal MMC card holder and card - trying to find out what kind of file system is on the card - mount the system on linux - reverseengineer the files on the card. - adding bigger cards - modify the stuff with a homebrew version After that: - making a retro c/c++ library that contains graphic and audio functions for lower "restro" screen resolutions, sprites and other useful functions, classic audio chip emulation or software implementation of a "retro" audio chip - making new games Anyone already working on that??? Maybe some ideas?

did you make some progress already with your hardware?

well, if someone wants to start with the 2600 hardware and wants to make one step or more further to a bigger/better 8-bit gaming console, you need a system for bank switching or managing the chips selects. so that you can switch into a 2600 compatibility mode, where the cartridge is visible at multiple address ranges. and switch back, so that the cartridge is only visible at one single address range. and the other address ranges are mapped to ram/rom/other chips/whatever. so by designing such a bank switching, it would make sense to look at the 7800, how they did it. because they had the same problem when they tried to make a better 8-bit coinsole but staying compatible with the 2600. if the mechanism that they implemented for the 7800 is a good one, then it would make sense to use this and at the same time you get a single piece of compatibility with the 7800. after doing this, you could then look at ROM concepts. it is not difficult, you can look at the 7800 regarding the address space for the internal ROM. then you could come up with a chip select / bank switching which still could be compatible to implement a ROM similar or the same like the 7800. and so on and so on. at some point when you want something that the 7800 does not have, you have to break compatibility in some way but could still check if there is a configuration possible that allows 7800 compatibility. an example would be an advanced stereo audio chip. you would need an address space for it, that was not reserved in the 7800. so you need a kind of configuration where you enable the chip select for a certain address range or disable it to be in 2600/7800 mode again. at the end you might be 80% compatible to the 7800 and just have to implement the graphic chip. if clever designed, you could have two big pin headers on the PCB around the old TIA chip and you could pull out the TIA chip and put a graphic daughter board over it, that supports HDMI, emulated 2600 TIA and the 7800 graphic chip with added HDMI. so, every add-on to the 2600 could be desined in a way that would be possible with the 7800 as well to not disrupt a possible upgrade path to the 7800. good idea?