Search the Community

This is going to be a lot shorter than the last couple of projects. You can pick out details from those blog entries if you need to install a UAV mod of your own, but I'm not going to go over it all in detail again here - much of it is the same. One last console to mod, and no repairs needed! This time - a four-switcher. Or as I like to call 'em, a four-banger: Somehow, I don't think my console nicknames are catching on. 4x4? Foursider? No? Anyway... here's its RF: Pretty clean. And the parts bound for it: Yep - those are jacks! The plan this time was to drill holes in the case, and use jacks instead of pigtail cables. Also shown, from top left: a TBA internal audio board, a UAV mod, a Molex connector, and Console5 cap/refresh kit (lower left). When I opened the case, it was absolutely pristine. This console had never been opened since it was manufactured - the screws hadn't been broken loose yet, and it still had the inspection tag taped in place: The felt dust covers were still in like-new shape, as were the foil static strips (even though the adhesive had failed): Consequently, John decided to not have me drill holes in the case, and go back to pigtail cables instead. Same functionality, no holes. Fewer angry purists. But we still went ahead with the mod, because for the console to be useful to him, John needed it to have S-video and composite out. Here's where I found the connection points: Apart from +5v, everything had to be soldered to the leg of something. A little tricky, but not bad if you take your time. Ground is just a via on the ground rail, and the RF shield doesn't cover it, so it's super-easy to access (soldered it from the underside). And here's the mass of wires needed to connect it all: I really miss the mostly plug-and-play installation of the CyberTech mod. To get the wires out of the case, I used the RF-out hole. I modified it slightly, by filing about 1mm off one side: While not strictly necessary, this allows me to fit the Molex connector through it, and allows the output cables to be completely removed later if needed: The S-video and composite+audio cable fit quite easily. I used the same cables as the last two consoles I modded: The trick now was... how to secure the mod boards? I really didn't want to stick the circuit boards down with double-stick tape. I think that's inelegant, and makes removal difficult. The advantage of the four-switch though, is there's a ton of room in the case, unlike the Jr. or even the 7800. So I decided to use... double-stick tape! But not to stick the mods down directly. Rather, I stuck some heavy 3M double-sided mounting tape to the back of some 2mm craft foam (leftover from the Jr. mod), making a couple of adhesive foam pads: Then I stuck that down over a piece of solid wire (left over from some old cat5 cable): The thick double-sided tape will keep the foam in place, and prevent the wire from tearing through it. I added a second one for the TBA audio board: Then I used the wire (along with a little heat-shrink tubing for cushioning) to anchor the boards down. This is similar to what I did with the Jr. Easily removable later, if needed. The rest of the wiring is similar to what I did in the previous mods, including an inline Molex connector to allow easy disassembly later. The cables neatly fit into the stock RF cable guides. I cut a small notch into the RF shield (as I did with the Jr.) and covered the edges with electrical tape. RF is still intact and fully functional - but John would need to open the case up, and plug the cable back in: Just needed to reinstall the static strips (with the addition of some new, thinner double-sided tape), foam dust covers, and... why not - the inspection tag, and it was ready to button back up: Before I closed it up though, I wanted to check one more thing. When I installed the TBA audio board in the Jr., it seemed loud. This time I did a comparison test, and it is LOUD. I output a test tone from the Color Bar cart, and dialed the monitor's volume down until my iPhone's decibel meter app stabilized at 85dB: I then switched to RF - same console, same monitor, same volume setting and the level dropped nearly 10dB: When running the TBA audio through a mixing circuit with my AtariVox, I had to turn the AtariVox's internal volume level all the way up to be heard against the volume of 2600. Note for anyone making audio mods: adjustable output would be nice. That, or just match the level of the RF modulator. But this audio mod wasn't designed for the 2600. It works with it, but it was designed for the Atari 8-bit computers first. Much like the UAV mod itself. The picture (S-video shown here) is very clean. But it looks quite undersaturated to my eye. There's no adjustment for that, unfortunately. It is what it is: Although in comparison to its RF from before the mod, it's pretty similar: My sixer (with a CyberTech mod) is considerably more vibrant: I suppose the only way to really judge the UAV would be to run a series of tests of it and other mods all on the same console. It would be nice if somebody did that. Eh... maybe I'll feel inspired someday. Anyway, it's all cleaned-up and buttoned-up and on its way to John, along with the 7800 and Jr. It seems to have not gotten much use - even the orange stripe around the bezel has almost no sign of wear on it. The cartridge slot contacts were a little dirty, but some of that can just be attributed to age. Even the toggle switches were pretty clean (I polished them up anyway with some Flitz). So that wraps up all of John's consoles, and my series of UAV mod installs. At some point, I'll mod my own 7800, and may fix up a couple more 2600s I have. But other than just maintaining my own console, I'm not really interested in taking on any more hardware projects right now. Well... except for maybe one more thing. Published 9:00 PM, 3/29/23

Time to cut stuff up! Choppity-chop! And yes... this part is non-reversible. But the cables have to exit the Jr. somewhere. There aren't many places to do this, unless you repurpose the RF jack, or remove the RF modulator and the channel 2-3 switch. Neither is happening here, so I need to cut a hole. Because of how I routed the cables and the location of the mods, I decided the space between the channel 2-3 switch and the corner post of the case was the best spot. So I measured the width of the cables (stacked vertically) and notched the plastic with an X-Acto razor saw: I measured the height of the cables, then cut three slots, to minimize the chance of cracking the plastic when I broke the pieces out with pliers: Test fitting the cables - the bottom cable lies on top of the circuit board, so the top of the case will need to be notched out to accommodate the height: A little more cutting and filing, and the Jr. has a new hole: And the cables fit neatly through: While I'm working on the case, one of the plastic tabs that holds the circuit board in place had broken off. Here's the intact one: And the broken-off one: I used some painter's tape to align it... And globbed some J-B Weld in there to repair and reinforce it, adding more tape to hold it in place while it cured: More test-fitting. It all fits - I just need to trim the output wires to length, and solder them to the mods: Just making sure the case still closes... More soldering! Solder one, clip the next one to it. Rinse and repeat. I trimmed the excess off afterwards. And yes, I remembered to install a smaller tip in my soldering iron this time. Thanks for asking! Many (Radio Shack Helping) Hands make light work. Or in this case, re-soldering the +5v and ground wires to the UAV board. You might be able to tell in the photos above, I had soldered them so they came off the edge of the board and ran headlong into the RF modulator. I didn't like that, so I desoldered them and reattached them so they went off to the sides: With everything finally connected... would it work? Well, rather anti-climactically - yes! First try! While testing, to avoid shorts, I used some leftover wire to tie some unshrunk heat-shrink tubing to the underside of the the mod boards as insulators. More on that in a minute. I still need to do something about that LED though. Once the case lid goes on, it's almost too dim to see. While adjusting the colors and checking the S-Video picture quality, I noticed some odd thin black vertical line running down the center of the screen: Adjusting the trimmer on the UAV mod made it go away: Remember the parrot from part 1? Here it is, now in all of its S-Video glory (ignore the moiré patterns - it's my camera, not the video): So - time to button this all up! But how am I going to attach the mods? Tape? Glue? J-B Weld? Screws? Chewed-up bubble gum? Nope. Wire! I took some leftover solid Cat5 wire, and soldered the ends to a couple of empty vias on the main board: I put some heat shrink tubing on it for a little extra cushioning, and used it to tie the two boards in place. I left the large pieces of heat-shrink tubing underneath them from before. This anchors them in place nicely, and protects everything from shorting. No glue, no tape, and completely reversible. The black wire to the left is ground for the UAV mod and the audio board. And finally, the finished mod install. Or more colloquially, ten pounds of crap in a five-pound bag: And yes - the repaired clip held up just fine: All buttoned-up with its pigtail S-Video, composite video and audio cables: Pictures! RF is quite saturated, but looks okay. Although see if you can figure out what's different with these RF pics, from the ones from part 1: Composite video. Looks good... but is definitely less saturated: And S-Video. I just couldn't get my camera to reliably capture both interlaced frames. I need to figure that out. But this all looks fine in real life: RF again. Very saturated, and the color difference between the upper and lower half is far more pronounced than with composite or S-Video: But since this will be mostly used for composite, I calibrated the color for that: And S-Video is pretty-much the same. But the text is crisper: Again, the RF is very saturated. And pretty dark: And composite is... uh... hey! Those vertical lines are back! And in S-Video, too! But I didn't change anything. What's going on? Sometime later... without changing anything, they were almost gone again: After going back to part 1 and looking at the RF pic there, it's pretty clear those lines were always there. This isn't a mod artifact, it's a Jr. one: Did you catch the difference in RF pics? And yes - I did replace that super-dim power LED. Sourcing it was easy - when I replaced the one in John's 7800, I had 99 leftover. It's silly, but it's cheaper to buy 100 LEDs off Amazon with free shipping, than to buy one off Mouser and pay for shipping. I miss Radio Shack. So that concludes fixing and modding this Jr. It's a far cry from the gross, crud-encrusted mess that I started with: Even the mangled Reset switch looks pretty-good now: One thing I overlooked in Part 1 is that the Select and Reset switches are "hinged" at the top (you can see the plastic tabs that serve as hinges in some of the photos there). This is why the entire lower third of the switch has PUSH on it. If you push there, the switches work effortlessly. If you push higher up, there's more resistance and the switches don't respond. I'm sure Atari saved a whopping penny or two by not using actual momentary switches there. A couple of final shots of the finished product: Some final thoughts on the Jr. UAV installation: the more I work with the UAV, the more I wish there was a better solution. This took a fair amount of time and figuring out in order to install it. The documentation is really lacking. The need for a separate audio board is clunky. And I'm not sure the results are all that great. The picture is clean, but it still seems quite undersaturated to me, and I don't see any way to adjust it. I miss the CyberTech S-Video mod, but I think it would've been too tall to fit under the Jr's RF shield anyway. Now, if you didn't click on every single link in Part 2 (and why wouldn't you?), you might have missed thread about the CleanComp Composite Mod, currently under development. I only came across that thread a few days ago, and the Jr. was already finished by then (it takes awhile to write up these blog entries), but that mod looks very promising indeed. There are a lot of tech-savvy eyes on that thread, giving insight and feedback, and this could end up being the best (and most straightforward) 2600 mod yet once it finally gets sorted. It's making me reconsider using a UAV in any of my own consoles. Up next: the final chapter in the saga of "Adding a bunch of UAV mods to John's consoles" as I install one in... a four-switch woody! And this time, I'm drilling holes. Lots, and lots of holes. Published 2/25/23 12:30PM

So, it's time to throw a UAV mod into this 2600 Jr. As far as installing mods, this isn't exactly my first rodeo. But it is my first time installing a mod into a Jr., and it's my first time installing a UAV mod into a 2600. When I installed a UAV mod in John's 7800, I had the advantage of using an auxiliary board from -^CrossBow^- that served as both an audio board and a mount for the UAV. This made installation pretty simple. For the Jr., though, the UAV instructions warn: So that wasn't encouraging. And even though it looks like there may be plenty of space with the RF shield removed, I'll be putting the shield back since one of the goals here is to keep RF output intact: For one thing, John requested it. It's important for developers to be able to see what their games look like with RF, because that's the standard for the system. Some graphical elements can look radically different (or even disappear entirely) in RF that might otherwise look fine on a modded system or in emulation. Besides that, whenever possible, I like to make these mods reversible. It's possible the mod may fail at some point, or a better mod may be developed, or the console fails and the mod needs to be moved to another system. Whatever the reason, it's just good practice. (I couldn't make the mod fully reversible with John's 7800, because a previous modder gutted the RF modulator. But it is still removable by desoldering the resistors it's attached to from the console, then desoldering each resistor from the mod, then reinstalling the resistors back in the console.) Another warning that comes in the UAV instructions is this one: This is especially true of the Jr. installation. Which reads, in part: So, there are no instructions for the Jr. for the alternate "outside the shield" installation method. Which is unfortunate, since that's the method I'll be using. The detault instructions call for removing the CD4050, and installing the UAV mod in its place. Initially, I had considered doing this, so I desoldered the CD4050: I'm going to pause here for a moment, and interject a mini-rant I have about their instructions for doing this, which read: Uh... no. First, I disagree about this being easier. It may seem quicker, but you still have to clear all of the solder and clipped-off legs from each hole. You have to desolder them anyway. Desoldering is not that hard, and you can pick up a perfectly effective desoldering iron for cheap on Amazon. I used that Radio Shack model for over 20 years (at work and at home), before finally upgrading to the Hakko one I have now. The big difference between the two? The Hakko has a temperature control and a trigger to actuate the vacuum. Otherwise, they essentially do the same thing: melt solder, and suck it up. (And honestly, the Radio Shack one is more fun to use because to clear it, you squeeze the bulb really hard and it blows hot molten solder everywhere!) If you're going to desolder any components, just buy one. Get the cheap Radio Shack model - you don't need anything fancy. Then just practice on some old throwaway electronics until you get the hang of it. It will make your life easier, and your projects much more enjoyable. You also won't have to destroy components to remove them. And while CD4050s are still in production and readily available, other components are not. And why waste money having to re-buy components if you don't have to? So... end of mini-rant. Back to the default install. The UAV mod kit comes with standoffs that mount the board to where the CD4050 was, and jumpers to configure it for the particular system you're installing it in. It's important to remember: this was not originally designed for the 2600. This was designed for the Atari 8-bit computers, and then adapted to work with the 2600 later. Consequently, there are some compromises with it. One such compromise, is that in the case of the Jr., the CD4050 has to go back in because the Jr. won't work properly without it. For the default installation, the instructions read: Did you follow all of that? This might help: So now you're looking up, at the underside of the board, and the underside of the CD4050, with the UAV mod mounted on the top. Incidentally, "Figure 5", and the accompanying instructions, are wrong. I'll admit to not trying it, but pin 1 is at the opposite corner of where it should be. Maybe it still magically works. Somehow. In short, you chop the pins off the CD4050, and install it on the underside of the Jr.'s circuit board, in the exact same orientation it was in originally, by soldering it to the UAV pins that stick through the holes on the bottom. Basically, you're sandwiching the Jr.'s board between the UAV on top, and the CD4050 underneath. Also, you put a bunch of jumpers in there, that aren't documented in the manual. (Oh, it shows you which jumpers to install... but it doesn't tell you what each one does.) It was at this point I decided I wasn't going to install the mod this way. For one thing, it's not easily reversible (especially because you have to mangle the CD4050), but also it doesn't address another major shortcoming with the UAV mod: no audio. While using the CD4050's location seems like a tidy solution for installation, you're still going to have wires running to and from it, and you're going to have to install a separate audio mod somewhere anyway. The audio board sold as a companion to the UAV has no such provision for convenient mounting. It doesn't attach to the UAV (which would've been nice), it wasn't incorporated into the UAV (which would have been nicer), and the instructions provide no insight on where you might actually locate it inside the Jr. So I decided to go with the non-default (and undocumented) Jr. installation method, leaving the CD4050 intact, and instead running wires to the UAV mod outside the RF shield. This is actually a common installation method shown in the manual for several other systems. I just had to decipher what was going on, and adapt it to the Jr. And, of course, find some place to put it. And the audio board. First though, I needed to remove the connector pins from the audio board. They were just going to get in the way, since I wanted to solder straight to the vias instead. So, off came the shrink tubing (and the adhesive gunk inside it): And off came the pins (desoldered... not clipped): One nice touch - they listed what each connector is for on the underside. Not sure if that's why the board has so much wasted space though. They could've made it significantly smaller just by relocating one component. Still - documentation! Anyway... so the question is: where to put the two mod boards? One solution would be to put them inside the RF shielding somewhere, and stick them down on top of other components using double-stick tape. This appears to be a pretty common installation method for the UAV mod in other systems. But after having cleaned off someone else's double-stick gunk from the inside of John's 7800 (and having cleaned off a lifetime's worth of double-stick tape in my day job), I decided I didn't want to do that. Reversibility, remember? Double-stick tape is great stuff. Removing it, is not. So I put the mods in what turns out is a pretty-much perfect spot. Next to the ribbon connector on the main board, just in front of the player 2 joystick port and RF out jack. They just fit, and there are only a couple of rows of resistors underneath them: My initial thought was to make a couple of standoffs out of scrap plastic, then attach those to the main board and mods using (wait for it...) double-stick tape. But the tape wouldn't touch any components, and be pretty easy to remove. Before I got to that point though, I needed to figure out how to route the cables from inside the RF shield. There were a couple of nice gaps in the shield near the cartridge slot that I could feed the wires through: So I soldered on (most of) the wires going into the UAV and audio boards. Here's a handy chart (your wire color may vary): Then, I test-routed the cables where I wanted them to go... And promptly realized that the plastic cartridge slot was going to get in the way, because it sits flat on top of the Jr.'s main board, and blocks those access points: Okay, take two. Run it around the cartridge slot to the other side... Where there are also gaps underneath the RF shield: Then, I had a slightly better idea... I noticed a vertical gap at the inside corner that offered more clearance from nearby components: I just needed to add a little electrical tape to soften the sharp edges: And do some more test fitting: You'll notice the other set of wires draped across the Jr. in the above photo. Those are in-progress output wires. I'm making those wires pretty-much identical to what I made for the 7800 mod, using a Molex connector to join the S-Video and composite+audio cables to the internal wiring coming from the UAV mod. Strictly speaking, this wasn't really necessary with the Jr. For other consoles, I use the Molex connector to make disassembly of the console easier. Unplug-and-play, so to speak. But with the Jr., I added them anyway because I like making more work for myself, I guess. Also, this gives me more flexibility in which wires I use where. So we'll go with that. At this point, I was just making sure there was enough room in the Jr. to fit everything in. Success! I also updated my wiring diagram to include the polarity markings on the S-Video cable that I use, and the Molex pinouts: When you get old, it helps to write everything down. Pictures are even better. Okay, so the wiring will fit. The mods will fit. Now... where do I hook all this stuff up? Unfortunately, the UAV instructions are of almost zero help with the Jr. There are some photos showing where to connect wires for a six-switch and four-switch mod, but not a Jr. It's at this point this blog entry will devolve into another mini-rant. This time, about graphic design. Feel free to skip ahead if you'd like. On the plus side, the UAV mod comes with a printed version of the installation instructions. I really appreciate that, since I like having printed instructions to refer to, and I don't have to go back to my computer, or have an iPad nearby just to look up a step. I'm old like that. On the negative side, besides the definitely work-in-progress nature of the instructions, is how it was printed. The printed version comes on standard, 8.5" x 11" (US Letter) paper, folded in half. That's great - it results in a nice sized (5.5" x 8.5") manual, and is very cost-effective to produce. The problem is, they made no effort to fit the content to the paper size. It appears the digital version was created first, with no consideration given to how it would be printed, then they just took the digital version, and copy/pasted it as-is into the middle of a 5.5" x 8.5" document, without adjusting the layout, margins, photos, text, or making any changes to improve legibility or clarity. Consequently, you end up with a manual printed on 5.5" x 8.5" paper, that only takes up the middle 4" x 5.5". The resultant oversized margins are just wasted space. The photos especially could've benefited from being printed larger, and it would've made the text far more readable as well. Ideally, the manual would've been laid out for print from the get-go, and then exported as a PDF for a digital version. As it is, while I liked having the physical manual to refer to, I often just left the digital version open on my computer so I could better see it. (You can download both the digital and "for print" versions of the manual here.) Anyway... So without instructions for how I wanted to install the mod, a little detective work was in order. First, let's update my chart a little bit to include the TIA: Now, lets find out where those are on the TIA itself (thanks to various online shematics): Now, I could just solder wires straight onto those pins. But that's harder than it needs to be, and again - reversibility. Let's find some easier places to attach wires. The reason the UAV (presumably) uses the CD4050, is because some of the signals needed to generate video pass through it, and are therefore easily accessible. Let's update the chart again, this time to include the CD4050. While we're at it, let's add +5v as well, since we'll need that to power the UAV and audio boards: What you won't find on the CD4050, are Color or Audio. So for the UAV mod, you will always need to go elsewhere to find those two signals. In this case, there are a couple of handy vias right near the TIA. Just below R28 for Color, and just to the upper right of the TIA (next to pin 1) for audio (this has both TIA audio channels combined). This shows us where the UAV was designed to get signals, but we're not using the CD4050 install method. And soldering to the CD4050's pins directly is not an option (in case you haven't been following along). But a little sleuthing with a multimeter, and you can find alternative locations. You do have to end up soldering to the legs of three resistors (Sync, Lum 1 and Lum 2), but the rest are handy vias, which you can remove the solder from very easily with that desoldering iron you just bought for $24. So with the connections sorted out (and wires routed, tested, measured and trimmed to length), It's Solderin' Time!™ I soldered the first wire in, then clipped the second to it to hold it in place, soldered that one... Then worked my way down the line... And yes - there's some folded-over masking tape up there to temporarily hold the mods in place while I work. Temporary. We'll get back to that. Eventually, I got everything routed where I wanted it to go: Don't forget to slide any heat shrink tubing onto the wires before you start soldering. And yes, I put the CD4050 back. Socketed, this time: Then I temporarily installed the RF shield, to make sure everything still fit: And I'm done! No I'm not. But the UAV is now connected to the Jr. However, until I solder on the rest of the wires, I can't actually test this. But I've been checking continuity carefully as I've been going, so it all should work. Right? Published 2/24/23 5:20PM

So, remember how Sean Connery would pronounce "Junior" whenever he was talking to Harrison Ford in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"? Well, there you go! I'll be repairing and adding a UAV mod to John Champeau's 2600 "Chewnyor". Let's take a look at this crusty, disgusting thing, shall we? In all fairness to John, he thinks he picked it up like this either as part of an eBay lot or from a yard sale. It looks like it had been buried in a yard... It's certainly been well used... the power switch actually has a worn-out spot on it. And a lot of... "patina" . The switch also doesn't work reliably - so that's going to be one of the first things to get fixed. The other switches are just... gross. And the Reset switch doesn't work at all. It must have been getting progressively worse over time, since you can see gouges in it where someone stabbed it with something trying to make it work. Can't imagine someone getting that upset at a Reset switch. So first things first - I took the shell off, removed the switches (actually, they're just switch covers), and gave everything plastic several really good cleanings. Toothbrush, dish soap, whatever it took. That really highlighted the gouges in the Reset switch. But I decided instead of replacing it, to try and just fix it up a bit. Why? Well, for one thing, the cover was functionally fine. And also, at the time I started working on this (which overlapped the 7800 project), Best Electronics was limiting orders to only three items per order, and I needed the replacement power switch from them, plus I was ordering a new 7800 power supply and one of their upgraded Pro-Line controllers as well. So that ate up my three items. Incidentally, I documented how the upgraded Pro-Line controller didn't work properly. I exchanged several emails with Best about it (which included several implications from them that something had to be wrong with the consoles on my end, because clearly the joystick worked perfectly before they shipped it ), but after including photos and a thorough recount of exactly what was happening and how I tested it, they agreed to take it back as a return. So I shipped it off to them and waited for what I thought would be a replacement. And waited... And waited... Eventually, what I got, was a refund on my credit card. No further emails. No replacement. No "yes we tested it, and it's just as you said". Nada. Now, I like many of Best's products. Their upgraded 7800 power supply is very nice (although I had to do a bit of filing to the plastic, because the connector is too tight of a fit). And I've bought 2600 joystick upgrade/rebuild kits from them, a Lynx replacement speaker, and more spare Atari OEM parts than I can count. But I'm not going to waste my time (or money) on their Pro-Line upgrade again. Not unless they come up with better installation instructions than: Even if they manage to make a better kit that doesn't require a cigarette lighter, I've played the 7800 enough recently to realize that even if working properly, the 7800 controllers are an absolutely terrible design. They've earned their nickname "Pain-Line" very well. So I'm going to do something else. But that's for another blog entry, on another day. Meanwhile, back to Chewnyor... I used a four-way emery board to sand out, refine, and polish the worst of the gouges on the switch: In the end, it turned out pretty-well. Certainly worth salvaging: Now... about making the Reset switch actually work. With the switches (actually, switch covers) removed, what you end up with are a couple of very thin mylar switches: Just tapping on these with my finger triggered them without any issues. So the mylar switch itself seemed fine. (Replacements are available from Best, but again - three-item limit. ) I clipped on a multimeter so I could test them without going to the hassle of hooking the console back up: When I swapped the Select and Reset switch covers, the problem went with the covers. So the mylar switches, again, just fine. The switch covers use foam rubber "springs" that are stuck with double-sided tape to their underside. This gives them enough rebound so they're not always "down". But these have been worn nearly flat - the Reset one is on the left. When I swapped just the foam springs, the problem followed the foam. So the switch covers and switches - both fine. So maybe the foam had spread out just enough to prevent the switch cover from actuating the switch. Or it was so compressed, it no longer had any give to it. At any rate, they needed to be replaced. Now these are one thing Best doesn't sell. Which is odd, because they're easy to make. I went to a local craft store and picked up a couple of sheets black craft foam. One with an adhesive backing, one without (since I didn't know how well it would stick, and I might have to use other double-stick tape): 2mm is just the right thickness to match the un-squished original foam: So I measured and marked out the foam (including the centers of each square): The "X" was so I could align a 5/16" hole punch. 1/4" would be too small to leave any space around the post on the switch cover. You can get a 5/16" punch off Amazon pretty cheaply. I didn't. (To be fair - I bought mine at the craft store, and it was the only 5/16" one they had.) A little cutting, and presto! New sponge spring-things! I made a few attempts at these, but these are the final ones. I cut these just a tiny bit smaller than the originals, so there wouldn't be any clearance issues as they compressed over time. The adhesive backing worked just fine! So I installed them, and Select worked just fine. Reset, however, didn't. I could press it pretty hard and get it to work, but that wasn't going to cut it. Taking it back out, I noticed a small, round dent along one edge (near the lower right corner). Something was keeping the switch cover from fully depressing. Turns out, there's a round "key" of sorts, that sticks up: This holds the mylar switch in position: So, I cut a notch around it, figuring that would fix it. And it did! It worked great - but not for the reason I was expecting... When I looked back at the mylar switches again, they had slid out of position. Bother. So I put them back where they belonged, and taped them in place: However, now Reset didn't work again without applying a lot of pressure to it. When it was slightly off-center, it worked perfectly fine. So... go with what works. I punched a new hole to reposition the mylar switches (who's laughing at my overpriced multi-punch now?), and that fixed it. Both switches now work with just a tap (yes... you can just "tap" a Reset switch - you don't have to stab it). At some point, the mylar switch may indeed need to be replaced. But that's an easy enough fix later, if needed. As long as you only need to order two other things. So up next... time to get inside this thing. Atari made it quite compact. And kind-of cheap. Long-gone are the industrial tank-like components of the heavy-sixer. Here's what will be going inside it, at least in part. From left: a Console5 recap kit (including a new voltage regulator and power jack), a UAV mod and internal audio board from The Brewing Academy, and replacement power and TV Type switches from Best. (You can order multiple quantities of your three items. So I figured I might as well replace both switches.) First up, the switches. I had tried cleaning the power switch, but it was just worn out. It would turn on, but the slightest nudge would cause the power to flip back off. The newer switches (bottom) have quite a different profile than the originals. This was a bit of a concern at first... But, there's plenty of height in the switch covers to accommodate them: Here's the difference between new (left) and old (right): And with both replaced. Note that the caps have also been done at this point (along with the power jack and regulator): One oddity about this Jr., is that the difficulty switches were different from each other. The channel switch (far left) and left difficulty (center) are the same. But the right difficulty switch is a different model entirely, and worked much more stiffly than the others. So since the right difficulty switch gets used a lot more than the channel switch, I swapped them around: The last bit of maintenance/repair work to do, was clean that nasty cartridge slot! Canned air only gets you so far. Time to break out the cardboard! Just find a piece no thicker than a typical 2600 cart's circuit board. After soaking it in electronics cleaner (isopropyl alcohol would also work) and working it in and out of the slot a few times, you can see how gungy the contacts were: No need to throw it out though - I can re-use this, just by snipping off the dirty part: Here's the Jr.'s RF output. That's with a stock Atari RF cable. It'd be a bit cleaner with a proper one. Look at how dim that power LED is though... you can hardly tell it's on. May have to address that. And this Jr. does bus-stuffing, too. Not that it will likely ever get used... but it's nice to know. Here it is, all cleaned up: Up next: adding a UAV mod. (Spoiler alert: it's not going to be fun.) Published: 2/23/23 2:47PM

A friend and I decided to check out a place the other night that reportedly had classic arcade games: Let's Play Cafe in Monroe, WA. Admission was $20 and everything was set to free-play. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of actual classic arcade games they had there - most of which actually worked! I played: Joust, Defender, Robotron: 2084 (all three part of a Williams multi-game cabinet), Qix (which had a slightly wonky joystick), Gorf (very reassuring to see that we nailed the blue-background in Astro Battles for the Champ Games version), Scramble (which had a very unresponsive joystick - it felt like there was a super-stiff spring preventing it from moving), Centipede, Asteroids (there's nothing like playing on a real vector monitor!), Popeye (I don't recall this having a strict four-way joystick, but it made playing it really difficult), Roadblasters (which crashed with a "Bankswitch error" not far into the game), Pac-Man, Hydro Thunder, and possibly a few others I don't recall. But they had a good selection, especially comapred to what passes for most arcades these days. They had some newer games (and by newer - I mean 1990's), as well as quite a few pinball machines. They had a few unusual games in there too, including a Starblade which was under repair, and a true rarity: Baby Pac-Man - a fully working one at that! Having played Bob and Kurt's version for the 7800, I couldn't resist trying to play the original. We spent over two hours at Let's Play, and I spent much of that time on Baby Pac-Man (along with Qix and Gorf). Man... that is one addictive (and incredibly hard) game. After countless attempts, I finally managed to clear the first maze. I probably got my 20 bucks worth out of that game alone. We'll be going back again at some point. Hopefully they can expand their selection (would love to see Battlezone and Tempest), and make a some repairs to their existing games. Anyway... speaking of the 7800 and making repairs - let's wrap this project up! How's that for a segue? Time for some cablin'. Here are the donors, plus the Molex connector I'll be using to hook them up: The video cable is a leftover S-Video cable from a patchbay I had at work (from Clark Wire and Cable), and the audio cable is a 3.5mm stereo to dual RCA cable from Monoprice. However - I'm not using it for stereo audio. I'm using it for mono audio + composite video. The reason I'm using that particular audio cable, is because the UAV mod only outputs mono audio, so instead of having two cables hanging out of the back of the 7800 for a superfluous "stereo" output, I'll use one connector for audio, and I'll repurpose the other for composite video. John can add a "Y" cable if he should need to plug the 7800 into stereo inputs. He wanted composite video in addition to S-Video (since not all of his monitors have S-Video), and this provides a second RCA connector in a compact form factor. The only downside? The right audio connector is color-coded red. Yellow is typically used for video. But we can fix that... Presto! Composite video, mono audio, and S-Video! Job done! (As an aside, I tested an S-Video to composite adapter to see if it would be an acceptable substitute for a dedicated composite output - it wasn't. The picture was terrible.) Just to make sure everything worked end-to-end, I used a terminal block to temporarily hook everything up and test it: Composite works! And S-Video works! (Audio also worked.) In previous mods, I've used Molex Micro-Fit 3.0 connectors to connect the mod wiring to the output cables, but have always had trouble crimping the pins. The connectors are tiny, and I had bought a crimping tool that did not cost $400. The tool I had could (in theory) crimp the conductor and insulation at the same time, and was a ratcheting-type crimper (which I've used at work for other connector types), but I could rarely get the pins in exactly the right position to crimp them, and it was a massive source of frustration. While starting on the 7800 wiring , I completely trashed multiple pins in the attempt and finally gave up and did some more research on finding an alternative crimping tool. And, I found one: It's not a ratcheting crimper, and you have to crimp the conductor and insulation in separate passes, but it works. I can align the pins in the tool every time, and it crimps them solidly with a very reassuring "click". Well-worth 1/10 the cost of Molex's tool. All crimped up and ready-to-go! The reason I use the Molex connector is so the main board can be unplugged from the output cables, in case the 7800 has to be taken apart (again) and repaired. The 7800 board has to be tilted up at the back in order to be removed, so the output cables need to be completely out-of-the-way for that to happen. Since they're going out the back of the case right above the main board, the only way to do that is to make that cable fully removable. The excess cable fits through a hole in the side of the RF shield (originally intended for the non-existent expansion port on this 7800). The blue heat-shrink tubing is there to protect the wires as they go through the shield. The output cables are held down to the board with a twist-tie where the RF modulator used to be. I'd usually use a zip-tie for this, but I didn't have one that skinny, and this does the job just fine: When I get around to modding my own 7800, I'm going to have to route the cables differently because I won't be removing the RF modulator or drilling any holes. Fortunately, someone has already solved that problem. One more job to do. See capacitor C64? Of course not! Because its label is hiding underneath it. But disconnecting its right leg should improve compatibility with certain games (mostly Activision games and the SuperCharger). ' -^CrossBow^- made the suggestion of adding a switch to enable/disable it. I checked with John and he liked that idea, so I decided to add one. But I wanted a small, unobtrusive switch (unlike the toggle switch used for the previous HDMI "mod"). So what better brand to use than Radio Shack? You can still buy their stuff from Amazon! It seems completely period-correct to add a Radio Shack switch to an Atari 7800 too. Man... that brings back memories. Now if I could only find my Battery Club card! Score! I even still have eleven free batteries remaining! Time to cash this puppy in! So first, some very careful measuring, followed by some very careful drilling, cutting and filing: Perfect fit! Found C64 yet? Hint: it's mounted horizontally. I desoldered the right leg, and re-soldered the left one to more firmly anchor it to the board: More Molex! I tidied up and reinforced the connections with some heat-shrink tubing. Also, it will protect the wires when going through the RF shield: Here, I bent the orange heat-shrink tubing while it was still hot, so it cooled and stayed at the angle I wanted it at. The blue tubing just keeps things untangled and tidy. All hooked up! Again - the Molex connector keeps the main board easily removable. One finishing (P-)touch: Before final reassembly, it's time to clean off the solder blob on the RF shield leftover from the previous mod: And to clean up the solder blobs and adhesive gunk on the inside of the shield: Also, I needed to make a small notch for the Compatibility Switch™ wire to feed through: I covered the notch from both sides with electrical tape to protect the wires, and cut a slot for the wires to feed through: On the expansion port side, I did the same thing, but left a larger area for the wires: I removed the solder and cleaned up the adhesive, then polished up the whole thing with some more Flitz. Shiny! It took a lot of solder wick to get the blobs off. I couldn't get rid of the fingerprints though - they're etched through the finish into the bare metal beneath. I'm wondering if this happened at the factory when it was first assembled? With everything ready to be put back together, it's time for some final testing: Thanks to Trebor for adding a POKEY 4000 version of the 7800 Utility Cart to his ROM pack! I can see the POKEY in my Concerto cart now: And it works! (You'll have to pretend to hear it.) 2600 video looks good: 7800 video looks good! Right - time to put this back together! But first... I'm missing a screw. Rather, the 7800 is. Fortunately, Atari used the same sized screws for other things - in this case, CX-40 joysticks. So I grabbed a spare screw from a broken joystick, colored the top of it black to match the rest, and NOBODY WILL EVER KNOW!! Unless they read this. So, like... five people. Cables are routed... RF shield is reattached... time to button 'er up! Underneath, showing where the cables exit. Also, in case anybody wants to add this to the list... The Magic Switch of Compatibility™! FWIW - every Activision game I've tested works with the switch in either position. However, I've been testing them on a Harmony cart, since my real carts are still packed away. But hey - it has the switch! One more thing to add... it's always driven me up a wall that Atari didn't even care enough to label the difficulty switches. They barely even get mentioned in the manual, and even there they got them backwards! So this fixes that little problem: And the final, finished console! All cleaned up, fixed up, re-modded, and ready to play all of the awesome 7800 homebrews, Food Fight, and... well, the rest of the 7800 library is pretty-much crap. But it plays 2600 games, too! One final thing to check... how does the S-Video output look scaled up to HDMI? For reference, you can revisit Part 1. The RetroTink 2X-Mini: And the Gefen GTV-COMPSVID-2-HDMIS: And since I got to play the real Qix the other day... I just had to fire up the Champ Games 2600 version - Qyx: And of course, Baby Pac-Man: Looks great in HD, too! And yes... my HD monitor is having some light leak issues at the corners. Guess I'm going to have to get a new one pretty-soon. Edit: Whoops! Forgot to show what the finished console looks like in action, featuring the not-blinding-plain-old-red-LED: Much better! Well - that wraps up the 7800 Mod Mixedup Messup Whatever Fixit Thingy! Special thanks to -^CrossBow^- and alex_79 for their help with this project - working on a 7800 is new territory for me, and I really appreciated their insight, experience and advice. That kind of support from the AtariAge community is one of the reasons I've stuck around here for over 20 years! But we're not done with John's consoles just yet. Stay tuned... as next time I fix (and mod) a 2600 Junior! Hopefully, that one will be a lot shorter. Published 1/29/23, 2:22 PM

Get comfy! These next two entries are going to be a bit on the long side. There's some saying in some profession or something somewhere where they say something like, "the first rule of whatever is to do no harm". Or something. This poor 7800 has been through enough grief without incurring any more damage. But as they say, "You can't break any eggs without making an omelette". Or something. As I was cleaning up the case of the 7800, I decided to try to polish some of the marks and scratches out of the aluminum, using Flitz (which is a non-abrasive metal polish I've used before). Unfortunately, I inadvertently removed a little bit of the red ink from the rainbow stripe in the process: Now, this wasn't meant to be a "bring it back to like-new condition" restoration, but it was still a bit of a bummer. Fortunately, John was cool about the whole thing, saying he liked the "vintage, faded" look. If I had an airbrush, I'd take a shot at repainting it. But the metal is all scratched and dented anyway, so it's never going to look "factory fresh" unless you go to some pretty expensive lengths. Not gonna happen. Anyway, there are a lot of other issues with the case besides the aluminum plate - namely a bunch of holes drilled into the case that I won't be reusing. John really didn't like the location of the previous mod's three RCA jacks, plus there was a gaping hole for the HDMI port (formerly where the RF out was), the now-unused channel switch hole, and more holes where a previous mod had apparently been. Oh, and a hole for the "HDMI on/off" switch. So... yeah - the case was far-from new. But again, this isn't a restoration. It's a repair. And while I'm intent on fully undoing the horrible mod that was done, the scars are a part of the history of the console. So I'll replace/repair/patch what I can, but the goal is to get the console properly functioning. But these are pretty bad. So we're going to do at least something about them. Besides the holes, two of the screw posts in the top of the case are in bad shape. One is completely broken: The other has a massive spiral crack running around it: So it's time to bust out my favorite plastic-repair kit: J-B Weld and paste wax. Johnson doesn't make their paste wax anymore (for some reason), so I had to find a lemony substitute (my old can got lost in a recent move): For the half-missing post, I made a mold out of painter's tape: Filled it with epoxy: And screwed the wax-coated screw into it: For the other post, I filled it with epoxy and troweled some epoxy into the crack from the outside: And drove in the other waxy screw (neatness doesn't count as much as strength): For the other holes, I cleaned up outside where they were drilled, and covered them with painter's tape: And filled them up with epoxy from the inside: After they dried, and the tape was removed, I had some nice, solid patches: I did the ones on the back in a separate pass, since they're at a 90° angle to the first ones: For the big former-HDMI hole, I needed to do something a little different. I approximately shaped the tape into a rectangle with a notch in the top: This is so I could fit a Molex Micro-Fit 3.0 connector through it. I'll get more into that in the next installment. After letting the epoxy cure 24 hours, it was time to see if I could back the screws out. I used a very snug-fitting screwdriver tip, and applied a lot of downward pressure while slowly turning the screw. After a few very nervous moments, the screw finally broke free and backed out, leaving threads behind: The broken post worked as well. I'd later go back and add more epoxy to the outside to further strengthen it: The other holes needed a little clean-up, some shaping and filing, but were solid: Well... except for a few voids. Guess I need to trowel it in there a little more enthusiastically next time... After a little carving and filing, I ended up with the hole that I needed for the Molex connector to fit through: I'm not mounting the connector here - I just need it to be able to fit it through: The posts got filed down and cleaned up a bit, and held the screws nicely: I test-fit the case back together to make sure they held, which they did: I'm not going to over-tighten them though. I suppose someday I should test just how much stress one of these can handle before it breaks: After getting the case patched-up and cleaned-up, I tackled cleaning the cartridge slot. I've described this before for the 2600, but here's a 7800-specific version. First, I found some cardboard about the same thickness as a typical 7800 cartridge circuit board. Then I measured the cartridge slot, and started cutting the cardboard with an X-Acto knife to fit: I trimmed it until it fit while still contacting all of the contacts in the slot: Then I gave it a good soaking with some contact cleaner: Then I just worked it up and down in the slot multiple times: Yep... those were pretty dirty contacts: On both sides: I can re-use it over and over, just by trimming off the worn/dirty part. I also went through and used contact cleaner on all of the console's switches. Surprisingly, they were all in good shape, so I didn't need to worry about replacing any. So now the console is modded, fixed, patched, and cleaned! What's left? Reassembly! Coming real soon! Published 1/29/23 at 12:22:AM

So... the 7800 isn't back to "working" yet, although I have made some progress. In the sense that "I've spent more money on it" and "I took it more apart". Let's look at the pretty pictures! Here are some fresh parts from Mouser: I may not use the RCA jacks... I'm more inclined to use the short "pigtail" type cables I used on my own 2600 as well as John's. You just plug them into your monitor's (or AV system's) cables using barrel connectors, saving wear-and-tear on 40-year-old brittle plastic. But I figured I'd buy the jacks anyway, just in case I decided to go that route. It's not like John's 7800 doesn't already have a gazillion holes in it (gratuitous JB Weld action, coming soon). Another item needing to be fixed on John's 7800 was the heat sink. The only thing holding this massive piece of aluminum in place was the voltage regulator. The previous modder drilled an extra hole in it (maybe to attach another voltage regulator?), and either desoldered the heat shield to drill it, or just worked it loose through repeated abuse. So I desoldered the old regulator, fully removed the heat sink, cleared out the vias (or as I like to call them "solder holes"), and clamped the heat sink back in place: Super-handy, those little clamps... Then I swapped out my soldering iron tip for a big ol' honkin'-sized one, and gave it what-for, until the heat sink was firmly in place again: Of course, I had to wait for my soldering iron to cool back down before I changed tips again. How do I know when it's safe to do so? With a cool toy! (Thank you, Amazon Prime Day.) I should really take some pics of the interior of the 7800 while it's running. That would be cool. Or hot. Or something. With the heat sink anchored, I installed a fresh voltage regulator: All done, and rock-solid! I also replaced the two bad transistors, and while I was at it, replaced the other 2N3906 for good measure. A quick test showed that this did indeed fix the joystick issue. So with the console now properly working, it was time to rip out the rest of the composite + audio mod. Snip-snip-snip! I also took this opportunity to clean all of that adhesive gunk off of where the HDMI connector had been glued down in place of the RF modulator. What an icky mess that was to get through! Unfortunately, there was some collateral damage... capacitor C3 was caked in the gunk, and I couldn't remove one without destroying the other... But I did get the gunk off. At least everything that could come off without ruining the circuit board: And the old mod was finally, fully removed: Now then... to find a replacement capacitor. I didn't really want to place another order just for one thing. Fortunately, according to schematics in the Atari 2600 Field Service Manual, there are a bunch of 1nF (.001µf) caps used on the 2600A. So I dug out a couple of spare boards. This board only had ceramic radial .001µf caps, which don't have very long leads, but I grabbed one anyway. Plus, this still had a variable inductor for tweaking audio on it - just what I needed to replace the choke that had been ham-fistedly added to the 7800. Score! This donor had axial capacitors - so I grabbed one of those as well. The stuff at the lower right... not my doing. This was sent to me as something to add to my Mods Comparison Page umpteen years ago. It never got added. But the parts have come in handy. So, here are the two potential replacement caps. Let's see how they actually test out! (Yes... I could just try to decipher the color coding.) Well, the axial cap isn't exactly 1nF... The radial one, even less so: Fortunately, I had some spare caps in a bag o' parts lying around. After some testing, I found these which were pretty close. Close enough! (Hopefully. If in the end it needs replacing, I'll order a proper part.) Right, so, C3 and C10 are both replaced, as is R3 and the variable inductor, the heat sink is anchored, the voltage regulator is replaced, the three transistors (not pictured) have been replaced, a re-cap kit installed, the blinding rainbow LED is no more, and the gunk is finally gone. The board is pretty abused-looking in places from the previous mod though, but serviceable. The still-missing R5 doesn't need to be there - the UAV mod picks up its signal on "this" side of it (gesturing with hand, as if anyone could actually see what I'm pointing at): Now then... onto the goodies! At the top are a terminal block and S-video/RCA hookup board I use for testing connections when installing mods. Below that (in the bag) are the Molex connectors I use to connect the mod wiring to the audio/video outputs, so the main board can be removed without being tethered to the video/audio cables (or jacks), or vice versa. Beneath that is... something! Then the UAV mod (with the unused kit parts off to the right), and below that, my favorite hookup wires, ready for tinning and crimping and stripping and soldering and tangling and cursing. So... just what is that aforementioned "something", and where does it go? Well, it's a new 7800 UAV Mount Board from Ivory Tower Collections. -^CrossBow^- kindly sold me a couple of one-offs for use on this (and my own) 7800. This includes the Chroma Fix circuit, an audio circuit, and provides for a mounting platform for the UAV mod. Just solder it to the legs of the resistors on the board, add power and ground lines, add one UAV mod and some wiring and boom! Done! I haven't actually soldered any of this yet. That's next time. But the pieces are here anyway. Thanks Jesse! Meanwhile, I spent even more money, this time with Best Electronics. One thing that became painfully apparent while testing the 7800 was that my Pro-Lame controllers were pretty-much shot. The joysticks are sloppy to the point of being nearly unusable and the fire buttons aren't far behind. Fortunately, Best has a 7800 joystick upgrade kit. But with required tools such as "two sliding desk drawers", "a chair" and "a cigarette lighter", the installation process seemed a bit sketchy to me. So I ordered a pre-upgraded one instead, before making any such attempt (or spending money) on my old joysticks. I also ordered one of their new 7800 power supplies. I still have my original 7800 one, which works fine, but I really like the beefier power cord of their new one. Less prone to failure, and at the moment, I'm plugging/unplugging that power supply a lot. And I also ordered two switches. For something. I would've ordered a few more items, but at the moment, you literally can't. Best is so backlogged, they're only allowing you to order three unique items per order. No more. Fortunately, I don't think I need anything else at the moment. As for this order, I can definitely recommend the new power supply. I really like the build quality of it. But the upgraded Pro-Line controller? Well, there's good and bad. First, the "good": it probably feels more responsive than these controllers ever did when they were brand-new. I played a few rounds of Baby Pac-Man and a few other games with it, and the Left/Right/Up/Down movement is super-precise. Very tight, accurate, reassuring. And the fire buttons? Well... they work fine. But the problem with the Pro-Line controllers is that the fire buttons are probably located in the least comfortable positions possible for someone to actually use. This is not Best's fault. You can't fix bad design with better switches. That's not the "bad". The "bad" is, one of the diagonals just simply will not work. Down/Right works great: Down/Left also works great: Up/Right... less so. Sometimes it doesn't quite register. But mostly it's fine: But then we come to Up/Left. It goes from Left... To... nothing. There's a dead zone where the diagonal should be: To Up: Now, if I press REALLY hard, I can make the diagonal connect, if I angle the joystick just exactly in the right spot. But clearly, this one didn't get tested enough before leaving the shop. Maybe it needs more cigarette lighter. Published 1/10/23 at 12:03AM

Well, this blog entry just about ended very differently. But it's all-good now. So close to the finish line... just a couple more things to do after this. But first, here's where we're at now. When we last left this poor, abused 7800, I was about to install a UAV mod, using one of -^CrossBow^-'s 7800 UAV Mount Boards. First - I need to install the wires (or a header, but in this case, wires). I soldered the first one, then held each successive wire in place with some little copper clips I picked up somewhere ages ago. Probably Radio Shack. Anyway, they're super-handy. I also recently picked up a bigger magnifier, because age. Here they are, all soldered sort-of neatly in place. Note to self: next time you install one of these, switch out your soldering iron tip for a smaller one. In case you're wondering what each wire color is, here's a diagram I've made so I can be consistent when installing these: Next - I have to add a few wires to the Mount/Chroma Fix/Audio Circuit board: Time to bust out the Radio Shack "Helping Hands" I bought eons ago. The electrical tape keeps the alligator clip from marring things: This is a really tiny pad... but I was able to make a good connection. (As a side note - if I were designing mods/boards and such, I'd make the pads bigger, and space the vias further apart, so people like me who are a bit ham-fisted with soldering irons have a little easier time with them). And the power wires are in place (they can attach to either board - nice feature there, Jesse!) Everything is all wired up! Now at this point, I had a choice to make. The Mount board is designed to sit alongside the resistor legs, and be soldered to them. Alternately, Jesse suggested I could desolder those resistors (since they're for RF, and RF is long gone from this 7800), and just install the mod directly where they used to be using their vias. While that had some appeal, I decided I wanted to leave as much of the 7800 intact, just in case someone, someday wanted to try to put an RF modulator back. Plus, I wanted the practice for my own 7800, and the RF is definitely staying intact there. One potential downside to soldering the Mount board to the resistors is that Jesse said it would be a bear to remove. Desoldering those connections would be a pain - but I think you could instead just desolder all of the resistors from the board, and pull the entire thing out as a unit. Then you'd have pretty easy access to remove the resistors, and could reinstall them later. Anyway, in order to solder onto the resistor legs, I needed to reinstall a leg that had been unceremoniously chopped off by the previous modder. So I did that: Then used the little clips to hold the audio side in place: And the video side: Then, I soldered everything up (note to self: re-read previous note about installing a smaller soldering iron tip next time): The audio legs were particularly hard to reach. Removing the resistors and just plugging the board in their place would make soldering easier - but you'd have to go through all of the desoldering first. But eventually, I got the board in place: Now, to add the UAV board on top (again with the clips to hold things in place): And soldered! (Note to self: soldering. iron. tip. smaller. next. time.) I went through and tested continuity on everything, to make sure it was all properly connected. Some points weren't easily reachable, but that's easy to fix - just wrap a thin piece of wire around your multimeter probe (add tape if necessary) and you can reach pretty-much anything: Then, I connected the power and ground. There are a couple of points closer than this to get power from, but the previous modder outright ruined them. For some reason. But this worked fine (they're poked through, and soldered from the underside): Right! Now to test! I grabbed my handy test board, and wired it up. Usually I have separate left and right audio, but this mod is mono, so I repurposed one of the RCA jacks as composite video (for reasons which will be revealed eventually): Much to my surprise, it booted up first try! Looked great, too! Nice, clean, crisp display! And it's not totally washed out by the LED anymore, either! But... here's a question I have for all o' you tech-heads out there, and this has been bugging me for years. This 7800 Utility ROM says to "Match Color" between both sides of that bottom color bar (note: I haven't made any color adjustments): Similarly, the 2600 Color Bar Generator instructions also says to match the two background colors at the title screen: The 2600 field service manual has somewhat contradicting instructions for Atari's Diagnostic Cart, saying to adjust the colors so "the bars immediately above and below the reference line are within one shade of each other." But in the diagram, it points to them and says they should be the "same color". Here it is, running on this 7800: Maybe I'm being picky, but "within one shade" is not the same as "same color". More to the point, these aren't the same color. Stella shows the top color as F6, and the lower one as 16: So the question is... is the whole "match these two colors" thing wrong? Seems to me, if they're different colors, they shouldn't match. I wonder if Atari put that in their service manual as a quick "close enough" adjustment instruction, and everyone has just copied it ever since? The problem I've found, is that when I've adjusted 2600's so those two colors match, everything is shifted too much to be green. The browns effectively disappear from the palette. I don't think that would've been the original designers' intent. Wonder who we could ask about this? Anyway... back to the 7800. While the video worked first time out... sadly, the audio was not so lucky. As I ran the audio test on the 7800 Utility ROM, I got zip. Nada. Nothing. At least, not from the TIA side of things. Great. So... what did I break? The TIA audio worked with the earlier mod - but that was completely ripped out and gone now. Did I mis-wire something? Fry the audio board? Is the TIA borked? Is some component still missing? I thought at this point, I'd just end this blog entry with non-working audio, and see if alex_79 or -^CrossBow^- or someone would chime in with some ideas. But... Then I thought, "I wonder if the POKEY works?" So I fired up Ballblazer, and the audio there worked! (Love the THX-like intro sound.) Okay. The audio board is okay. My output wiring is okay. The stuff I replaced earlier (C10 and R5) are okay because they tie into the cartridge port for the POKEY. The TIA audio just isn't getting where it needs to go. So I dug through the schematics, and started tracing. Pins 12 and 13 of the TIA are combined, and then eventually run over to the base of C14. Pins 12 and 13 were tied into directly for the previous mod. So lets see where that leads us... Hmmm. A hole. There's not supposed to be a hole there (I checked this against my non-mutilated 7800): What's on the other side... What the fluffernutter?! The entire trace has been obliterated! What kind of a nincompoop does that? He only needed to clip the leg of the capacitor! $#%!! Ugh. Okay, well at least that explains it. So I bridged the missing trace with a purple wire (one of the few colors I haven't used yet): And presto! AAUUGGHH!! What happened? Heh. Forgot to plug in a cart. Okay. Back to the audio test. Well... Channel 0 works. But nothing from Channel 1. Back to the circuit board. There should be trace joining TIA pins 12 and 13 (there's one on my 7800). But it's not there. There's no continuity. I'm guessing the previous modder cut that trace so the TIA would be "stereo"?? I guess? Anyway, I bridged the two pins... A little further-away look at it: And while I had the soldering iron out, I also re-anchored the power jack. It wasn't sitting flush to the circuit board, and I was concerned about there being too much force exerted on the connection. The plastic tabs which are supposed to hold this in place are loose or missing. Not sure what do do about that... maybe a little epoxy? Anyway, back to testing. And this time - full TIA audio! And video! And POKEY audio as well! After the console warmed up, the colors changed slightly (to be expected): The right side of the bar is now warmer than the left side. Previously, the left side was warmer. So we're almost there! Now, I just need to fire up Tower Toppler, and adjust the... well... crap. Eh... who plays Tower Toppler anyway? Guess I should report this in the Concerto Firmware thread. Up next: Final wiring and patching up the case. Then we'll get around to what those switches are for. Published 1/16/23, 5:44PM

When we last left the 7800 Mod Mess Mixup Fixup™, alex_79 helpfully suggested: We'll get back to the transistors in a minute. Meanwhile, I decided to rip out the HDMI "mod" as a first step, because: 1) It's horrible, and 2) I did find a short between ground and the composite video output that I traced back to that mess. I didn't take pics of the process, suffice to say it involved cutting wires, desoldering and re-soldering, chewing through a glued-down HDMI connector with side-cutters, and lots and lots of prying to remove epoxied-on crapola. Here's the debris field: Good riddance to bad rubbish! The "mod" was stuck down to the RF shield with some sort of clear, sticky goop. Still haven't cleaned it all off yet. They also soldered ground wires to at least four places on the RF shield. For some reason. Still have to de-glob those as well. All of the prying resulted in some minor denting. I'll try to smooth them back out before final reassembly. And maybe try to remove those fingerprints. They'd replaced the stock 2200µF cap with a big, honkin' 4700µF one. They'd also screwed a second voltage regulator to the RF shield to supply power to the HDMI "mod". I reconnected the basic composite + audio mod, just enough to make sure the 7800 still worked (to the degree that it did before). Here's the bottom of the 7800, where they attached the TIA audio: I still need to clean off the snot (or whatever) they used to glue down the HDMI cable. There are also a few components they removed when they ripped out the RF module. Jesse (aka -^CrossBow^-) has been kindly answering a bunch of my questions and made some helpful suggestions about what needs to go back and what doesn't, in preparation for the UAV mod that will be going in there. Unfortunately, even though removing the HDMI "mod" did fix the short, it didn't fix the joystick problem. After this, I also installed a recap kit from Console5. I didn't expect it to do anything about the joystick issue, but it was on the "to-do" list. Yes... the whole case needs a serious cleaning. Also patching - there are a lot of holes in it. Also on the "to-do" list, was getting rid of that obnoxiously bright "rainbow" LED: By comparison, here's the original LED in my stock 7800 (I had to adjust my iPhone's exposure to make it appear as dim as it does in real-life): Here's the replacement red LED. Better, but still too bright: -^CrossBow^- said he usually adds a 460Ω resistor, in place of the stock one to drop the brightness down. I tried that, but felt it was still too bright: So I stepped it down further, with an 800Ω resistor: Much better! More like a power indicator, less like Laser Pink Floyd. Now then, onto the transistors. Both of the ones in question (labeled Q6 and Q8 on the board) are 2N3906 PNP transistors, but I didn't have any spares lying around, so I couldn't just replace them. So I desoldered those two transistors from my own 7800, so I could test and compare them with the ones from John's console. I marked them to keep track of which was which. John's are on the left (white dots), mine are on the right (orange dots): It's been awhile since basic high school electronics , so I had to look up how to test transistors with a multimeter. So here are the results from my 7800: Q6 Collector to Emitter OL Q6 Emitter to Base .691v Q6 Collector to Base .686v Q8 Collector to Emitter OL Q8 Emitter to Base .689v Q8 Collector to Base .682v Well, that all looks good. And from John's 7800: Q6 Emitter to Collector 11.6Ω Q6 Emitter to Base .703v Q6 Collector to Base .701v Q8 Collector to Emitter 67.9Ω Q8 Emitter to Base .659v Q8 Collector to Base .659v Well, that ain't right. So, I transplanted my transistors into John's 7800, and re-tested it: And lo-and-behold, that fixed it! The 7800 Pro-Line buttons now worked properly in 2600 and 7800 modes. Much easier than having to desolder and swap a RIOT. At least, it was finally working... for all of five minutes. Then I desoldered my transistors, and put them back in my 7800 where they came from. I've ordered some new ones from Mouser (along with some other parts), and will install those... next time. Published 1/3/23 at 11:46PM

So when we last left "John's" 7800 , I still needed to test the audio, and look into the joystick problem. To hear audio on my Sony monitor, I have to munge any stereo signals together into mono (each input has only a single audio connector). Since this 7800 has a stereo mod (or two audio outputs anyway), I needed such an adapter. My other two inputs on the monitor already have adapter cables plugged into them that I made, but now I'm using the third input, and I want to minimize cable swapping, so it's time to make another one. You shouldn't just use a stock "Y" cable though, since you should attenuate the two signals when you mix them together. "Y" cables are meant to split, not combine. A simple mixer circuit can be found in this article: https://www.epanorama.net/circuits/linemixer.html I've used this to make my own simple AtariVox mixer for my 2600: https://www.cheeptech.com/atarivox.html Effectively, I'm doing the same thing here. But instead of mixing four channels down to two, I only need to mix two into one. So I only need half the circuit. And I'll just make it inline, using a "Y" cable and a couple of 10K Ohm resistors: Now, I just had these sitting around in a box of parts. So how did I know these were 10K Ohm? Why, because I've memorized resistor color-coding, of course! Not really. I used my recently-purchased Fluke multimeter on them. Then I looked up the color coding to confirm it. (I bought the Fluke multimeter because my ancient Radio Shack one was literally falling apart.) Man, I miss the days where you could just walk into your local Radio Shack and buy a pack of resistors. So, let's make a cable! First, chop it in half, and strip the ends. I use a stripper similar to this. But mine came from Radio Shack. The two ends on the left are sitting on top of each other - but there are two wires there. Bad photography. Twist the ground (bare) conductors so you can solder to them. Next, strip the ends of the center conductors (the red and white wires), and re-strip two of the cables to expose more wire because you realized after-the-fact that you didn't leave enough room to put on the heat-shrink-tubing : Before getting too far, be sure to slide on larger diameter pieces of heat shrink tubing (blue, in this photo) that are going to cover up everything later (and yes... I've had to desolder things because I've forgotten): Solder the resistors to one side of each center conductor. Leave one of the resistor leads intact so it's easier to work with (I use some "helping hands", also from Radio Shack): Before soldering the other side, be sure to slide on the smaller heat-shrink tubing (yellow here) that will cover the resistor and exposed wire: Then shrink it into place. Nice and neat. Since the bare conductors will be too short to meet, bridge the gap by soldering one side of each conductor onto some spare wire. I stripped off the insulation, since it's all going to be covered anyway and it's easier to work with: Trim it to length, and solder the other ends: Slide the heat-shrink tubing over, and shrink it into place! Job done. You now have a proper stereo-to-mono-munging-mix cable! They make great Christmas gifts! So, time to plug the 7800 back in and test the audio. Just one little problem... with 7800 Pro-Line controllers plugged in, I can't get past the Concerto's start-up menu. Pressing the fire button does nothing: To get it to work, I had to plug in a CX-40 joystick, which works fine. Once I got past the menu and was able to load the 7800 Utility Cart binary, I plugged back in my 7800 Pro-Lame controllers. Apart from a sticky right button on the right controller (it is the controller - not the console), both controllers worked fine. That said, both joysticks are terribly sloppy. I really need to get rebuild kits from Best. I'm also thinking of converting my old Gravis Mac GamePads over to a switchable Sega/7800 controller. Anyway, the rest of the switches and buttons all worked fine. And the whole point of all this was to test the audio. So I did, and it worked: Just pretend that's a video, and that you can hear sounds. Now that I knew the audio worked, it was time to dig further into the joystick issue. Weirdly, while the Concerto still refused to recognize the Pro-Line fire button at startup, my Pole Position cart did. It worked just fine. So maybe it was the Concerto? Well, most of my carts are still packed away, so I tried my Harmony Cart. Same results - Pro-Line buttons wouldn't work, but the CX-40 would. (As an aside, With the Concerto, I can't navigate without a working fire button. But I can with the Harmony cart, using Select and Reset. But it's being worked on... just not finalized yet.) Since I had the Harmony plugged in, here's the 7800 showing the 2600 Colors binary. Yeah... that's really dark... Since the Harmony had the same issue, I thought, "Okay... maybe it doesn't like multi-carts." Some weird issue with the HDMI converter and the cart drawing too much power or something? So I plugged in my go-to lowest-common-denominator: 2600 Pac-Man. But the Pro-Line button wouldn't work there either. I could start the game with Reset, and found that the directions worked just fine, but the fire button was a no-show. Yet again, with a CX-40 plugged in, the fire button worked fine. To try and further troubleshoot this, I popped in the 2600 Testcart. Since I own the cart (rather than loading it from a multi-cart), that would remove the multi-cart variable, and I could leave the Pro-Line plugged in, since after just a few seconds, the Testcart switches to the joystick test screen. The left Pro-Line, left fire button reads as: Left Keyboard * and Paddle 2 far-right: It reads the left Pro-Line, right fire button as Paddle 1 far-right: For the right Pro-Line, it reads both buttons as it should: Left fire button: ]\ And right fire button: It shows a CX-40 fire button correctly in both ports, left: And right: On my 7800, both Pro-Lines read as they should. left Pro-Line, left button: Left Pro-Line, right button: Right Pro-Line, left button: Right Pro-Line, right button: So John's 7800 is reading Pro-Lines plugged into the left port all wonky. Could be the RIOT, but I think before I go ripping that out, I'm going to completely remove the HDMI-converter mess, leaving just the AV mod in place, and see what that does. It's got to go away sometime, and now seems as good of a time as any.

The 7800 really needs a nickname. The 2600 has several: Heavy Sixer, Vader, Jr., etc. The 5200 is... uh... the Boat Anchor? Well, we'll go with that for now. But the 7800? As far as I know, it never got a nickname. So I'm going to bestow one upon it: The Wedge. It's cool. It's hip. It's trendy. And I'm sure that nothing ever nicknamed The Wedge ever had any bad connotations whatsoever. Anyway, it's time to 7800-up my blog with my next fixit project: repairing a 7800. My first! Not my first 7800. My first attempt at repairing a 7800. This is someone else's 7800. Now then, some time ago, someone sent me a pile of consoles to fix. I just wish I could remember who that was... ? Guess I'll never know. But I do remember what's wrong: after a lightning storm (which took out two 2600s which I previously fixed here and here), the joystick buttons on the left port didn't work, and the right port didn't respond at all. So the first suspect is the RIOT. Also, there was a mod installed (by some random person on eBay apparently) that had composite and HDMI that... Wait. An HDMI mod? That can't be right. There are no HDMI mods. There are HDMI scalers, adapters, converters and transcoders... but not "mods". Huh. Anyway, the owner, let's call him "John", didn't like the dull (aka "normal" on a 7800) colors of the composite video, and said the HDMI looked terrible. So he was interested in having that improved, in addition to fixing the other problems. Anyway... let's take a look-see underneath. Video/audio mod jacks on the left. Magic "turn on the HDMI mod" switch on the right. And a close-up of the HDMI port. Yep. There's an HDMI port there. Weird. And extra holes for... ventilation? Well, let's see if it works. First - checking my monitor's composite input with color bars: Annnnnnd... nothing from the 7800. But man... that is one BRIGHT LED. Obnoxiously so. But at least it's getting power. Next, I'll try HDMI. To set up my LG 4K monitor, I'm first sending my color bars through a Gefen scaler. Besides scaling S-Video video very cleanly, you can also make sure you're keeping the proper, original aspect ratio. Very robust options menu with lots of adjustments too. It's a bit bulky, runs quite warm, and tends to be kind-of expensive. But I've used these at work for years, and never found a better, more full-featured scaler (outside of professional broadcast gear). And presently, Amazon has used ones for around $100. Dirt cheap! So the HDMI into my monitor is properly set up, but no love from the 7800's HDMI output: Did I mention how obnoxiously bright the LED is? And it color-cycles, too. That may need to get replaced. Well, it ain't gonna fix itself. Let's open 'er up and see what's what. Umm... okay. That's a thing. I guess. It's a bit of a hodge-podge. Like a leftover wire bin at an electronics flea market. The soldering is... amazing. Well, there's your problem!™ At least one of them. That wire will need to go back. Let's look under the hood... if we dare. The HDMI "mod" is actually a cheap AV to HDMI converter from Gearbest. The product page is no longer there, but you can find it on Wayback. (If you Google "AY29J Mini AV to HDMI Converter" it will still return a picture of it. Basically, it's one of these.) Basically, they removed the board from the converter, desoldered all of the jacks (except HDMI) and grafted the output from the composite mod to it. And pulled power from somewhere. Small wonder the thing worked in the first place. The wiring is... amazing. The rest of the AV mod looks like a mix of this and this. And hot glue. Lots of hot glue. I mourn the poor RF modulator that died a horrible death for this. But wait! Another loose wire. What might this have been haphazardly attached to? Looks like the center pin of the video jack. Well, that would explain the complete lack of picture everywhere. It's not long enough to easily reattach, so I grafted a wire onto the end of it, and heat-shrunk some tubing onto it using my new toy, which I'm totally digging. Fast, quiet (for a heat gun), and precise. And less fussy than using the soldering iron for heat-shrink tubing. Then I soldered the other broken wire back onto the switch of destiny. It magically enables HDMI somehow. Maybe it supplies power to the converter? Would it work? Much to my surprise, it fired right up. The composite picture isn't awful. Or rather, it's not any worse than my RF 7800. Color looks pretty-good. A touch brighter than my RF 7800. Did I mention how bright that LED is? And so... many... fingerprints. Well, let's take a look at the HDMI output. It works... but it's pretty awful. It just stretches everything out to 16:9, and there's a ton of artifacts from over-sharpening. Ugh. Ick. But then, this is composite video, being barfed through an $11 converter. Here's the 7800's composite scaled through the Gefen. Notice the appropriate aspect ratio: But blowing up composite is never pretty. The Gefen makes no attempts to hide anything. Lots of fun bleeding from the composite out. And for comparison's sake, here's the same composite out through a RetroTink 2X-Mini: It sharpens the video a bit more than the Gefen, but it's also stretching it - something you can't alter with the 2X-Mini. Maybe the 5X-Pro is better. One of these days I should order one, and do a shoot-out with the Gefen. Tons of bleed. Garbage-in, garbage-out. Yeah... we can do better than this. I haven't checked the audio. I probably should before I get any further into this. So, what's up next for this 7800? Well... here's a peek: Stay tuned, as we rip this thing's guts apart, and put it back together. Properly.

Some time ago, I was planning to order a Concerto cart for my 7800. I didn't have a POKEY to install in it, but figured I'd either order one from Best, or wait until the HOKEY was available to order the Concerto. Around that same time, James mangled the daylights out of a POKEY, trying to remove it from a poor, unsuspecting Ballblazer cart. I offered to attempt to fix it, if he wanted to send it to me. So he did, presuming it to be DOA anyway (he subsequently bought a replacement POKEY from Best). I didn't have anything to test it in though (and I wasn't about to mangle my own Ballblazer cart for testing), so I used the excuse of sort-of now having a POKEY to order my Concerto. A year-and-a-half later, I finally got around to attempting to fix the chip. Now, I didn't hold out much hope for success. I figured at best, I'd have a 30% chance of this working. Thirty. Percent. I think that was pretty optimistic, if you look at the pictures of the aftermath linked above. When it arrived, I didn't think it looked all that bad. Although that was the pretty side. This side... Yeah. Ouch. It looks like James desoldered about 2/3 of the chip successfully, then just lost patience and tried ripping it out the rest of the way. (Just speculating... I'm sure James would never get impatient. ) So first things first - a little desoldering wick and some tweezers to clean-up and gently unbend the pins: So that all cleaned up pretty well, and just left me with one completely-broken-off pin, and one half broken one (third from the left): So to fix it, I decided to graft on a donor pin from another (dead) chip. I have a pretty-good collection of them now, from fixing up a few 2600's. Here's one from one of John's consoles: For ease-of-access sake, I picked a corner pin that looked particularly stout, and chipped away at the resin with side cutters until I got a nice amount of the leg exposed: Then I broke off the chunk underneath. Neatness does not count here - I'm just making sure I don't damage the pin that I want. Then a couple of quick bends and presto! Donor body part! Now I had to expose the top of the leg on the POKEY. I carefully scored the resin with a razor saw: I had to be careful not to cut too deep and damage the part of the leg I needed to get to: Once scored, I figured I could just pop the piece off with a pair of side-cutters, as I'd done on the donor chip: No such luck. I spent about 20 minutes gradually chipping and scraping my way down to metal: Next, I cleaned and tinned the contact: And used a spare chip socket to line up the donor. Sorry for the blurriness. iPhone 6S. (I refuse to upgrade.) A quick touch or two with the soldering iron, and the leg was attached! Next, I had to fix the half-broken pin (again - third from the left): I forgot to take a picture of clipping the donor pin off, so I craftily Photoshopped one. Nobody will ever be able to tell the difference! I then forgot to take a picture of clipping off the broken half of the POKEY pin, and again was forced to show off my mad Photoshoppery skillz: I used the socket again to line them up, and grafted the new pin on top of the old one: Done! And the other side, because of course I remembered to take a picture of something I didn't need to: So would it work? Remember - I'm giving myself a 30% chance of success, so I'm not expecting much. First though, I figured I'd better see if the Concerto cart itself actually worked. I'd never tested it, POKEY or not. I popped it into my 7800 with a fresh SD card (since I can't find my old ones), fired up a 7800 test binary, and presto! No POKEY! Because I hadn't installed it yet. But hey - the cart works. I tried a few other binaries just to make sure, including Ballblazer (which was deafeningly, and unsurprisingly, silent). Time to install the Hacky POKEY! Opening the shell, I somehow managed to break off a tiny little alignment pin. Bummer. But that's what screws are for. I gently (or gingerly even) seated the POKEY in the socket, and carefully squeezed it into place: Everything fully seated, and no bent pins! I considered throwing a little JB Weld over the corner to tidy it up, but I kind-of like the look. It has a history to it now. And also, I didn't want to spend the time on it (thirty percent chance of success and such). Before doing anything else, I checked continuity from the chip through the board. Just to make sure that if the chip still worked (thirty percent), that the signal paths were good. I then reassembled the cart... And fired it up! Would it work? Well... first I had to wade through the Concerto's startup sequence: Looks pretty good for stock RF. Then I loaded the test cart binary... And... nothing! Still no POKEY. Thirty. Percent. But then I thought, "What if the test binary doesn't see the POKEY because it's in the Concerto?" The Concerto isn't exactly 100% compatible. So, I fired up Ballblazer... And was met with some reassuringly jamming tunes! The POKEY worked! Take that, other 70%! You'll just have to pretend this is video. But the music is there. Just to be sure, I fired up Commando: And that worked, too! (Again, you'll have to pretend.) So I managed to revive James' mangled POKEY! And now I have a working POKEY for my Concerto cart! Unless he wants it back. That would be awkward. I'm kind-of attached to it now. Anyway... And yes, my 7800's video is a little bit lot on the dark side: But my monitor is calibrated properly for NTSC: It's hard to get a good picture with my iPhone (refuse to upgrade), but yes, the PLUGE is clearly visible in person: Not sure if adding a UAV mod would address the brightness issue, but I'll likely try that at some point. After I experiment practice on John's 7800, that is. You think this POKEY was a mess? Just wait. But that's a story for another time...

So, remember when I foolishly wrote this? I guess two years counts as "some longevity". Because yesterday, after recently moving back to Seattle*, I finally unpacked my 2600, hooked it up for the first time, and got this: Looks suspiciously like the pics in that other blog post, doesn't it? (I'm assuming you clicked on the link. If you didn't... how do you know I'm not lying? Or maybe there's something really spectacularly awesome you're missing over there! How can you even sleep at night not having clicked it? Do it! Do it now!!) Right... so it looks like I get to take my 2600 apart again. Not sure what happened. Hopefully something just worked loose. I really packed my 2600 well, so it shouldn't really have been bounced around any. But what happens in a POD, stays in a POD. Or something. (The world's briefest 2600 repair later...) Well, that was easy. Three of the chips (including the mod board) had worked themselves a little loose from their sockets and just had to be popped back down. Probably because of the rather extreme temperature differentials between Southern California and an unusually snowy Seattle, plus being jostled around for 1100 miles during the move. Anyway - it's all back-to-normal now: Usually I have my 2600 hooked up to my 46" Sony HDTV, but that didn't make the trip. It was over 16 years old, the backlight was starting to get spotty, and the thing weighed 90 pounds! (Just about ruined myself getting it off the wall.) I can pick up a newer, bigger, lighter, better, and faster-responding HDTV for a fraction of what I paid for that one. Besides, there just wasn't enough room in the POD for its box. But I kept my Sony CRT, tuner, and various and sundry gaming-related sundries (s-video switcher, color bar generator, etc.), so I can get back to playing (and helping develop) homebrews. Now then... all I need to do is figure out in which of the 70 or so boxes I packed, are my AtariVox and Harmony cart's SD cards. *After a brief absence of only 31 years. I'm much happier now.

As I was getting my 2600 setup set back up, I ran into another issue. I used an old Pelican S-Video switch to connect my 2600 (along with other S-Video components like my LaserDisc player and Dreamcast) to my HDTV. Well, I no longer have the HDTV, and the LaserDisc player and Dreamcast are likely to stay in storage for the foreseeable future, but I wanted to re-use the switch with my Sony PVM-14M2U monitor so I wouldn't have to keep swapping cables. And while it still switched S-Video just fine, the audio wasn't fully working. Most notably, the right channels were intermittent, and cut in and out any time I moved cables that were plugged in. So, now it was time to take this thing apart, and see if I could fix it. (Or spend 15 bucks to replace it.) What I found out, was that when the right (red) audio jacks were installed, even though the tops of them (where the ground connector is) were seated flush against the circuit board prior to being soldered in place... ...the center connectors were not. Several of them were just short of being fully pressed into place prior to soldering, so when you plugged in a cable, it pushed on the middle of the jack, and without the support of the circuit board behind it, it would eventually push the pad off the circuit board, breaking the trace. So, for those where the trace was broken, I had to install jumper wires to go from the center post to the nearest available solderable point on that trace. Fortunately, just at the base of the green board, there were little gaps of bare copper I could solder to. The other two inputs didn't need to be fixed since they hadn't broken, but I went ahead and re-flowed the solder on them, pressing the jacks firmly against the circuit board so this wouldn't become a problem. I then tested all of the connections with a multimeter for continuity and shorts, and it was job done! Except... it wasn't. When I plugged in actual audio to test it, the last three inputs still didn't work! And not just the right channel, but the left as well. After a little more testing, I found that the ground trace had broken between inputs 2 and 3. So I soldered a jumper there as well, checked everything again (including ground this time ), and now it was fully fixed and working again. Here it is in place, on top of my Sony monitor and TU-1041U tuner (which I use for RF), with new pushbutton labels for my color bar generator, 2600, 7800 (S-Video mod pending), and an auxiliary cable. Being a nearly 20-year-old switch, it's a little clunky, and it needed a little TLC to keep going, but it still does the job!

Did I mention I bought a PS4? Years ago. I don't actually recall when. Oh wait, here's an email receipt from Best Buy... 11/18/18. Must've been a Black Friday sale. $199. Was that a good price? I'm guessing it must've been. I don't buy new consoles unless I can get them cheap. I bought it in order to... uh... why did I buy it again? Oh, right. To play Carmageddon. Remember the PC (and Mac) game from the late 90's where you smashed up opponents and ran over pedestrians for points (like the camp classic movie Death Race 2000)? It was so pixelated and goofy as to be completely hilarious. There was also a really good expansion pack and a pretty-good sequel. Then a terrible sequel (which I never bought, since it never came out on the Mac). Then an iOS release in 2012 of the original (complete with lumpy polygons and pixelated graphics). The original developers rebooted the game around 2015 for the PC (after a crowdfunding campaign and years of delays), and finally a PS4 version called Carmageddon: Max Damage in 2016. So, because I'm a Mac user and could only realistically play the new version on a console, and there were probably... three?... other games on the PS4 I could think of to buy, I decided to buy a PS4. Two years later. It came with Spider-Man. I haven't played it yet. I'm not sure I even put in the disc. I played Carmageddon pretty-much through the whole game. All that's left is to grind through "achievements". Meh. The original was more fun. I also bought Wreckfest. It's supposed to be like um... that game where you crash into things. FlatOut. Yeah, that was it. So I played Wreckfest for awhile. It was kind of fun. Neat physics. But kind of tedious. I bought Burnout Paradise too. For some reason. Even though I owned it for the PS3 and played it enough there. The series peaked back on the PS2 with Burnout 3. Pretty sure I've never even put the disc in the PS4. I bought Dangerous Driving because it's supposed to be more like the classic Burnout series. Did I play it? Not sure. Probably a little. I wonder if there's a folder or something on the PS4 showing me what I've played? You see, it's been awhile since I actually turned my PS4 on. The last system update was apparently installed in 2019. So the first thing it had to do when I turned it on today was install a software update. I usually use my PS3 when I watch Blu-ray discs. So the PS4 doesn't even get used for that. Not that I watch Blu-rays (or DVDs) much anymore. I mostly stream through Apple TV now. What else did I get for the PS4? Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Pretty sure I haven't played that. Again, may never have even put the disc in. I also bought WRC 8 for my PS4. I really love watching rallying. I really like driving games. I should probably play one of them. I hear WRC 8 is very good. WRC 9 is out now... oh wait, so is 10. And 11 is coming out in the fall. Maybe I'll get that one. If 8's any good. I should probably play it. Or see if I already have. I also bought Gran Turismo Sport. Because I really liked Gran Turismo and Gran Turismo 2. Amazing games. I also own Gran Turismo 3 "A-Spec" and GT 4. And 5. And 6. I don't think I played any of them all the way through after 2 though, because A-Spec was pretty disappointing if memory serves. And I have Gran Turismo on the PSP. I often forget I own a PSP. I wonder where it is... But GT Sport was mostly online. So I didn't play it much. Clearly, my PS4 has gotten very little attention. So then... why did I even bother turning on my PS4 today after three years of it being idle? Because, of course, I bought Gran Turismo 7. Please try to not hurt yourself rolling your eyes. You can get a headache from doing that too much. Yes - I bought another game for a console I haven't touched in three years. Because, I guess, I'm stupid. And particularly stupid this time, because usually I wait for games to hit the "Greatest Hits" bin before buying them at a fraction of their original price. But no, I bought GT 7 for full price. (But not the $90 anniversary version. At least I'm not that gullible.) I suppose the reason is, I was really disappointed in GT Sport because there was no traditional single-player career mode, so it's been nine years now since a proper, new release of Gran Turismo. For all intents and purposes, this is the first real Gran Turismo for the PS4. So I bought it. Pretty much on launch day (or launch week). So how is it? Well, one common complaint about the Gran Turismo series is the lack of realistic damage. Nonsense! I can report, first-hand, that the damage in Gran Turismo 7 is incredibly realistic. Check this out: Look at that damage! Not only is the plastic cracked along the entire top edge of the case: But it actually tore the paper insert, too! So, thanks for that Amazon! That extra touch of realism is just what this game needed! Would it kill them to invest in slightly-less-flimsy bubble envelopes? And yes... I returned it. They sent me an (undamaged) replacement right away. Even before I sent the other one back. Actually, returns are ridiculously easy now with Amazon. I just requested a return, they sent me a QR code, and I took the game and code to my local Whole Foods Market, and they scanned it in and boom! Done! No shipping or packaging required. So anyway, with an undamaged copy in hand, this evening I was finally able to dust off the PS4 and pop in the game. As mentioned before, it had to run a system update first. But I expected that. And it took only a few minutes. So kudos to Sony for speeding that whole process up! Now then, onto the game itself! Oh, right. Uh... 48 minutes. Well, I guess I can go have dinner or something. But that's fine. If it copies it to the internal drive, the load times will be much faster. (Time passes) Right. Now to put in the game disc. There are actually two Blu-ray discs for the game. The first disc was just data. The second has the game. It's like swapping floppy discs back in the early days of the Macintosh! Ah good times... good times. And since this is a brand new game, it should fire right up! Here we go! Ugh. I think BattleBots is on tonight. Guess I'll go watch that. I'm starting to remember now why my PS4 just sits around gathering dust. That's what it's best at.

About a year-and-a-half ago, I posted about getting my best-ever score in Vs. Golf in MAME: 16 under par. Since then, I've kept playing and have gotten back to that score and near it quite a few times. But 18 under eluded me. I'd always have one or two bad shots that kept me from reaching it. I also started playing the Women's Vs. Golf ROM as well. If anything, I think the course is trickier. Part of that might be due to unfamiliarity with it. But it did help me practice and get better overall. Today, after playing a decent round in Men's Golf, I played the Women's version again. I was doing quite well. No bogies. One par, but an Eagle made up for it. After 13 holes, I was 13 under: Another par though set me back. But I made it up with another Eagle at 16: Then I had another par at 17. Even with a Birdie at 18, the best I could do would be 17 under... But 18 was another par 5... and I Eagled it: Resulting in a final of 18 under! Finally! I managed to shoot 18 under in Vs. Golf! And on a course I'm less familiar with, too! My final score was 55. This is only one stroke less than my previous best, because that was a par 72. But I'll still take it! I kind of wish I'd recorded it - but I play this so often, I never do. I never intentionally set out to attempt 18 under. I'm not after records or anything like that. This is strictly for fun. Now then... anyone for 20 under? (It does make me wonder if a decent port of this could be made on the 2600. Maybe with bus-stuffing?)

A year ago I finally fixed my original Sears 2600. It had kicked the bucket in 2011, and after making do with a donor board for a couple of years, I finally got my original board working again by swapping out the 6507 and RIOT, plus installing Mojoatomic's re-cap kit. So I had my original 2600 (plus a CyberTech S-Video mod) all up and running again! But not quite... One of the first repairs I had to make back when I dusted it off in 2002 for the first time in over a decade, was the Select and Reset switches were broken. So I ordered a set of new ones, and much to my disappointment, they weren't the same. The toggles were aluminum. Mine had always been chrome. I didn't know at the time that the chrome caps were added to refurbished models - I just thought that's how the Sears consoles were supposed to all be. I knew mine was a factory refurb (that's how I was able to afford it), but had never made the connection. Unfortunately, you just can't go out and order replacement chrome caps. Those parts have long-since been exhausted. And an attempt I made to get one of the chrome caps off resulted in mangling it so bad it was unusable. So, I made do with the aluminum ones. But my 2600 never felt... right. My 2600 - with aluminum switches. When I repaired it a year ago (for what I hoped was the last time), I made one last effort to find chrome switches. Even if it meant finding another refurbished Sears 2600. But no luck. So I figured "Well... maybe someday", and went back to playing the console with the stock aluminum switches. Then, quite recently (probably due to my participating more than usual in the 2600 HSC this year), my Reset switch started misbehaving. At first jiggling it would make it work, but after awhile, it completely failed. So I was going to have to open my 2600 up and replace it anyway. Meanwhile, I swapped my console with a spare Vader, and kept playing. Then, this thread happened. And in it, AtariAger Osgeld responded to me asking about chrome capped switches - and he had some! They were spares - and I could have them for the cost of postage. A quick PayPal later, and I had the switches! Now, it didn't 100% solve my problem, because he had only one momentary switch, and I needed two. But - I was able to get one of my other chrome caps off with minimal fuss, so all I had to do was slide that cap over one of the aluminum ones, and I'd be in business! Three of my original switches, Osgeld's spares, and my successfully-removed cap. So today I opened up my 2600, and started swapping out the switches. All prepped for surgery. The nice part about doing a switch swap is that the main part of the 2600 - including my video mod - can stay put. The bad Reset switch is on the right. Some of the contacts in it are loose and flopping around. I had to scrape some adhesive out of the cap before it would slide over the switch. The re-capped Select switch. Since this switch was good, there was no reason to desolder it. The cap is held on with a thin strip of Poster Tape inside. All desoldered, and ready to have its proper switches restored! All done! That was fast! (No it wasn't... desoldering took awhile. I need to get one of these.) Close-up of the chrome switches. Don't they look sweet? More chrome! Including the re-capped Select and replaced Reset switch. Felt pads are back in place, and the 2600 is ready to be buttoned-up. Hopefully for the last time for a long while. I don't actually know what this is. I hit the button on my phone accidentally at some point. But it's kind of a cool abstract art thing, so there you go. And it's finished! It's hard to show how good these look in person. But what's even better, oddly enough, is how they feel. They're smoother than the aluminum ones, and they make my 2600 feel the way it used to, all those years ago! Before and after. So finally, after multiple surgeries, and many, many years, my 2600 is back! It's got its original switches again, and finally everything works! Well... except that it boots to a black screen unless my AtariVox is plugged into the right joystick port. For some reason. Whatever.

Previously, I mentioned at the very end of this post: That's not the only problem anymore. You see, I've been testing the Trak-Ball™ hacks on it. Why have I been testing them? Well I wouldn't have wanted to go to the trouble of designing labels for hacks that didn't work now, would I? The problem is... some of them just won't work on my six-switch 2600. What's weird is - some of them do work. On my four-switch, all of the hacks work fine. Both of my CX-22 Trak-Balls™ work with all hacks on that system. But on my six-switch, only these hacks work:Missile Command Colony 7 Nexar Reactor Marble Craze Missile Control Plaque Attack So those are all good. But these don't work on my six-switch: Centipede - controller only moves left and up/down. You can not go right, and you'll get stuck along left edge of screen. Millipede - Y axis is fine, but the X axis responds far too fast and makes moving/aiming impossible. SpaceMaster - same as Millipede. Star Wars - same as Millipede. And yes - I'm using the correct versions where applicable, and those that auto-detect are doing so correctly: So between that, and the problem with needing to have an AtariVox continually plugged in, I'm a-guessin' something is amiss with my 2600. I'm observant like that. So that means... I have to pull my 2600 apart. Again. I'm assuming this is a RIOT problem again. But I'm not sure. So I'll have to do some chip swapping to find out. Ugh. But it won't happen anytime soon. I just got this thing put back together and I'm not inclined to go tearing it all apart right now. But while I'm here, I do have some observations on the Trak-Ball™ hacks. These aren't reviews, as such. Since for one thing, I only review games that I have on actual, released carts. Not fake renders. Plus, I have a gazillion other reviews to write before I get to these. So consider this a warm-up. For these first six games - playing them with a Trak-Ball™ is transformative, and these are "must-buys" when they're available: Missile Command - I already reviewed Missile Command, so check my comments there. Reactor - This is one of my favorite unsung 2600 titles, and this hack really lets it shine the way it always should have. It brings a lot of the arcade feel back to this title, and the controls are superb. Centipede; Millipede - Both are dramatically more playable (and fun!). If I had any complaint, the controls may be just a touch too fast. However, I'm perfectly willing to accept that perception is due to how bad I am at both games. The Challenge of Nexar; Colony 7 - Both feel like they should have always been Trak-Ball™ games. They almost play like entirely different games - the hacks are really that good. Less successful are: Marble Craze - Just to be clear, the Trak-Ball™ is a noticeable improvement over using paddles. That said, I wish braking was more forgiving. I keep meaning to just slow down, and end up going over the edge. A lot. I'm not sure how to fix that. Some of it is due to the nature of a Trak-Ball™ being a free-form analog control, and some of the maze layouts being designed for you to go dead-straight vertically or horizontally to get through them. Rolling a Trak-Ball™ in a dead-straight line is next-to-impossible. Stopping on a dime to change direction in a dead-straight line is even closer-to-impossible. But again, the Trak-Ball™ is a significant improvement, and makes the game much more playable. I think for it to truly work to its fullest potential, some of the mazes would need to be redesigned with the Trak-Ball™ in mind, rather than paddles. Or there would have to be some sort of AI that would dampen X or Y axis input, depending on the predominant direction you were heading. Or something. One lingering frustration that became more apparent the further I got into the game, is that it's not always clear what constitutes a path leading offscreen, since instead of having the path's color extend to the edge of the frame, there's a band of "falling to your death" color at the edge, such as the blue on the right side of the Berzerk robot: To me, that says "don't go here". So I'm always second-guessing that. This is especially obnoxious on the Adventure maze level, which looks like it's full of dead-ends, but isn't. Finally, on the hack, there's a graphic glitch on the title screen (it shows up on real hardware, too): Missile Control - This is a pretty obscure game, and while the Trak-Ball™ moves your aiming cursor around just fine, the game's control scheme is wonky to begin with. Firing directly at the enemy works well, but then you're expected to ricochet shots off of huge rockets flying up either side of the screen. As the game progresses, this is the only way to hit enemies, and it's more guesswork than anything. It doesn't help that your range of motion is limited so you can't always aim where you want to. This is part of the original game, and the Trak-Ball™ can only help so much. Plaque Attack - Another game with wonky controls in the original. Again, the Trak-Ball™ works fine for moving you around, but Activision blew it with this one, in that you can only aim up or down. They should've made aiming four-way. That would've vastly improved this game. Plus not making it about teeth would've helped it be less weird. But hey... dental hygiene education. I guess. SpaceMaster X-7 - I haven't played this enough to determine if the Trak-Ball™ really helps or not. I tend to find myself wanting to stay in one spot, fire for awhile, move, fire, move, and repeat. The Track-Ball™ doesn't lend itself to that, but when you do need to move around, it works well. Star Wars: The Arcade Game - The 2600 version of Star Wars has one of the worst control schemes of any 2600 game. I hated it so much when it first came out, I returned it to Toys 'R' Us and exchanged it for something else. Gyruss, I think. By using the same objects for the crosshairs and lasers, aiming and firing becomes a sluggish, inaccurate chore. Having a limited range of motion doesn't help. The Trak-Ball™ does improve it marginally, but it can't save what was a bad design to begin with. Anyway... if any of you hardware-inclined types have any suggestions on what's ailing my 2600 this time, let me know in the comments. I'd really like to get this thing back to 100%. Finally.

About a year-and-a-half ago, I posted about a couple of Lynx upgrades I bought - McWill's excellent replacement screen, and SainT's Micro SD multicart. When repairing my 2600 last year, I ordered a bunch of parts from Best Electronics - chips, joystick repair kits, and so on. Also, I added one of their Lynx replacement speakers. Now - my speaker actually worked, but for $12.50, I thought maybe the upgrade would be worth it. But it just sat in the box, waiting for me to get around to it. Since I had worked on my 2600 yesterday, I finally decided to go ahead and do the speaker swap today. It doesn't require any soldering, just a bit of careful disassembling/reassembling. I didn't take a bunch of pictures this time, but here are the two speakers, midway through the swap: The top (clear) one is the replacement. The lower (black) one is the original. Here's the new speaker in place before reassembly: The hard part, is not breaking off the little plastic tabs that hold the speaker in place. Anyway, I reassembled the Lynx, fired it up... and presto! It... uh... has sound. I guess I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It sounded okay. After all, you're not going to get hi-fi out of a tiny little speaker. I wasn't even sure it was any better than before. Fortunately, I recorded a "before" and "after" video. Skip about halfway to hear the "after". This was recorded at close range with my iPhone 6S. So while not the best recording, it actually does give a very good comparison of what these two speakers sound like. Flipping between the two, the new one does sound better. A little bit fuller. Bass is slightly improved. But if I hadn't shot the "before" video... I probably never would've known. Again - my original speaker wasn't fried, so I wasn't trying to fix something that was broken. Anyway, if yours is broken, then I think this is a worthwhile swap. It certainly won't make the kind of difference McWill's screen did though. If you want better sound... get a good pair of lightweight headphones. (I've been using the Koss PortaPro for decades. They sound excellent, and have a lifetime warranty. I've worn out two pair, and they replaced them for the cost of shipping.)

With Pong being prominently mentioned in a couple of forum threads recently, I just had to pick up a Pong console off eBay... I wanted one of the Sears Tele-Games models, because those were the first ones sold (I have no idea of this one's actual manufacturing date however). This one is in amazing condition, especially considering its age. It works perfectly fine, there's almost no wear to speak of, and it just needed a little TLC with some Windex and a toothbrush to clean it up. The left pot needs a little contact cleaner, but it's not bad - just a little jittery. The picture is very crisp, especially considering it's running on a 35-year-old TV. And no - the score doesn't stay on the screen while you're playing. It only appears between serves. But the photos looked empty without it. When the game ends, a checkerboard pattern moves around on screen: I guess this was just a way to let you know the game had ended, and was probably something easy to display. Plus it adds a little pizazz to it. It also came with an original Sears Pong "Battery Eliminator" which is still the coolest name ever for an AC adapter. I think Radio Shack may have called them that, too. Having never owned a dedicated console before, a couple of things surprised me: It's battery-powered. It seems strange now, but at the time it would've been marketed as an electronic toy, and all of those were battery-powered. But again, you could buy a "Battery Eliminator" for it. The speaker is built-in. No sound comes through the TV. Not sure why, except, again, it's effectively an electronic toy, so that would have been expected at the time. It just makes a couple of different beeps, and there's no volume control. I don't know when videogame consoles started using the TV for sound, but this better explains why there are unused speaker grills in the 2600. Anyway, it's a cool little conversation piece to have around, and it's still fun to play. And yes - it will be making an appearance in a certain Atari-themed comic strip at some point.

I used to play Nintendo's Vs. Golf back-in-the-day-when-you-could-actually-play-it-in-the-arcades. When I got into MacMAME (now 20 years ago!!!!) I picked it up again, and the best score I shot at the time was 59: That was 13 under par (the course changes, so the overall par changes as well). Recently, since I got MAME running again properly for the first time in years, I've been playing it again. I've gotten to where I can birdie every hole on the course... just not always in the same game. Although I just got real close: Just two more... (and yes, I did miss two putts). Admittedly, one hole was actually an eagle, and three were pars, but one of these days, I'm going to shoot 18-under.

Keeping an old 2600 running isn't always easy... My original 2600 is kind of an odd one to begin with, in that it was a factory reconditioned Sears console, with a light-sixer case, but heavy-sixer insides. Apparently, this is just something Atari did. It makes sense - if they're factory-refurbishing something, they'll put it back into the best, or newest, case available. In 2002, as I dusted off my 2600 for the first time in years, I noticed the springs in the switches were broken. These were the chrome-capped switches Atari used when reconditioning their consoles, although I didn't know that at the time. I thought they were just stock switches. So I ordered some replacements, only to find out they were the aluminum-finish ones instead. I was disappointed, but installed them anyway. In hindsight - I would have disassembled them, and kept the chrome switches, just repairing the springs. In 2008, my 2600 died. In that case, it turned out to be the hex buffer (CD4050) - which was a pretty easy fix. Thanks to batari and supercat who suggested that was the problem. Then, in 2011, it died again. This time though - I couldn't get it working again. I wasn't sure what the problem was, although the console had taken a lot of abuse over the years as the guinea pig for my mods comparison tests. I tried swapping chips with a working four-switch Vader, to no avail. Meanwhile, I used the Vader as my daily driver. In 2015 I bought a populated six-switch donor board from Best Electronics to swap parts with, in an attempt to get my original console working again. But despite my "best" efforts - my original 2600 just wouldn't work. Its TIA was good though, since that worked in the donor light-sixer. But its 6507 and RIOT wouldn't work, so I figured those were bad. But even swapping all of the donor's chips over to my 2600 didn't get that working. So then the donor board went into my original 2600's case, "fixing" it. But it wasn't really fixed, and I still really wanted to get as much of my original 2600 working as possible. Then recently, mojoatomic began selling capacitor and voltage regulator kits. Now, these parts can be found at Digikey or Mouser, but the nice thing about buying his kits, is that he buys them in bulk, and saves you the trouble (and shipping costs) of hunting them down yourself. Everything's just there in a neat little bag. Plus, he posted instructions on what to replace. And he also sells brand-new replacement power adapter jacks. Very nice! So, hoping this might have been part of my original 2600's problem, I ordered up some kits and installed them. But again, to no avail. Swapping the chips with the donor light-sixer still didn't fix it. Mojoatomic also suggested checking for cold solder joints and bad connectors on the IC sockets or cart connector. So, I spent a pretty long evening desoldering and replacing the IC sockets, and completely re-soldering the cart connector. Still nothing. At this point, I was about to give up and take up mojoatomic on his offer to see if he could fix whatever was wrong. But first, I tried one more thing. I pulled the RIOT and 6507 from the Vader again, and popped those into my original heavy board. And it worked! My Atari was back! For realsies, this time! So what happened, and why didn't the donor-sixer's chips work in my board? They worked in the light-sixer, and the chips are all the same, right? Well... not exactly. Since I first got the donor board, it always had a slightly odd quirk. It worked fine, but whenever I pressed the fire button on the joystick, the picture would dim slightly. I had hoped recapping and replacing the voltage regulator on the donor would fix that problem. But it didn't. Yet - the console still worked. So I assumed its chips all worked. But apparently, the RIOT is going bad. It's not bad enough to fail on the light-sixer, but it is on the heavy. So I was trying to troubleshoot using a bad chip. Once I put the Vader's RIOT into the donor-sixer, the dimming problem went away. I think the sequence of events went like this: My power adapter had some sort of problem. When it did, it took out my original console's RIOT and 6507. (That power adapter has - quite recently - fully up and died. So I'm sure now it was the culprit.) It may have also taken out the voltage regulator or a cap somewhere. This would explain why originally transplanting the Vader's chips didn't work. It may have also damaged the donor light-sixer's RIOT, causing the dimming problem. But I have no way of knowing that. In the end, I had a bad 6507, and two bad RIOTs. But now I have two re-capped 2600s with new voltage regulators and power adapter jacks, and I know they both work. I'm going to go through and upgrade my Vader and another four-switcher I have with those kits as well. I've ordered up the replacement chips I need from Best, as well as a few other goodies (power supplies, joystick rebuild kits, and a speaker upgrade for my pimped-out Lynx). For the time being, I'll keep the Vader's chips in my original console, so that for the first time in almost six years, I finally have a working heavy-sixer-in-a-light-sixer-Sears-shell 2600 again. Now all I need to do is find another set of six chrome-capped switches.

See what I did there with the II? As in Lynx II? No? Well... fine. I never claimed to be a good literaryist. I'm pretty sure that's a word. If I tell my spell-checker to ignore it, it works, and that's good enough for me. Anyway, a few years ago, I had written that I had dusted off my Lynx II and picked up a few new games for it. And while there were a few keepers in the bunch, after a little while the Lynx sat idle again. In the last couple of years though, it's had new life breathed into it not once, but twice, thanks to a couple of very talented Lynx hobbyists. AtariAge member McWill created an LCD screen replacement kit that has to be seen to be believed. The original Lynx screen was dull, washed out, and had a very narrow viewing angle. Mine was starting to exhibit dead pixels, too. McWill's kit puts a modern, bright, crystal clear screen in its place (and you can optionally add a VGA output, too). I posted about my experience with installing McWill's screen kit in the Lynx forum. The upshot is, it completely transformed the system. The games actually became more playable, as details lost to the old murky LCD screen suddenly became razor-sharp. It was like my Lynx got cataract surgery! That was a weird analogy. Maybe this is better: It was like the difference between looking at leftover pizza through wax paper or Saran Wrap. Uh... no. Look... here are a few photos, okay? Rampart, before: And after: And Awesome Golf before: And after: It looks a lot better. That's the point to take away here. If you want to see more, I posted extensive before and after galleries. If you want to order one of these amazing new screens, just contact McWill, and he'll get the details to you. For those who don't know how to solder, he offers installation as well. He also has kits for the Lynx I. So... after installing the new screen, the games I had looked better, but I still had a relatively meager selection of them. But this year AtariAge member SainT developed an SD-based multicart for the Lynx. As with similar multicarts for other systems, the RetroHQ multicart allows you to load any or all Lynx ROMs onto a single Micro SD card, which can then be plugged into your Lynx. From there, you just choose the game you want to play from an onscreen menu. The online reviews and videos of it were all very promising, so I asked to be added to the pre-order list. And last week - mine finally arrived! SainT's Multicart is on the left (the Micro SD card can be seen in the notched corner at the top), and a standard Lynx cart is on the right: Once booted, the menu system is very responsive and clear to read. A downside is that it only shows 8 character filenames: One thing that helps is that you can organize your ROMs by folder. Mine are alphabetical for now, but I may further refine this by games I play more often, or by genre, etc. A really nice option is that you can add preview images to your SD card to view pictures of the games you select before loading them. This is very handy, especially if you can't remember what game KISTENSC is supposed to be. Or in this case, APB, which is, well... APB. In order for the previews to work - your ROM names and preview names must match. The preview images have already been created, named and zipped for download, so you'll likely have to go through and rename something for them to work. In my case, I renamed my ROMs to match the previews. It's just as well, since the menu can't display long filenames. Also, you currently can't create your own preview files, unless you can figure out how to save images in the correct image format. It'd be great to be able to create your own, or even have multiple ones available for each game to show different screens or other information. Once a game is selected, it takes several seconds to load, but from that point on, everything works as if it were an original cart. The multicart is very solidly made - with a 3D printed case permanently attached to it (for the Lynx I, you have to get one without a case, or it won't fit). There's quite a long waiting list to get one - I was added to the list mid-May, and it finally arrived mid-October. But it was well worth the wait, because apart from a few unavailable homebrews, I have instant access to the entire Lynx library. If you want to read more about it, check out the this thread. To get on the order list, just post a response in that thread, specifying what you want. I'd highly recommend both of these items to any Lynx owner. They really do transform the system, and have really increased my enjoyment of it. If I had to pick one, I'd have to go with McWill's screen. I never thought a Lynx could look that good. But once you get the screen looking good - you're going to want to get the multicart, too.

Over my Christmas vacation, it was with a tinge of sadness that I noticed that the Radio Shack I had grown up with had closed its doors. My Radio Shack. I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised though, since I was often puzzled at all of the other Radio Shacks that were still open. More surprising, was that when I went to go see a movie that week, this commercial ran in the theater beforehand. "Weird Al" Yankovic singing the joys of holiday shopping at Radio Shack, in a Radio Shack the likes of which I'd never seen - clean, modern, organized, inviting. I couldn't help but think, "Wow... Radio Shack can afford 'Weird Al'? How did that happen?" My guess is, the boardroom discussion went something like this: Suit #1: We need a new celebrity spokesperson. Suit #2: Howie Long and Teri Hatcher aren't hip with the kids anymore? Suit #3: They never were hip with the kids. Suit #1: We need someone who can better appeal to our target demographic. Suit #2: What's our target demographic? People who can't drive all the way to a Best Buy? Suit #3: People who have never heard of the internet? Suit #1: No - nerds! We need to re-connect with our core users. Hobbyists, electronics geeks, computer nerds. Suit #2: Sure! Nerds are rich now! That's exactly what we need! Suit #3: So we need a spokesperson that appeals to nerds? Suit #1: Yes! Nerds are hip and trendy right now. What with the internet and texting and MP3s and all that. Suit #2: And cellphones. Don't forget cellphones. Suit #3: I'd like to forget cellphones. I still have a hernia from the ones we used to sell. Suit #1: So who's big with the nerds now? And also affordable. Suit #2: We should get "Weird Al"! "Eat It" was awesome! And he had a #1 record this year. Suit #3: Isn't he kind of old? Do we really want to appeal to old nerds? Suit #1: Nah - kids love him! And their parents love him! It'll be great! Suit #2: Whole families of "Weird Al" fans, streaming into Radio Shack! Buying stuff! Suit #3: Yeah... I can see it now. "Hey kids... let's all go down to the Radio Shack to buy some cellphone chargers and hearing aid batteries." The thing that surprised me most about the commercial, is that I regularly follow "Weird Al" and I never once saw any announcement that he'd made this. And he puts links to almost everything he does on his website. Maybe he was distancing himself from it, sensing that the end was near for Radio Shack. Being associated with nerds is one thing... but even nerds no longer associate with Radio Shack. At any rate, the end finally came this week as Radio Shack filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Frankly, I'm surprised it's taken so long. (Even though I could have predicted this would happen.) My most recent dealings with Radio Shack have been few and far-between, and usually the result of "Well, nothing else is open, and I don't want to wait the two days it would take to get this online, so I'll see if Radio Shack has it". And as time went on, more often than not, the answer was no - they didn't have it. Their inventory dwindled over the years, as did any concern any of their employees had for maintaining the stores. They fell into disrepair, with half-empty displays and shelves, and the things that used to distinguish them - the oddball adapters, electronic parts, components, project boxes, tools - disappeared. Even hobbyists who weren't already buying everything online were forced to shop elsewhere. The stores became ghost towns. Employees knew almost nothing about what the stores carried, and cared even less. On the rare occasion I could find something useful, I'd usually have to hit up three stores just to find enough stock of an item to make the project work. Radio Shack's downfall is hardly a recent event. About 20 years ago, around the time I started my current job, we would shop at Radio Shack for parts pretty frequently. But the thing was - even then - we were shopping just for parts. Odds and ends. RCA cables, audio adapters, switches, portable cassette players, 99¢ packages of resistors, VHS tape rewinders, cheap computer speakers - old technology we needed to support other old technology we still had at work. But over time, other stores began carrying those bits and pieces - Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's Electronics, computer stores, outlet stores - places where we were already buying other equipment, so that the odd trip out to Radio Shack became unnecessary. There were options. There was competition. Radio Shack was no longer unique. It was no longer a destination, but a fallback in case you couldn't find something somewhere else. And this was before the internet. The last major purchase we made from Radio Shack for work was about 10 years ago, when we bought several 27" TVs from them (because they were cheap). But all of the TVs failed within just a few years. You get what you pay for. As a hobbyist, I found fewer and fewer items at Radio Shack that I could use. Their electronic parts selection, which used to be massive, became effectively useless. I used to build stuff with parts from Radio Shack all the time. There was something reassuring about knowing that you could go down to the store whenever you wanted, to pick up a few parts to make something useful or just for fun. As a kid there was a joy to be found in looking through bins and drawers full of parts, to imagine the possibilities of what you could create. Wishing you had just a little more money to buy that cool looking switch, or that LED display, or any one of a hundred or a thousand other things. Radio Shack, even when I was a kid, had a reputation for selling cheap junk. Their batteries were cheap, and went flat faster than any other brand. They sold cheap speakers, car stereos, audio gear, microphones, and all sorts of things. I owned a cheap little mixer so that I could mix my own cassette tapes. My old car had an all Radio Shack stereo that I installed - an AM/FM cassette player, dual slim 7-band graphic equalizers (one for the front speakers, one for the rear), the front doors had 5 1/4" three-way speakers plus another 4" pair, the rear window had 6" x 9" three-ways, and the trunk contained a dual 8" subwoofer that I built using Radio Shack's book on how to build speaker enclosures - including hand-wound crossovers. My main home speakers are still sitting on Radio Shack speaker stands. Right now, where I work, hooked up to a brand new 46" HDTV, we still have an old cheap mini Radio Shack amplifier and Optimus AV speakers because they happen to work for exactly what we need. I still have four more of those speakers hooked up at home as my surround speakers. I still have an old pocket Radio Shack AM/FM radio that I keep around in case of emergencies. I have a Radio Shack stopwatch. I still have a bunch of old Radio Shack project boxes sitting around (some with projects in them). I still have a Radio Shack desoldering iron. Two of them, actually. One at home, one at work. I still have a couple of Radio Shack digital multimeters, and sound level meters (which we still regularly use at work). And a Radio Shack electronic studfinder. There are old Radio Shack cables, adapters, and who knows what else, tucked away all over the place. I probably still have a broken LCD watch pen sitting in a drawer. And yes... a lot of it, maybe most of it, is cheap junk. But maybe that's what made Radio Shack so... magical. We knew it was cheap - but it put things into our reach that maybe we otherwise wouldn't have been able to grab ahold of. My high school electronics teacher always dismissively called it "Battery Shack", but of course that's where you had to buy parts for his classes. It was where everyone went to buy parts to build things with. That's just what you did. It's where you went to find things to create stuff with. To explore. And Radio Shack carried all of the weird, oddball, and interesting electronics that other places never did. Need an adapter that turns your car's 8-track player into a cassette player? Yeah - Radio Shack's got you covered. Crappy handheld electronic games that were five years behind everyone else? Check. A cool-looking pocket TRS-80 computer with an LCD matrix screen? You got it. A battery-powered portable TV? How about five of 'em! Radio Shack had your back for the weird, fun, cool, goofy and stupid stuff you wanted, needed, or were just fascinated by. Was it innovation? I don't know. But it was fun. It was fun to walk through their stores, or flip through their catalogs, and just marvel at the weirdness, the coolness, the usefulness, and the uselessness of it all. Radio Shack used to call itself "The Technology Store". And it was. It wasn't always great technology, or quality technology, but it was undeniably fascinating and they put it within our reach. When Radio Shack really began to click with me, was when they began opening up their Computer Centers back in the TRS-80 days. I was incredibly fascinated with computers in the late 70's/early 80's, and Radio Shack set up these Computer Centers where you could go in and just bang away at the keyboards for hours. My friends and I would hang out there after school (when we weren't at the video arcades, naturally), learning BASIC, running programs, and printing things out on silver thermal paper. The store just let us in - a bunch of kids - to do that. To play - yes, but also to learn. I never learned how to program very much - but it was a great deal of fun. So much so, that I still vividly recall staying there so late one day, I missed a dentist's appointment, and got in a lot of trouble for it. I have yearbooks signed by my friends specifically mentioning our times at Radio Shack. Along with the arcade, the mall, and the movie theater... it was one of our hangouts. While in high school, one of my best friends saved up enough money for his own Trash-80. Besides playing blobby adaptations of arcade games, we spent hours - and I mean hours - upon hours playing Zork, logged into the University of Washington's VAX, or trolling various bulletin boards. I later typed up some of my college papers on his TRS-80, including one where the computer crashed, and he somehow managed to recover it from RAM (I have no idea to this day how he did that... but he now works at Microsoft, so there you go). Was it the best computer out there? Did it have the best graphics? Of course not. But it didn't matter. Because it was his. His computer. That was an incredibly rare thing back then for a high school kid. He worked hard to earn that money, too. And he chose to buy it at Radio Shack. The problem was that Radio Shack never figured out how to hang onto that magic. The magic of technology. Of weird, cool stuff. Of things that fired the imagination. They never figured out how to keep walking the line between being the place that sold cheap junk, but also being the place that always had cool cheap junk. After awhile, they just had junk. And that's all that people remembered. That and cellphones. Radio Shack was way ahead of the market on cellphones - but by the time the market caught up to them, they had already been left behind by it. They often led the way, but then got stuck in one place, never moving ahead until it was too late. Instead of being the place to go for the latest cool thing, they became the place where everything was just old. They had forgotten how to keep up. They'd lost their relevancy, but worse than that, they'd abandoned the niche that made them unique. That made them fun. Making fun of Radio Shack as a kid had always been with a wink and a nod. Now, people were making fun of them because they had become old and pathetic. Looking back - I wonder if they had kept a stronger emphasis on personal computers, maybe they could have done better. Build and sell cheap PC clones. Keep the Computer Centers for training. Focus on repair and service. Become the family-friendly source for personal computing. Be the Apple Store, for the non-Apple crowd. Maybe they could have survived long enough to partner with Microsoft to have stores-within-a-store as part of their recent "let's copy Apple" retail initiative. Radio Shack certainly had the real estate for it. I'm surprised Microsoft didn't have a hand in their buyout just for that reason alone. By its very nature, the computer industry is always going to have some cool thing people will want. 3D printing would have been right up the old Radio Shack's alley. Don't we still have a need for a "Technology Store"? Maybe they could have been the place to go to learn how to "cut the cable" featuring the latest DVRs, set-top boxes and digital antennae. Or they could have become a center for home automation integration - Home Depot sure isn't going to help you out with any of that. They completely, and repeatedly, missed every opportunity to get into video games. Quadcopters have become a "thing" recently - but by the time Radio Shack noticed, nobody was paying attention to them anymore. Nobody would risk buying anything there, because it was no longer a trusted source. Everyone knew Radio Shack had become just a joke. A joke with bad service, old products, and cheap junk. Not even a hint of the magic, or wonder, or fun, or goofiness remained. The opportunities were there. But they couldn't see them. Maybe they grew too big, too old, and too slow to change with the times. Maybe though, their downfall was inevitable. Maybe the age of the hobbyist, the tinkerer, the enthusiast, the discoverer, has moved on from needing a place to congregate. The internet has supplanted Radio Shack in every way, shape and form. You can browse an endless array of weird, cool and cheap junk online, and have it delivered to your door. You can connect with likeminded people without setting a foot outside of your house. Maybe even if Radio Shack had done everything right - the end result would have been the same. Maybe their time had just finally passed.

Yet another mouth to feed: Huge thanks to Albert for hooking me up with this Vectrex! This is a pretty sweet unit - very clean, works great, solid controller, and it included several games and overlays (gotta have the overlays). I've been wanting one of these since, well, since the early 80's when I first saw them in stores. More recently though (like, ten years ago) Alex Herbert sent me copies of a couple of his Vectrex homebrews as a thank-you for work I did on the manual and label for his as-yet-unfinished 2600 homebrew: Man Goes Down! Unfortunately, I had nothing to play them on. Even more recently, I bought one of Richard Hutchinson's VecMulti carts, as I got ever closer to acquiring one of these puppies. Finally, it's here! Now I just need to get a microSD card reader (so I can use Darrell's Mac port of MenuMaker), and scrounge up some more games. (Hmmm... now Darrell and I both have a Vectrex. I wonder how Stay Frosty would look in vectors? )