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The amount of needless shielding is older consoles is ridiculous


Rev. Rob

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I've worked on a lot of my older console for one reason or another, and I have to say, the hoops that they had to jump through to get through FCC regulations must've been astounding. The Channel F, APF M-1000, and Astrocade are built like a tank. The Channel F has so much useless metal inside of it that it's easily a contender for heaviest home console.

 

Here's a interview with Jerry Lawson, one of the founders of the console industry:

 

Oh yeah. Well, the biggest part of getting the Channel F released was getting through the FCC. That was a job in itself. It was the first microprocessor device of any nature to go through FCC testing. And I — believe me, I got some gray hairs over that. The FCC was really hard on us. And Al Alcorn came down — it was funny when they first saw it — Al, Nolan, and the [Atari] president then — at the Chicago show. They came down to me and said, “Lawson! It’s cool, except the only thing we dig is the hand controllers.” And Al told me, he said, “Oh, boy, that little noise you’ve got there on the screen, boy, you’re really going to have to get rid of that — you’re gonna have trouble with the FCC.”

 

And I had to leave the show early to go to the FCC. Because the FCC — oh boy — it cost, at that point, a thousand dollars, and the spec they had was one microvolt per meter of spurious signals you couldn’t overcome. And if you had any more than that, you were in trouble.

 

The problem was — Texas Instruments, years later, couldn’t make that spec. So guess what they did? They lobbied and got them to change the law. I was so mad, I couldn’t see straight. ‘Cause that was what keeping a lot of people from jumping in the market, including RCA. They couldn’t pass the test.

 

We had to put the whole motherboard in aluminum. We had to make an aluminum case for it, we had to have bypasses on every lead going in and out of the thing. It was unreal, some of the stuff we had to do. We had a metal chute that went over the cartridge adapter to keep radiation in. Each time we made a cartridge, the FCC wanted to see it, and it had to be tested.

 

http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/545

 

Pretty damn insane.

 

On a side note, that interview is pretty damn interesting. Lawson was one of the first console designers in history, and one of the only blacks in the game industry at the time.

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I've worked on a lot of my older console for one reason or another, and I have to say, the hoops that they had to jump through to get through FCC regulations must've been astounding. The Channel F, APF M-1000, and Astrocade are built like a tank. The Channel F has so much useless metal inside of it that it's easily a contender for heaviest home console.

 

Here's a interview with Jerry Lawson, one of the founders of the console industry:

 

Oh yeah. Well, the biggest part of getting the Channel F released was getting through the FCC. That was a job in itself. It was the first microprocessor device of any nature to go through FCC testing. And I — believe me, I got some gray hairs over that. The FCC was really hard on us. And Al Alcorn came down — it was funny when they first saw it — Al, Nolan, and the [Atari] president then — at the Chicago show. They came down to me and said, “Lawson! It’s cool, except the only thing we dig is the hand controllers.” And Al told me, he said, “Oh, boy, that little noise you’ve got there on the screen, boy, you’re really going to have to get rid of that — you’re gonna have trouble with the FCC.”

 

And I had to leave the show early to go to the FCC. Because the FCC — oh boy — it cost, at that point, a thousand dollars, and the spec they had was one microvolt per meter of spurious signals you couldn’t overcome. And if you had any more than that, you were in trouble.

 

The problem was — Texas Instruments, years later, couldn’t make that spec. So guess what they did? They lobbied and got them to change the law. I was so mad, I couldn’t see straight. ‘Cause that was what keeping a lot of people from jumping in the market, including RCA. They couldn’t pass the test.

 

We had to put the whole motherboard in aluminum. We had to make an aluminum case for it, we had to have bypasses on every lead going in and out of the thing. It was unreal, some of the stuff we had to do. We had a metal chute that went over the cartridge adapter to keep radiation in. Each time we made a cartridge, the FCC wanted to see it, and it had to be tested.

 

http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/545

 

Pretty damn insane.

 

On a side note, that interview is pretty damn interesting. Lawson was one of the first console designers in history, and one of the only blacks in the game industry at the time.

 

That is pretty interesting actually. I hadn't given it much thought until I bought an Astrocade and within 5 minutes the unit would begin to overheat. As I'm sure you know it's due to the shielding on the motherboard that Bally had to put in to get FCC approval. While they got the approval it had the unintended effect of overheating the motherboard. I'm not a tinkerer so I sent it in to get the shielding removed and now the Astrocade works like new. On the Channel F, one of my first reactions was how solid the system felt. It really has a well-built feel to it. It is unfortunate that these early pioneering companies had to go through so many hoops but I wonder if that's part of why these systems work as well as they do so many years later...due to all the precision and care.

 

That article with Jerry Lawson is amazing. I printed it out to read on a bus trip and the guy sitting next to me would periodically look over to read, especially after he saw the Atari logo in one of the sections. :) Mr. Lawson is a fascinating man and an important part of video game history. It's a shame more people don't know who he is, and I'm greatly looking forward to his book.

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I remember getting a package in the mail from Coleco years ago. They were required by the FCC to send out these shielding kits to all the ADAM owners. The kit contained these magnet looking things that you were supposed clip onto all the ADAM data/power/controller cords to stop RF leakage or something. The Colecovision contains a big, thick metal shielding that covers the top and bottom of the circuit board. I've taken it off to repair/mod CV's and I don't think it really helps or hinders if it's put back on. Let's not forget the FCC requiring that metal piece to be inserted between the Genesis and the 32X. It only served to cause never-ending headaches for people who couldn't figure out how to properly connect their 32X. Don't some of those O2 or TI99 carts contain shielding inside the carts?

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I remember getting a package in the mail from Coleco years ago. They were required by the FCC to send out these shielding kits to all the ADAM owners. The kit contained these magnet looking things that you were supposed clip onto all the ADAM data/power/controller cords to stop RF leakage or something. The Colecovision contains a big, thick metal shielding that covers the top and bottom of the circuit board. I've taken it off to repair/mod CV's and I don't think it really helps or hinders if it's put back on. Let's not forget the FCC requiring that metal piece to be inserted between the Genesis and the 32X. It only served to cause never-ending headaches for people who couldn't figure out how to properly connect their 32X. Don't some of those O2 or TI99 carts contain shielding inside the carts?

 

Hm. You know, my Atari 2600 actually doubles as a pretty darn good HD antenna. I'm not kidding when I say that either. It works better than the powered job I bought for 50 bucks. I'ms ure that big hunk of metal in there has something to do with it.

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I remember getting a package in the mail from Coleco years ago. They were required by the FCC to send out these shielding kits to all the ADAM owners. The kit contained these magnet looking things that you were supposed clip onto all the ADAM data/power/controller cords to stop RF leakage or something. The Colecovision contains a big, thick metal shielding that covers the top and bottom of the circuit board. I've taken it off to repair/mod CV's and I don't think it really helps or hinders if it's put back on. Let's not forget the FCC requiring that metal piece to be inserted between the Genesis and the 32X. It only served to cause never-ending headaches for people who couldn't figure out how to properly connect their 32X. Don't some of those O2 or TI99 carts contain shielding inside the carts?

 

You're right, O^2 carts do have shielding. Not sure about Texas Instruments. According to the Lawson, TI couldn't pass the FCC standards, so they got the law changed.

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One should remember that, even if they corrected the standards for RF emission, part of the job of the metal shield is to not only keep the stray RF generated by the console inside it, but also to protect the console from the effects of stray RF from other devices. It may not prevent the console from functioning, it can make the video anywhere from slightly more fuzzy to unviewable.

 

This is likely a potential concern when the FCC auctions off the bands that were allocated to old television, or low power television stations come online in that space.

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You're right, O^2 carts do have shielding. Not sure about Texas Instruments. According to the Lawson, TI couldn't pass the FCC standards, so they got the law changed.

 

TI Carts have no shielding.

 

As for the law change, this is documented in numerous histories, so I suspect it's true. As noted, TI ticked off a LOT of vendors. What they did was get it changed so that only the RF portion of the system had to pass FCC standards, and then they provided an external RF modulator and submitted only that (or so I understand from what I've read, it's been a while, but it is supposedly why TI uses an external modulator when nobody else does).

 

The TI-99 console DOES have some aluminum shielding, a shell clamped to the top and bottom of the motherboard, and some units have a little extra shielding covering the cartridge port.

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OK, I'm thinking to add LaserActive packs to the list. The Sega pack is, of course, in a metal enclosure, and on top of that it has RF chokes on the controller lines just behind the ports.

 

Then the whole thing slides into another metal enclosure, and the player itself has a metal casing on it with plastic insulation layers in between the boards and the hood.

 

Shielded by design? Probably not. Well shielded period? Definitely!

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My Apple //e used to tear up channel 5 that my parents would watch off the antenna. It took them forever to figure out what was causing it, in fact I think I was the one that made the connection and for some reason told my dad about it. He'd been putting filters and stuff on the antenna to try and fix it, but nothing ever worked -- except turning the computer off. They finally got cable and that fixed the problem for good. Of the system I have the Intellivision and the Atari Heavy sixer seem way over shielded -- guess they were made before TI had the laws changed.

 

We later picked up a Apple /// and the bottom of that thing seemed to be milled from solid steel billet. I don't know if it was for the RF standard or what, but I bet it could stop a few bullets.

Edited by Prodos8
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My Apple //e used to tear up channel 5 that my parents would watch off the antenna. It took them forever to figure out what was causing it, in fact I think I was the one that made the connection and for some reason told my dad about it. He'd been putting filters and stuff on the antenna to try and fix it, but nothing ever worked -- except turning the computer off. They finally got cable and that fixed the problem for good. Of the system I have the Intellivision and the Atari Heavy sixer seem way over shielded -- guess they were made before TI had the laws changed.

 

Certainly, from what I've seen, it's usually easier to stop the offending emissions at the source than to try to shield the television receiver from it. Sometimes, moving the unit a few feet can do it. One also has to recognize that all external peripherals for a computer can serve as antennae (via the cable)... and the FCC does class a computer differently when it has an ethernet CAT5 connected compared to when it doesn't (class A versus class B).

 

Two things with my apartment, is that when I moved in, living practically on top of an AM radio station, I had to shove my old external dialup modem into an old hard drive case to make it reliable against the rampant RF in the area, and one of my phones has it in the background during daylight hours. And I've had to move my clock radio a couple of times to give it better reception, something like a foot difference.

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