7800 - what did Atari wrong?

[Atari_Falcon]

Okay, I am interested in what you think about this topic. I mean the 7800 is a very nice piece of hardware and shows in some decent games what it really can do, overall it can be considered to be more a fail than a success (although it did live quite some time and sold not that bad).

 

In my opinion the reasons that made the 7800 fail are the following:

 

- Atari stuck too long with it's predecessors: The Atari 2600 was built too long and sold in some countries even after the 7800 was abandonned. In my opinion Atari should have made a cut and stop selling the 2600 console in 1988. I mean the 7800 can play 2600 games anyway, so why not make people buy a 7800 instead of a 2600 to expand the user base.

 

- Games from 1988 on not exclusively for the 7800: If you see some of the "new" (>1987) 7800 games, many were also released for the 2600: Xenophobe, Fatal Run... In my opinion a big mistake as consumers didn't have a reason to upgrade to the 7800 as they got nearly the same games and even some excellent (e.g. AXLON) titles exclusively for the 2600: Off The Wall, Secret Quest, MotoRodeo, Ghost Busters II (1992!)... I mean this really sucked! Imagine those games being exclusive for the 7800... With better graphics and maybe a pokey soundchip, they really could have competed with the NES

 

- Homecomputers vs. consoles: I never will understand why any Atari game was released on any Atari system. So at least the 8-bit computer line was in some kind of competition with the 7800. Why should someone buy a videogame system when he got the same games (even on cart!) for his computer? I mean that makes no sense (sure other companies did and failed, too)

 

- Too small library of exclusive games: As I wrote somewhere else, Atari kept on porting arcade classics (e.g. centipede, missile command) until it's death. 1978 you bought a VCS and got Asteroids, 1987 you bought a 7800 and got Asteroids. 1991 you bought a Lynx and got Asteroids (packed with Missile Command), 1993 you bought a Jaguar and got Missile Command 3D. Sure they had the licenses and that may be the main reason, but did they really expect anyone to buy consoles of 4 different generations just to play games of the 1st arcade generation? I think they *must* have realized that as late in the life of the 7800 they did great stuff like Ninja Golf, Alien Brigade, Basketbrawl and so on. But I think they aimed at the wrong customer range and overestimated what the brand "Atari" meant to the people. They thought people would remember the great arcade games, but in fact people who heard Atari heard 2600 what meant "cheap, inferior graphics, inferior sound, 1-button gameplay" to most people

 

Well these are the things they did wrong in my opinion, now I am curious what you think.

 

Sure one could say nearly the same for the 5200, but as this machine wasn't ever released here in Germany, I have no experience with it...

[Atarifever]

The analysis is pretty good, but we've recently seen that not much of it could be helped.

 

The 7800 got old arcade ports because Nintendo tied up most good licences, and Sega themselves owned the rest of the best (Altered Beast, After Burner, Space Harrier, Outrun, etc.). Atari didn't have a lot of options. What connections they did have were on the comoputer side of things, so they made a bunch of computer ports for the 7800. When you look at it, these computer ports weren't bad choices. Karateka, Impossible Mission, Super Huey, etc. were all "big" games, both in scope and in name recognition. The problem is that for various reasons they didn't transition well. The programmer of Impossible MIssion has demonstrated that that game was botched a little due to a tiny, unintentional mistake (so I wouldn't count that too much against anyone). Super Huey and the other flight sims were great games, but flight sims on a console with two buttons is a difficulat thing to do well. However, some ports, like Karateka, obviously suffered solely due to either funding or care. Still, the choices Atari made in going with those games, are, in my opinion, the best they had.

 

If you don't have the Sega properties, or most of the third parties who are tied up with Nintendo, or most of the Nintendo stuff, and your glory days were before 1983, and you have ties to computer companies, there weren't really a lot of better games they could have went with.

 

As for supporting the 2600 too long, I think the numbers we have seen show that Atari couldn't NOT have taken advantage of that market. They needed money to dig out of the hole, and they made a bunch on the 2600 for years after the crash.

[DracIsBack]

• Good analysis. I'd also add a few others:
   
   
  Tramiel cost cutting on the cartridges.
• Nothing from 1986 or 7 was more than 48K. Even most games in 1988 were 48K or less.Nothing went beyond 144K when Nintendo and Sega had 384K and 512K games; Some games (ala Winter Games) were halved in size from 256K to 128K. Others like Time Lords were cancelled outright due to size.
• No MMC chips like the Nintendo to expand what the 7800 could do, the way that the MMC chips did for the NES
• No battery save unlike the NES and SMS
• Little use of POKEY chips, even though it was what was intended by GCC. Only two games used;
• Little use of additional RAM to expand games. Approvals had to be done in writing by the Tramiels.

The Atari XE Game System distraction:

 

No sooner was the 7800 launched, when Atari popped another game system out to compete for Atari's finite marketing resources, shelf space, game development budgets etc.

 

Worse, the XE was given flagship status initially. Atari had enough trouble competing against Nintendo and Sega, they didn't need systems competing with each other. I love my XE, but it was an all around failure which distracted from the 7800.

 

Poor positioning with the 2600

 

- Atari's marketing was confusing. You'd see a title that says "for the 2600 and 7800" and then the same title as "for the 7800 only. To this day, there are people who think that the 7800 was a 2600 with a different name because they saw 2600 games (marked as "for 2600 and 7800") running in the system.

 

- I remember bringing home my brand new 7800, plugging in my copy of Winter Games (Marked for "2600 and 7800") and expecting to see the Winter Games on the back of the 7800 box.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Rybags]

4K RAM, should have been 16K minimum.

 

Pokey should have been built in.

 

Games catalog - nothing really new or revolutionary, by the mid/late 1980s nobody gave a shit about remakes of games 5 years past their prime.

 

Usual crap Atari marketing. If they could have produced a $200 Playstation equivalent in 1988, they'd probably still have failed to make it a success.

Edited February 2, 2011 by Rybags

[Atari_Falcon]

4K RAM, should have been 16K minimum.

 

Pokey should have been built in.

 

Games catalog - nothing really new or revolutionary, by the mid/late 1980s nobody gave a shit about remakes of games 5 years past their prime.

 

Usual crap Atari marketing. If they could have produced a $200 Playstation equivalent in 1988, they'd probably still have failed to make it a success.

 

I agree And guess what - with the laserdisc player the 7800 would have come pretty close to the playstation

 

About the 2600: I mainly wonder why they still built the console. Software support is an other thing... Yeah, they shouldn't have stated 7800 on the packages - a 7800 owner would have known the game works with his machine anyway...

 

The XE game system is an other thing I don't understand

 

When I look at the marketing Atari did I still ask me how they could survive that long.

 

The design of the 7800 is nothing I'd criticise, I mean sure Pokey would have been great, but we know it could be in the cart, so I am fine with it. Bur the low cost carts (low memory) are in fact a big deal. I think most games could have looked/sounded better with some more size. On the other hand it is excellent what they did manage to do... e.g. Midnight Mutants is awsome!

 

And yes, the 7800 definately is the videogamesystem with the most flight sims I know about

 

But as for missing arcade licenses... When you look at Radar Lock for the 2600... This is an excellent "Afterburner" mock-up, although 2600 gfx, it really is a nice game... But why not on 7800... with pockey soundtrack and Maria graphics? Same with Solaris... Shame ATARI, shame!

[raskar42]

needed a robot.

 

nintendo's rob was a major selling point for kids - even though it really didn't do anything.

[Lynxpro]

I'd say the biggest contribution to the 7800's failure was the Tramiel takeover of Atari, but I'll get back to that.

 

*The lack of the Pokey chip standard. Last week I got to play a bunch of my old 7800 games on a friend's hacked Wii and it is apparent the sound is bad in the majority of the titles. The Pokey chip should have been built into the system from the start. Sure, Atari Inc. probably would've shipped a lot of carts with the Pokey chip included - unlike the Tramiels - but that would've still left quite a few titles with audio inferior to the 5200/XL versions.

 

*As stated above, the 7800 should've shipped with more than 4K RAM standard. The Maria chip could've really cut loose with more RAM. 16K should've been a given but 32K or more would've rocked. Can anyone imagine what could've been done had it shipped with 64K? It would've truly lived up to its moniker as the "Pro System".

 

*After the popularity of Gauntlet in the arcades, an Atari Inc. shipped 7800 should've been upgraded with 4 joystick ports.

 

Now back to the Tramiels...

 

 

*They wouldn't include the Pokey chip on a lot of 7800 games.

 

*They restricted the cart size when the competition [sega especially] was bragging about shipping 4Meg (megabit) games.

 

*They failed to understand how consumers would naturally assume all Atari [Games] arcade titles would appear on the 7800 only to be greatly disappointed in 1987 when those modern Atari arcade titles began appearing on the NES by the mysterious company named "Tengen". The Tramiels and their animosity with the management of the Atari Games Corp. helped cement the failure of the 7800. I can tell you I was incredibly upset with them when I learned the companies were separate and they allowed this to happen because they were too cheap to buy the company in 1984 with an extra $10 million in promissory notes.

 

*Continuing, had Atari Corp. gained exclusivity on the Atari Games titles, the 7800 would've been a clearcut success. Imagine how many 7800s would've sold had Gauntlet been the console pack-in...

 

*Removal of the Expansion port. Sure, the NES never exploited their expansion port but the removal of it on the 7800 was ridiculous.

 

*Product presentation. It was embarrassing how cheap the Tramiels were when it came to the 7800 cartridges. Labels and the manuals in black & white? Really? Marketing 101 failure.

 

*Failure to quickly relaunch an "Atari Club". Nintendo had copied the older "Atari Age" with their "Nintendo Power" magazine/club but it took Atari Corp. until 1987/1988 to (re)launch an Atari club despite more than myself bugging them to do so since 1986.

 

*The light gun fiasco. Like others, I had "Crossbow" but it was nearly impossible to buy the light gun for it. It was odd having to buy an XEGS branded light gun for it and many dealers [Toys R Us, Atari's own Federated] didn't even offer it to begin with separate from the XEGS. Even more baffling was that some Commodore dealers were selling the very same XEGS Light Gun without any Atari branding on it.

 

I could go on but work beckons.

Edited February 2, 2011 by Lynxpro

[+wood_jl]

Yeah, it's all the Tramiels' fault.

[Lynxpro]

Yeah, it's all the Tramiels' fault.

 

 

I meant the actual takeover of the company. Had Warner retained the company and James Morgan as CEO, the 7800 would've been released much sooner, all the later "Atari Games" arcade titles would've been exclusive, and Atari Inc. would've been more eager to include the Pokey chip in the 7800 carts and would've been more liberal about memory size in them. But for all of that, we can thank Rupert Murdoch and his hostile takeover attempts of Warner Communications which caused Warner to panic and sell Atari for a fire sale in order to take the pressure off Warner's stock price.

[Phredreeke]

- Atari stuck too long with it's predecessors: The Atari 2600 was built too long and sold in some countries even after the 7800 was abandonned. In my opinion Atari should have made a cut and stop selling the 2600 console in 1988. I mean the 7800 can play 2600 games anyway, so why not make people buy a 7800 instead of a 2600 to expand the user base.

 

Because they were still making money off it.

 

- Games from 1988 on not exclusively for the 7800: If you see some of the "new" (>1987) 7800 games, many were also released for the 2600: Xenophobe, Fatal Run... In my opinion a big mistake as consumers didn't have a reason to upgrade to the 7800 as they got nearly the same games and even some excellent (e.g. AXLON) titles exclusively for the 2600: Off The Wall, Secret Quest, MotoRodeo, Ghost Busters II (1992!)... I mean this really sucked! Imagine those games being exclusive for the 7800... With better graphics and maybe a pokey soundchip, they really could have competed with the NES

 

Well, there were more 2600s than 7800s so they naturally made games for the system they could sell more copies for.

 

*As stated above, the 7800 should've shipped with more than 4K RAM standard. The Maria chip could've really cut loose with more RAM. 16K should've been a given but 32K or more would've rocked. Can anyone imagine what could've been done had it shipped with 64K? It would've truly lived up to its moniker as the "Pro System".

 

The 7800 used SRAM, 16kb would be too expensive.

 

*After the popularity of Gauntlet in the arcades, an Atari Inc. shipped 7800 should've been upgraded with 4 joystick ports.

 

Joysticks were read by the TIA. If they were to add extra joystick ports they would have needed another chip.

[GroovyBee]

*Removal of the Expansion port. Sure, the NES never exploited their expansion port but the removal of it on the 7800 was ridiculous.

 

The expansion port removal was no great loss in my opinion (its not on PAL consoles). Its most interesting features in my mind are that it allowed video out of the machine and the ability to disable MARIA. You still needed the cart slot for the CPU's address and data bus. Meaning that any device would need to connect at the side and on the top at the same time.

 

Joysticks were read by the TIA. If they were to add extra joystick ports they would have needed another chip.

 

Not quite true. The TIA handles the joystick fire buttons and RIOT handles the directions. However they'd still need another chip for 2 extra sticks.

[Algus]

Hardware deluge IMO was a significant contributing factor. Sega had this same problem with the CD/32X/Saturn all coming out in a relatively small window. Atari had it even worse with their 8-bit computers, the 5200, the 7800, the XE all coming out at once, largely all playing the same (or similar) games and with the home consoles poorly marketed.

 

The fact that they were able to last so long is probably a testament to the quality of the 2600, its relative low cost in its late life, and its plethora of enjoyable games. Still, in their defense it was a different time and even into the 90s, people were experimenting to see what would and would not work.

 

Oh and Tramiel of course, but I'll leave that to others

[Mord]

- Atari stuck too long with it's predecessors: The Atari 2600 was built too long and sold in some countries even after the 7800 was abandonned. In my opinion Atari should have made a cut and stop selling the 2600 console in 1988. I mean the 7800 can play 2600 games anyway, so why not make people buy a 7800 instead of a 2600 to expand the user base.

 

Because they were still making money off it.

 

 

Yes, but the 7800 could do everything a 2600 could do. They should have axed the 2600 -console- and made sure that people knew that the 7800 was backwards compatible. At that point anyone who needed a replacement 2600 would have picked up the 7800 because it would have been the only option. With the 7800 having a pack-in game that at least showed the 7800 could do a lot more than the 2600, it might have set more people up to look for actual 7800 games. (Although they definitely should have avoided the "For the 2600 and 7800" garbage, although to be fair I saw that coming more from the unlicensed 3rd parties like Activision, which they probably couldn't do much about.)

[accousticguitar]

Yes, but the 7800 could do everything a 2600 could do. They should have axed the 2600 -console- and made sure that people knew that the 7800 was backwards compatible. At that point anyone who needed a replacement 2600 would have picked up the 7800 because it would have been the only option.

Not necessarily. The 2600 was the cheap option. If that cheaper option was not available, they would either have to do without a video game console or choose between the more expensive options at which point they could just as likely have chosen to buy the NES instead.

[Rex Dart]

Well, there were more 2600s than 7800s so they naturally made games for the system they could sell more copies for.

 

Don't you think they should've canned the cheapo 2600, considering the 7800 is also a 2600? You can sell equal amounts of 2600 carts for either system. What sense was there in churning out 2600s until almost the 90's?

 

The 7800 used SRAM, 16kb would be too expensive.

Bah. It needed it, and the system wasn't very expensive to begin with. I might be wrong, but I assume cheaper RAM could've been used.

Some game carts included additional RAM & didn't cost ungodly amounts. It worked for the competitor(s), it could've worked for Atari.

 

 

The 7800 got old arcade ports because Nintendo tied up most good licences, and Sega themselves owned the rest of the best (Altered Beast, After Burner, Space Harrier, Outrun, etc.). Atari didn't have a lot of options. What connections they did have were on the comoputer side of things, so they made a bunch of computer ports for the 7800. When you look at it, these computer ports weren't bad choices. Karateka, Impossible Mission, Super Huey, etc. were all "big" games, both in scope and in name recognition.

 

The 7800 got old arcade ports because that's what Atari thought people wanted. The best early Nintendo games weren't arcade ports, they were original. There was no Metroid or Zelda franchise at the time for Nintendo to "snatch up"; they came up with them & Atari's developers could have done the same if the company would've encouraged it.

[high voltage]

Okay, I am interested in what you think about this topic. I mean the 7800 is a very nice piece of hardware and shows in some decent games what it really can do, overall it can be considered to be more a fail than a success (although it did live quite some time and sold not that bad).

 

In my opinion the reasons that made the 7800 fail are the following:

 

- Atari stuck too long with it's predecessors: The Atari 2600 was built too long and sold in some countries even after the 7800 was abandonned. In my opinion Atari should have made a cut and stop selling the 2600 console in 1988. I mean the 7800 can play 2600 games anyway, so why not make people buy a 7800 instead of a 2600 to expand the user base.

 

- Games from 1988 on not exclusively for the 7800: If you see some of the "new" (>1987) 7800 games, many were also released for the 2600: Xenophobe, Fatal Run... In my opinion a big mistake as consumers didn't have a reason to upgrade to the 7800 as they got nearly the same games and even some excellent (e.g. AXLON) titles exclusively for the 2600: Off The Wall, Secret Quest, MotoRodeo, Ghost Busters II (1992!)... I mean this really sucked! Imagine those games being exclusive for the 7800... With better graphics and maybe a pokey soundchip, they really could have competed with the NES

 

- Homecomputers vs. consoles: I never will understand why any Atari game was released on any Atari system. So at least the 8-bit computer line was in some kind of competition with the 7800. Why should someone buy a videogame system when he got the same games (even on cart!) for his computer? I mean that makes no sense (sure other companies did and failed, too)

 

- Too small library of exclusive games: As I wrote somewhere else, Atari kept on porting arcade classics (e.g. centipede, missile command) until it's death. 1978 you bought a VCS and got Asteroids, 1987 you bought a 7800 and got Asteroids. 1991 you bought a Lynx and got Asteroids (packed with Missile Command), 1993 you bought a Jaguar and got Missile Command 3D. Sure they had the licenses and that may be the main reason, but did they really expect anyone to buy consoles of 4 different generations just to play games of the 1st arcade generation? I think they *must* have realized that as late in the life of the 7800 they did great stuff like Ninja Golf, Alien Brigade, Basketbrawl and so on. But I think they aimed at the wrong customer range and overestimated what the brand "Atari" meant to the people. They thought people would remember the great arcade games, but in fact people who heard Atari heard 2600 what meant "cheap, inferior graphics, inferior sound, 1-button gameplay" to most people

 

Well these are the things they did wrong in my opinion, now I am curious what you think.

 

Sure one could say nearly the same for the 5200, but as this machine wasn't ever released here in Germany, I have no experience with it...

 

 

You know this same-game shit doesn't cop it, Nintendo's been doing this for 20+ years, no-ones complaining.

[Rex Dart]

Yes, but the 7800 could do everything a 2600 could do. They should have axed the 2600 -console- and made sure that people knew that the 7800 was backwards compatible. At that point anyone who needed a replacement 2600 would have picked up the 7800 because it would have been the only option.

Not necessarily. The 2600 was the cheap option. If that cheaper option was not available, they would either have to do without a video game console or choose between the more expensive options at which point they could just as likely have chosen to buy the NES instead.

 

 

How would a competition between the 7800 & NES be worse than a competition between the 7800, NES, and 2600? At least you wouldn't have the 2600 sucking sales away.

 

Nintendo was smart, recently, to basically discontinue their Gameboy Advance when the backwards-compatible DS launched. The DS probably would've taken a path similar to the 7800 if they'd tried to sell the cheap option & the backwards-compatible expensive option simultaneously.

[Tubular Gearhead]

Its most interesting features in my mind are that it allowed video out of the machine and the ability to disable MARIA.

 

I think you mean video into the machine (i.e the images from the video player), otherwise we would all have had real slick composite video out thingamgigs available long ago...

 

BTW, there is a real LOW level signal that can be had if one ties into the video lines on the expansion port, but this is really not the correct way to do it as like I said, it is "video in" and there is barely any residual signal there to be had- and no sound to boot.

[Rex Dart]

 

You know this same-game shit doesn't cop it, Nintendo's been doing this for 20+ years, no-ones complaining.

 

They throw them in as extras along with their new titles, rather than depending on crusty played-out titles to support an entire system. Their games also lend themselves to updates better than Galaxian & Asteroids. If Nintendo had been surviving on nothing but Donkey Kong (the arcade game) and Wrecking Crew re-releases, I'd be more inclined to agree.

[GroovyBee]

I think you mean video into the machine (i.e the images from the video player), otherwise we would all have had real slick composite video out thingamgigs available long ago...

 

The expansion port supplies the luma and chroma, blank and sync directly from MARIA so it could be used both ways if MARIA isn't driving those lines when you want to use them for video input. You also get composite video on the expansion connector too.

 

Edit: Audio is available on pin 17.

[Atari_Falcon]

- Atari stuck too long with it's predecessors: The Atari 2600 was built too long and sold in some countries even after the 7800 was abandonned. In my opinion Atari should have made a cut and stop selling the 2600 console in 1988. I mean the 7800 can play 2600 games anyway, so why not make people buy a 7800 instead of a 2600 to expand the user base.

 

Because they were still making money off it.

 

 

Yes, but the 7800 could do everything a 2600 could do. They should have axed the 2600 -console- and made sure that people knew that the 7800 was backwards compatible. At that point anyone who needed a replacement 2600 would have picked up the 7800 because it would have been the only option. With the 7800 having a pack-in game that at least showed the 7800 could do a lot more than the 2600, it might have set more people up to look for actual 7800 games. (Although they definitely should have avoided the "For the 2600 and 7800" garbage, although to be fair I saw that coming more from the unlicensed 3rd parties like Activision, which they probably couldn't do much about.)

 

Yes, that´s exactly my point... why keep selling the 2600 console? I mean, okay, in 1987 it was okay, but 1 year after introducing the new console (and hardware prices getting lower) it definately would have made sense not to produce the console anymore... And as far as I remember, at least around 1989/90 the price difference between the 2600 and 7800 were only a few bucks and the 7800 was much cheaper than the NES... Caused to this fact I got one from my parents back then...

[Phredreeke]

The 7800 used SRAM, 16kb would be too expensive.

Bah. It needed it, and the system wasn't very expensive to begin with. I might be wrong, but I assume cheaper RAM could've been used.

Some game carts included additional RAM & didn't cost ungodly amounts. It worked for the competitor(s), it could've worked for Atari.

 

Atari 5200 needed 16kb RAM because it used bitmap graphics.

SMS needed 16kb VRAM because it couldn't read graphics tiles directly from cartridge, it had to copy it to cartridge first.

4kb RAM was enough for Atari 7800 and NES because they could read graphics data directly from cartridge.

[+save2600]

You know this same-game shit doesn't cop it, Nintendo's been doing this for 20+ years, no-ones complaining.

With the obvious difference being them having compelling time-tested titles to continually rehash. Atari had *nothing* even remotely close to something as compelling as a Super Mario Bros. and all of its spin-offs. Imagine though, if they had released a Bentley Bear type Mario clone which gained critical acceptance which would have allowed them to continue years later with a Bentley Bear kart racing game. Bentley Bear Smash Bros, etc. lmao

 

Lots of great stuff here in this thread! I especially agree about Atari's computers and consoles competing with themselves. Retail floor space usage was so much different in the mid to late 80's than now. I remember glass cases at Child World and Toys R Us being half-full, with redundant systems horribly scattered about. They'd also have some games and systems NOT on display, sitting there in the back room. You'd never see that today. In fact, quite the opposite. Look at a Sears, Wal-Mart or K-mart. They've got their cases so jam packed, you can hardly tell what all they've got hiding in there and that's the new inventory M.O.: everything goes up front, out on the floor, whether it looks good to be out or not.

[8th lutz]

I can't completely blame Jack Tramiel here for the XEGS. The reason the XEGS to my understanding was Atari had 8 bit computer inventory left and they were repacked. Some of the games the XEGS got also were games already released for the Atari 8 bit computer line. The main problem with the XEGS was it was a computer that thought it was a game console.

 

Where the blame of the XEGS for the 7800 should be in in the commercial below because XEGS was really not a true game console.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic0nvtNfDRM&feature=related

Edited February 2, 2011 by 8th lutz

[Tubular Gearhead]

I think you mean video into the machine (i.e the images from the video player), otherwise we would all have had real slick composite video out thingamgigs available long ago...

 

The expansion port supplies the luma and chroma, blank and sync directly from MARIA so it could be used both ways if MARIA isn't driving those lines when you want to use them for video input. You also get composite video on the expansion connector too.

 

Edit: Audio is available on pin 17.

 

They did design it for video in right? Oh well, this has been discussed before as below.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/43003-expansion-port-to-av-rca-jacks/page__p__822920#entry822920

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/126029-simple-expansion-port-to-composite-cable/page__p__1523656__hl__composite__fromsearch__1#entry1523656

 

All I can say is I thought I already looked into this. But upon checking the schematics- it looks possible so I will check it out.

 

Sorry- don't mean to derail thread. continue...