Could Atari 2600 be modded to include a rechargeable battery?

[phitter]

I don't know the first thing about this, if it could be done or if it has already been done but I received a portable speaker system for my ipod that has an internal rechargeable battery that charges while the speaker is plugged into an electrical outlet. This made me wonder if this would work for the 2600, too.

 

I absolutely love the convenience of the battery operated plug and play joysticks and find myself playing those much more than I ever drag out the cumbersome 2600 to play on the last remaining old-fashioned TV in our house.

 

I have been considering picking up a modded 2600 to use on our new fangled TV but it might seal the deal if there was some way to incorporate an internal rechargeable battery.

 

For those of you with the technical knowledge, is something like this possible and if so, how long could the 2600 run on battery-only power?

 

Thanks-

phitter

Edited December 28, 2011 by phitter

[_shameless_]

its possible, as long as the battery is 9 volts and has output of at least 500mA. if it meets that it should work fine

[Rex Dart]

If you search around, this has been asked before & probably attempted, too. The consensus before was that it's possible, but your average battery won't power a VCS for very long. Maybe some specialized or high-capacity batteries.

[+Gemintronic]

Jailbreak a PSP. The emulation is pretty good on those. When you get back home you can use the component adapter to hook it up to your TV.

[SlowCoder]

I believe someone was able to get about 1 hour of runtime off a single 9v battery.

[_shameless_]

9v's do pretty good on flashback 2's unless it reading a cart

[Pioneer4x4]

And I think you would only need a 6V battery to drive the 5v regulator. And with 5 c-type rechargables, I bet you would get about 5hours (from some real numbers and some assumed).

[Keatah]

Ahh shit, of course it is! There's many options and choices. You can wire up several 9V in parallel for hours of run time. The whole shebang can be little more than a diode and resistor and some ni-cd 9V batteries.

 

You can get more sophisticated chemistries going with Ni-MH, or Li-Po or Li-ION, but then you need to match the charging rates and currents, otherwise stuff will explode.

 

From an engineering point of view, there's hundreds of possibilites. From a homebrew hack perspective, there's still hundreds of possibilities.

 

I've had a 2600 powered by USB from my laptop, as an experiment, and little else. And you can also build a tiny battery pack that could power the thing for hours on end..

 

The simplest and safest and easiest thing is to wire up a set of 6 AA cells in a holder and plug it in, or build it in somehow. If they are Eneloop batteries they'll last hours and hours!

[_shameless_]

I've had a 2600 powered by USB from my laptop, as an experiment, and little else. And you can also build a tiny battery pack that could power the thing for hours on end..

 

thats a great idea! never thought of powering one from a usb port, im gonna go try that

[SlowCoder]

Remind me again why the 2600 needs to specifically run off 9v, when it's volted back to 5v at the voltage regulator? I forget if there's something that actually requires 9v. If not, then it should be able to be done with less power.

 

If I were to go about it, I think I'd just buy a nice 7.2v Lithium battery, the same as I use for my RC racing. I'm sure there'd be lots of run-time on them in a 2600, and they can be quick-charged in 20 minutes.

[Keatah]

There could be several reasons.

 

The 9V is dropped to 5V with an associated gain in amperage. A little extra oomph for the logic gates.

 

Having a 9V supply may have been cheaper to mfg back in the day with the rectifier and voltage configuration.

 

Having a 9V supply will afford you some wiggle room as line voltage fluctuates, thereby proving reliable operation. How many times does a 2600 crash or lockup mid-game for no reason?? I thought so...

 

9V transfers over the wires better than 5V (a minor reason to be sure)

 

Building a steady 5V supply at the wallwart would still introduce noise at the connection point to the console. There would be little reserve left for filtering unless you used more expensive parts. And you would need that filtering.

 

Heat. It's a good thing to keep a transformer's heat away from the mainboard. That, and electrical emf noise.

 

A regulator that can provide a rock-solid 5V (which TTL MOS chips like) will always need a higher voltage to work with when asked to do so.

 

The 9V AC adaptor you plug in is really only half of the power supply. The other half is in the 2600. There are many voltage levels involved in going from 120VAC to 5VDC. Depending where you measure, you might see 36V and 18V in the wall portion of the adapter, it gives out 9V, then in the 2600 I bet you'd see 9V and 7.2V and then 5V. With 5V being the final stage and output of a two-piece power supply.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Keatah