sd cartridge for 7800?

[DrSidneyZweibel]

I am that "twat" of whom you speak. Well, I got a fine Hamony Concerto out of it that doesn't quite fit in a standard 2600 slot. Was it worth it to cut those pins? Probably not, but the Concerto was already broken to me anyway...

the Concerto wasn't broken. It was your 7800. You could have bought another one off eBay for $30 and it would have worked fine. Instead you destroyed a rare prototype cart because you were impatient. I'm not going to insult you, but what you did made no sense.

[Jinks]

It was his to wreck so oh well.. KS is a atariage spam bot.. No matter what idiotic BS I post on here he will always have thousands of posts more than me...

[Andromeda Stardust]

It was his to wreck so oh well.. KS is a atariage spam bot.. No matter what idiotic BS I post on here he will always have thousands of posts more than me...

Not so much anymore. I kinda started a full time job recently so I had to cut back on the 4am insomnia-induced rants.

 

the Concerto wasn't broken. It was your 7800.

Every freakking 7800 game, vintage or modern homebrew, that I have plugged in, works fine, with a few notable 2600 exceptions like Robot Tank, which have well documented compatibility issues. And even the "problem" 2600 games run fine on Harmony. I assure you my 7800 is not "broken."

 

Also it's a Best A/V mod with fantastic crisp composite and clean audio output. If I wanted a thrift store / craigslist 7800 with snowy RF, I wouldn't have bought mine from BE.

[DrSidneyZweibel]

Not so much anymore. I kinda started a full time job recently so I had to cut back on the 4am insomnia-induced rants.

 

Every freakking 7800 game, vintage or modern homebrew, that I have plugged in, works fine, with a few notable 2600 exceptions like Robot Tank, which have well documented compatibility issues. And even the "problem" 2600 games run fine on Harmony. I assure you my 7800 is not "broken."

 

Also it's a Best A/V mod with fantastic crisp composite and clean audio output. If I wanted a thrift store / craigslist 7800 with snowy RF, I wouldn't have bought mine from BE.

2600 games and homebrew compatibility have nothing to do with whether a given 7800 might have problems with a Concerto. The Concerto you bought didn't work with your 7800. From what I read, you sent it back to batari and it worked fine for him, and he replaced it for you. You knew batari was still working on correcting the various incompatibilities, and that this product was a beta - but you destroyed it anyway. I'll never understand that. Why didn't you just sell it and buy a Harmony?

[+DrVenkman]

Gotta agree, Kosmic. Not a good move. Also, Robot Tank works great on my 7800’s (an AT84 machine and an A1 machine) so yeah, something’s up with whatever machine you’ve got. Would’ve been good karma for the community had you offered to sell it at cost plus shipping or something.

 

Just my two cents.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I'm not really siding either way on this. But the fact remains that if a person owns a thing...what they do with said thing is theirs to do with. I think the issue everyone here has is that it was likely a working Concerto cart and they all feel that if it wasn't compatible with your specific 7800 as seemed to be the case, that it was best to sell it to someone that it might work for instead. And I see that side as well.

 

But it isn't fair of the AA community to beat up on someone because of something they want to do with property they own.

 

So my suggestion is that we move on from this. The product is still being worked on....also means that more product will be available when the product is ready. Yes?

[DrSidneyZweibel]

I'm not really siding either way on this. But the fact remains that if a person owns a thing...what they do with said thing is theirs to do with. I think the issue everyone here has is that it was likely a working Concerto cart and they all feel that if it wasn't compatible with your specific 7800 as seemed to be the case, that it was best to sell it to someone that it might work for instead. And I see that side as well.

 

But it isn't fair of the AA community to beat up on someone because of something they want to do with property they own.

 

So my suggestion is that we move on from this. The product is still being worked on....also means that more product will be available when the product is ready. Yes?

I don't disagree. He has the right to do with it as he chooses. He owns it. I was just trying to understand what motivated that decision. it seems a bit drastic. Not trying to insult or beat him up over it though.

[MrBeefy]

It just makes me sad because I would have taken it. Lol

[+DrVenkman]

It just makes me sad because I would have taken it. Lol

 

Many of us would have.

[DrSidneyZweibel]

I had picked up a Concerto a while back - and for the most part my compatibility experiences were similar to some of those already mentioned in this thread. I have a couple of A1 -serialed 7800 consoles, and both of them exhibited overall boot up finicky behavior. also - Alien Brigade, Basketbrawl, and Midnight mutants won't run at all on the one I use as my every day 7800. Also - some homebrews with pokey the sound doesn't work and having a pokey in the Concerto makes it less stable overall.

 

This week I got an X- series serial number 7800 off of eBay, to see if it fared any better. here's what I found:

 

This console has some issue with the vidoe from the RF port. it's jumpy, and the color seems to quickly cycle between over-saturated and normal.

 

On the Concerto boot screen (Concerto 0.5 message) the screen partially rolls until just before the OS boots.

 

Once the OS boots - the warning message displays fine.- If it boots. it only booted up to the boot screen once every few tries.

 

Press fire to get to the menu, and things start to go loopy. The text is garbled in places, game names are misspelled, and oddball characters show up randomly across the screen as garbage.

 

Most of the time, trying to cycle through the menu causes it to completely glitch out and hang.

 

Sometimes, the menu behaves better, and you can get ti to a game you want to try, press fire, and the game loads.

 

However - the most interesting thing is - EVERY GAME YOU CAN GET TO LOAD PLAYS PERFECTLY. Even the ones that crash on every other system I tried, Alien Brigade, Midnight Mutants, Motor Psycho, Basketbrawl - all of them load and play fine.

 

The Pokey issues persist, but that is something Batari mentioned needing to work on, but every game loaded. I may crack this one open and re-cap it and put a new 7805 regulator and see if there are any noticeable bad components causing issues.

Edited October 20, 2017 by DrSidneyZweibel

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I had picked up a Concerto a while back - and for the most part my compatibility experiences were similar to some of those already mentioned in this thread. I have a couple of A1 -serialed 7800 consoles, and both of them exhibited overall boot up finicky behavior. also - Alien Brigade, Basketbrawl, and Midnight mutants won't run at all on the one I use as my every day 7800. Also - some homebrews with pokey the sound doesn't work and having a pokey in the Concerto makes it less stable overall.

 

This week I got an X- series serial number 7800 off of eBay, to see if it fared any better. here's what I found:

 

This console has some issue with the vidoe from the RF port. it's jumpy, and the color seems to quickly cycle between over-saturated and normal.

 

On the Concerto boot screen (Concerto 0.5 message) the screen partially rolls until just before the OS boots.

 

Once the OS boots - the warning message displays fine.- If it boots. it only booted up to the boot screen once every few tries.

 

Press fire to get to the menu, and things start to go loopy. The text is garbled in places, game names are misspelled, and oddball characters show up randomly across the screen as garbage.

 

Most of the time, trying to cycle through the menu causes it to completely glitch out and hang.

 

Sometimes, the menu behaves better, and you can get ti to a game you want to try, press fire, and the game loads.

 

However - the most interesting thing is - EVERY GAME YOU CAN GET TO LOAD PLAYS PERFECTLY. Even the ones that crash on every other system I tried, Alien Brigade, Midnight Mutants, Motor Psycho, Basketbrawl - all of them load and play fine.

 

The Pokey issues persist, but that is something Batari mentioned needing to work on, but every game loaded. I may crack this one open and re-cap it and put a new 7805 regulator and see if there are any noticeable bad components causing issues.

Try putting in a higher amperage output 7805. That way if the extra stuff in the Concerto is causing too much current draw (And what you are describing kinda sounds like it...) it might help?

Edited October 20, 2017 by -^Cro§Bow^-

[tep392]

I've made a discovery with my 7800 units that might be relevant. I bought and XBOARD a while back and initially installed it in my "A1 with expansion port" unit. It worked but I had random crashes with some of my homebrews. Beefdrop, which supports the XBOARD POKEY in particular. I moved the XBOARD over to my A3 unit and it has worked perfectly with all carts. I probed around on the two units to see what differences might affect the XBOARD and discovered the clock signal on the glitchy A1 unit had a significantly lower voltage level. Approaching the min hi state most logic chips require. I looked at the clock circuit and there were differences. The A1 unit has two transistors to buffer the clock output. The A3 unit replaced one of the transistors with a zero ohm resistor. I think there were a couple other minor changes but I don't recall the specifics.

 

This could be a factor in compatibility issue with the 7800. It would be very interesting to see what would happen if someone took a malfunctioning unit and modified the clock circuit to give nice clean TTL voltage levels.

[DrSidneyZweibel]

I've made a discovery with my 7800 units that might be relevant. I bought and XBOARD a while back and initially installed it in my "A1 with expansion port" unit. It worked but I had random crashes with some of my homebrews. Beefdrop, which supports the XBOARD POKEY in particular. I moved the XBOARD over to my A3 unit and it has worked perfectly with all carts. I probed around on the two units to see what differences might affect the XBOARD and discovered the clock signal on the glitchy A1 unit had a significantly lower voltage level. Approaching the min hi state most logic chips require. I looked at the clock circuit and there were differences. The A1 unit has two transistors to buffer the clock output. The A3 unit replaced one of the transistors with a zero ohm resistor. I think there were a couple other minor changes but I don't recall the specifics.

 

This could be a factor in compatibility issue with the 7800. It would be very interesting to see what would happen if someone took a malfunctioning unit and modified the clock circuit to give nice clean TTL voltage levels.

can you let me know the board location of the transistor to replace with the 0 ohm resistor? as I said I have a couple of A1's that are buggy like this, and one I don't mind using as a guinea pig.

Edited October 20, 2017 by DrSidneyZweibel

[tep392]

can you let me know the board location of the transistor to replace with the 0 ohm resistor? as I said I have a couple of A1's that are buggy like this, and one I don't mind using as a guinea pig.

It's one of the two transistors next the the crystal. I need to look at my 7800's first to see what other changes they made. I'll take a photo and mark the changes. I might have time to do that tonight.

[DrSidneyZweibel]

It's one of the two transistors next the the crystal. I need to look at my 7800's first to see what other changes they made. I'll take a photo and mark the changes. I might have time to do that tonight.

awesome! Thanks, Tep.

 

Also - I ordered a 5 pack of 1.5amp 7805 regulators. I will throw 'em in and see what haps

[+-^CrossBow^-]

awesome! Thanks, Tep.

 

Also - I ordered a 5 pack of 1.5amp 7805 regulators. I will throw 'em in and see what haps

Might not make a difference, but again just tossing out stuff. It does act like a voltage or current issue, especially the cycling colors part so thought maybe. And now with talk about the timer possibly not having enough voltage on earlier models...well..there you go.

 

Still we have to make sure that our voltages are in great shape on the Lynx in order to do the McWill LCD mods so it isn't a stretch to think that a v-reg upgrade might be needed as well.

 

Also advised to upgrade the caps and v-regs on NES systems that get modded with RGB boards etc... so again just a thought.

Edited October 20, 2017 by -^Cro§Bow^-

[Swami]

I had picked up a Concerto a while back - and for the most part my compatibility experiences were similar to some of those already mentioned in this thread. I have a couple of A1 -serialed 7800 consoles, and both of them exhibited overall boot up finicky behavior. also - Alien Brigade, Basketbrawl, and Midnight mutants won't run at all on the one I use as my every day 7800. Also - some homebrews with pokey the sound doesn't work and having a pokey in the Concerto makes it less stable overall.

 

This week I got an X- series serial number 7800 off of eBay, to see if it fared any better. here's what I found:

 

This console has some issue with the vidoe from the RF port. it's jumpy, and the color seems to quickly cycle between over-saturated and normal.

 

On the Concerto boot screen (Concerto 0.5 message) the screen partially rolls until just before the OS boots.

 

Once the OS boots - the warning message displays fine.- If it boots. it only booted up to the boot screen once every few tries.

 

Press fire to get to the menu, and things start to go loopy. The text is garbled in places, game names are misspelled, and oddball characters show up randomly across the screen as garbage.

 

Most of the time, trying to cycle through the menu causes it to completely glitch out and hang.

 

Sometimes, the menu behaves better, and you can get ti to a game you want to try, press fire, and the game loads.

 

However - the most interesting thing is - EVERY GAME YOU CAN GET TO LOAD PLAYS PERFECTLY. Even the ones that crash on every other system I tried, Alien Brigade, Midnight Mutants, Motor Psycho, Basketbrawl - all of them load and play fine.

 

The Pokey issues persist, but that is something Batari mentioned needing to work on, but every game loaded. I may crack this one open and re-cap it and put a new 7805 regulator and see if there are any noticeable bad components causing issues.

I have three X- serialized 7800's. Two of them load all games less than 256k and generally have no problems getting to the menu screen (without POKEY installed), although, the cartridge connector positioning is a little finicky because it is non-standard (grinds slightly on inserting and causes poor connection sometimes - you need to fiddle with it). With POKEY, you can get to the menu, but nothing loads.The third 7800 loads the atari logo/Concerto vous screen, but then goes to blue screen every time when trying to start the user interface. For Batari's magic boards that everything worked on, two were A1 serialized and two had no case to tell, but they all had the same board part number, even though they had different layouts regarding the timing circuit.

 

 

"batari on Sun Nov 8, 2015 7:01 AM #439

 

I take that back, the FAQ says there are only three revisions of 7800? It says Rev. 1 have the expansion slot, Rev 2 have the hole for the expansion slot but nothing to connect to inside (and timing circuit), and Rev. 3 have no hole at all. Is this correct or are there more board revisions than that?

 

 

Two of my consoles never had a case, but they are both Rev 2 as they have the timing circuit. My two consoles with a case appear to be Rev 3 models."

 

 

"batari, on 08 Nov 2015 - 4:52 PM, said:

 

All four of my consoles have the revised motherboard (C025233-002, which is printed in copper on the underside near the 7805.)

 

 

Are the electrical differences with CO25233-001 documented anywhere?

 

From the parts list attached... Attached File 7800 Parts List.pdf 15.47KB 74 downloads

 

 

...just focusing on motherboards, there seems to be a CO25233-001 and CO25233-002, which is also referred to as CAO25234.

And there is a universal motherboard labeled 300633.

 

A small notation at the bottom denotes: Sometimes the connection between U6 pin 21 (WE) and Pin 3 of U12 will be cut

and instead connected via a 1K ohm resistor.

 

It is believed there is no public documentation regarding electrical differences among the systems."

[DrSidneyZweibel]

Another dumb question - a 0 ohm resistor is just a jumper right?

[Jinks]

None of this matters the edge connector is made wrong. It is not aligned properly.

How are you going to mod your 7800 to work with this cart make a female end to work with it?

[RevEng]

Another dumb question - a 0 ohm resistor is just a jumper right?

Right. It might be used instead of a trace for a few different reasons, but at the end of the day it's just a wire.

[tep392]

can you let me know the board location of the transistor to replace with the 0 ohm resistor? as I said I have a couple of A1's that are buggy like this, and one I don't mind using as a guinea pig.

If you still want to try the mod, here are the changes to make. The photo is of my A3 unit.

 

1) remove Q4 - add jumper

2) replace R27 with jumper (next to CR1)

3) remove CR1

4) remove R7(1k)

5) repalce R26 with 470 ohm resistor. R26 is next to the missing R25 in the photo.

R25 and C18 are missing in my photo but they don't need to be removed. They get removed from the circuit when Q4 is removed.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Another dumb question - a 0 ohm resistor is just a jumper right?

Which doesn't make any sense why the 7800 would use a "zero ohm" resistor when everything on the PCB was through hole. Just an uninsulated component lead will do.

 

Zero ohm resistors exist on modern circuit boards with surface mount components in lieu of actual jumper wires because it is compatible with pick and place robots.

 

EDIT: Well looks like they did use actual through hole 0 ohm resistors. Would a bog standard jumper wire (or clipped component lead) not have been cheaper?

[DrSidneyZweibel]

 

If you still want to try the mod, here are the changes to make. The photo is of my A3 unit.

 

1) remove Q4 - add jumper

2) replace R27 with jumper (next to CR1)

3) remove CR1

4) remove R7(1k)

5) repalce R26 with 470 ohm resistor. R26 is next to the missing R25 in the photo.

R25 and C18 are missing in my photo but they don't need to be removed. They get removed from the circuit when Q4 is removed.

7800.jpg

 

I tried this. It has mixed results. The few suspect games now load, but will crash in game after a few minutes. I'm thinking it still needs to have the 7805 swapped out for the1.5amp one, and maybe re-cap it.

[SIO2]

I tried this. It has mixed results. The few suspect games now load, but will crash in game after a few minutes. I'm thinking it still needs to have the 7805 swapped out for the1.5amp one, and maybe re-cap it.

 

I would try just the regulator swap first. Interested to hear your results on this modified system.

[DrSidneyZweibel]

7805s will be in tomorrow. We will see.