Any new mods/expansions for the VCS?

[Keatah]

I was thinking about how far the VCS has come in the past 41 years. And I also noted that most expansions (of the VCS hardware) still take place outside of the console. Think Harmony, Supercharger, Graduate, and the varied bankswitch schemes with extra memory chips and such.

 

Has there ever been any thought given to making simple internal mods or expansions? I'm not talking about video mods, but instead things that affect the logic.

 

Piggyback memory or extra address lines for more memory. Or maybe something like variable clock speeds so more cycles can be had. The system would speed up when information isn't being clocked into the TIA. Stuff like that.

[fiddlepaddle]

I like it...a high performance 2600. Soup it up with an air foil, clamp on a super charger and add a racing stripe!

 

I wonder just how fast a 2600 could be? new software would be required, but you could create amazing graphics...

[CapitanClassic]

I have seen hardware mods for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis that overclocks the CPU. The result is that some games run better with less slowdown, like Sonic 2.

 

I doubt that the VCS could be overclocked, because the video is tied so closely to the TIA, and the 6507 is racing the beam.

 

Besides increasing the speed of the CPU, and expanding the memory (I would expect that the 6507 would have to be changed to a 6502 so it could address more than 4K. How do the 8-bit Atari upgrades work that increase the RAM from 64k to 1 Mb?), what other internal expansions would be possible?

[digdugnate]

i think it'd be pretty cool to expand the memory of the stock 2600. i'll be the first to admit i don't know diddly about the architecture, but not having to put extra chips on new game pcbs surely would make it a little easier.

[+AtariNerd]

The 6507 is a cut-down version of the 6502, isn't it, with just certain registers removed or are there other major differences? I guess what I'm wondering , is if one could bodge a 6502 onto a new board design and use the greater memory addressing, etc that could afford, would it still run most legacy code or would there be major fundamental departures in the way things work , making the whole idea just silly non-sense? Obviously new games couldn't run directly on older hardware, but if old games were forward-compatible, even if need be with some hardware tweaks...

[DirtyHairy]

The 6507 is a cut-down version of the 6502, isn't it, with just certain registers removed or are there other differences? I guess what I'm wondering , is if one could bodge a 6502 onto a new board design and use the greater memory addressing, etc, would it still run most legacy code or would there be major fundamental differences, making the whole idea just silly non-sense?

 

 

No missing registers, no other architectural differences, just the interrupt lines (IRQ / NMI) and address bits A15 -- A13 missing due to a smaller package size. Using a 6502 instead would require a new board and cartridge (including the connector) design to take advantage of the additional lines. In other word: a different console. No existing games would profit, beyond the possibility of not working at all due to differences in the memory layout.

[Mr SQL]

There was a really cool project on the A8 forum that replaced the internal 6502 CPU with the more powerful Motorola 6809 - it would be interesting to do that with the VCS too but of course you would need custom software for it.

[+Karl G]

Hmm, a board that uses the more powerful 6502, but retains backwards compatibility with the 2600? I think that's called the Atari 7800.