Looking for some help/advice on making 2600 portable for school project

[Leatherrebel5150]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm trying to see if I can get some help with questions I have about trying to construct components of a 2600 portable. The backstory is I'm taking a manufacturing class where one of our two main projects is to design a PCB and have it produced by a fab house for testing. The focus is really on using the design software rather than coming up with some original hardware. Most are doing simple things like FM receivers and such but I wanted to do something more interesting. I tried following the Ben Heck hand soldered video but he only really showed him fitting the main IC's on a protoboard and didn't really show or have any schematics for the rest of the design.

 

 

So I found the schematics here on atariage and am trying to eliminate as many "unnecessary" things as I can to get it as small as possible while being able to show base functionality of turn on, get video out, control the game. So Ive eliminated the second controller, difficulty switches, and channel select switch. Ive also intended to replace the video circuitry with this design

 

Which brings me to my questions:

 

1. Will that design eliminate the need for all of the original circuitry? The new design doesn't have any connection to the Vblank pin on the TIA, is that at all needed when converting to composite video?

 

2. The next question being can I use just 1 audio out pin or should I bridge them as in the original design?

 

3. Is there anything else I can eliminate and still retain the ability to just fire it up and playing a single game?

 

4. Im not familiar with all the notation used in the schematic. There is a notation that says 5v sources with a line to both filled in and non-filled in triangles but is there a reason why some are colored and some are not that Im missing?

There is also a symbol next to the capacitors that I haven't seen before on the bottom left of[ the same image kinda looks like a piston

 

 

 

 

Sorry for the long post but any help is greatly appreciated!! Thanks

 

[+RichG1972]

An Atari 2600 portable already exists, a guy by the name of Ben Heck makes them

 

https://www.benheck.com/original-atari-2600-vcsp/

[Shawn]

An Atari 2600 portable already exists, a guy by the name of Ben Heck makes them

 

https://www.benheck.com/original-atari-2600-vcsp/

 

Did you read more than a single line before posting? The guy is making this for a school project and actually mentions benheck's version in his post.

[john_q_atari]

@Leatherrebel5150

 

Just wondering if you ever completed this project and if so, how it turned out?

[Leatherrebel5150]

On 2/9/2022 at 5:22 PM, john_q_atari said:

@Leatherrebel5150

 

Just wondering if you ever completed this project and if so, how it turned out?

Sorry took so long to respond. No, I wasn't able to get this rolling. The partners I had for the project didn't want to go so complicated. 

[0078265317]

16 minutes ago, Leatherrebel5150 said:

Sorry took so long to respond. No, I wasn't able to get this rolling. The partners I had for the project didn't want to go so complicated. 

So what did you end up doing instead.

[Leatherrebel5150]

1 minute ago, 0078265317 said:

So what did you end up doing instead.

A delay pedal for a guitar. Still more complicated than what everyone else did but much fewer parts than the atari

[john_q_atari]

23 hours ago, Leatherrebel5150 said:

Sorry took so long to respond. No, I wasn't able to get this rolling. The partners I had for the project didn't want to go so complicated. 

Thanks for the update!