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Atari 2600 RGB Mod Question


Retro_Game_Lover96

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Looking at the TIA chip pin out (from http://atarihq.com/danb/tia.shtml), there are no RGB signals to use.  The TIA directly outputs a color signal and three luma signals, so S-Video is the best video quality you can get out of it.  Any RGB circuit would be decoding the baseband video signal in much the same way that a monitor would.

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5 minutes ago, bcombee said:

Looking at the TIA chip pin out (from http://atarihq.com/danb/tia.shtml), there are no RGB signals to use.  The TIA directly outputs a color signal and three luma signals, so S-Video is the best video quality you can get out of it.  Any RGB circuit would be decoding the baseband video signal in much the same way that a monitor would.

Uh, I meant the installation of the RGB board by Tim Wothington.

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I guess you'd need to remove at least the pause mod (the 2600 rgb mod provides a pause feature). The installation of the pause mod requires to cut a trace and remove a resistor: you'd have to revert those modifications by fixing the trace and putting the resistor back in place. You can reuse the hole left by the pause switch to install the "palette" button of the rgb mod (which is also used to pause the console)

 

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2 hours ago, alex_79 said:

I guess you'd need to remove at least the pause mod (the 2600 rgb mod provides a pause feature). The installation of the pause mod requires to cut a trace and remove a resistor: you'd have to revert those modifications by fixing the trace and putting the resistor back in place. You can reuse the hole left by the pause switch to install the "palette" button of the rgb mod (which is also used to pause the console)

 

Crap, I threw out the resistor while working on that mod, but I wonder what kind of the resistor.

 

Basically, the resistor is 4.7K (Yellow-Purple-Red). I just looked it up on https://vintagegamingandmore.com/pause-installation-guide-6-switch/

That is the guide I used to install the pause mod.

Edited by Retro_Game_Lover96
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30 minutes ago, root42 said:

0711spiele sells HDMI modded 2600 consoles. You may want to contact them if they are selling mod kits as well: http://www.0711spiele.de/de/atari-2600-jr-black-edition-mit-hdmi-stereo-und-switchless-pause-in-verpackung.html

That is the German site, so I'd rather buy stuff from the USA because I live here.

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I've fitted the eTim RGB mod to my six switch and it really is staggering in terms of the jump in quality even from the UAV. Not cheap, but not unreasonable either considering what it's doing. Now I just need him to do one for the 7800, which has probably the poorest picture of all my consoles now. But I know there are gonna be issues with that one given there are essentially two outputs on the thing (internally).

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28 minutes ago, Retro_Game_Lover96 said:

If only those RGB boards are sold with the US money (like they sold on eBay and Amazon) rather than the AU money from the etim site because it was an Australian site.

At least it has the US distributors, but they cost Australian money. 

These days, credit cards and payment services do the foreign money exchange seamlessly.  So, I'm not sure why this is such a problem.

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37 minutes ago, Retro_Game_Lover96 said:

If only those RGB boards are sold with the US money (like they sold on eBay and Amazon) rather than the AU money from the etim site because it was an Australian site.

At least it has the US distributors, but they cost Australian money. 

PayPal and pretty much every payment processing service will automatically convert the currency for you so that’s a total non-factor. 
 

Also, Yurkie here is the American distributor for the 2600RGB so you don’t have to pay extra for international shipping.

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9 hours ago, Retro_Game_Lover96 said:

If I am installing the etim RGB board on my Atari, do I have to leave the composite mod?

I'd just remove it and wire the existing rca connectors to the composite and audio pins of the RGB mod. The composite output from the RGB board is probably way better than what you can achieve with the simple transistor mod.

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2 hours ago, alex_79 said:

I'd just remove it and wire the existing rca connectors to the composite and audio pins of the RGB mod. The composite output from the RGB board is probably way better than what you can achieve with the simple transistor mod.

Simply remove the composite mod board and leave the RCA connectors for audio from the RGB board instead of using the headphone jack that came with?

By the way, the RGB board does come with the controller extra button parts, so is it possible to install it on a Sega Genesis controller?

Edited by Retro_Game_Lover96
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Personally I'm outputting mine over SCART so I connected the audio to the RGB out (bottom two pins of the DIN socket). It's the only socket I installed. You can do others but I didn't see the point. As for the extra joystick functionality. I don't use it, so I just put a switch on the back of the console to allow you to select the default palette (it auto-selecting isn't always great, so setting a default is nice). I rarely ever change it, but the option is there. Also you essentially end up with a true multi-region console doing this, which is a nice side effect.

Edited by juansolo
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11 minutes ago, juansolo said:

Personally I'm outputting mine over SCART so I connected the audio to the RGB out (bottom two pins of the DIN socket). It's the only socket I installed. You can do others but I didn't see the point. As for the extra joystick functionality. I don't use it, so I just put a switch on the back of the console to allow you to select the default palette (it auto-selecting isn't always great, so setting a default is nice). I rarely ever change it, but the option is there. Also you essentially end up with a true multi-region console doing this, which is a nice side effect.

That sounds familiar and reasonable.

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