A VCS reborn... (Atarivox & RGB content)

[juansolo]

Just finished this today so I thought I'd post it up as it's been a fun little project.

 

I tend to buy old 'spares or repair' consoles and computers and repair refubish them. Not to sell, I just enjoy doing it. So it was mid-last year that this gem popped up in Ebay. Advertised as a loft find, and not working, the pic from the advert is linked below. I think I paid £18 for it delivered...

 

One of the paddles was wrecked, but will become spares, the joystick Cleggy made clicky and cleaned up (that's really rather sweet now). The Atari itself, kinda worked. It was iffy. So it got reflowed (it was mostly the power jack that needed it, but also the ribbon between the two PCBs), all the connections cleaned and re-capped, because while we're there, it'd have been rude not to. It then sprang into life and seemed stable. I don't have anything that runs RF and we've done composite mods in the past, but this thing really cleaned up nice and I have a LOT of nostalgia for the old VCS, so I decided to do something special and stuck the magnificent eTim RGB mod in there.

 

It has been pretty great since, but I've been waiting for the Atarivox issues to be fixed (and Galagon to come out to combine delivery...) and my next cunning plan was in motion: Internal Atarivox! It's always baffled me that the VCS has speaker grilles but no speakers, bah, for this one no longer. All I've done here is run a set of lines from the P2 joystick port to an 8-way switch (GND goes straight though), to an internal port. The switch is simply so I can turn it off to play 2 player games. It's all way tighter than I expected, but it fits in there and it's kinda cool that the Atari itself does the speaking.

Edited January 26, 2020 by juansolo

[Prizrak]

Amazing work, love to see these old system being modified and given a new life. The internal Atarivox is a brilliant idea.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[Richard H.]

On ‎1‎/‎26‎/‎2020 at 4:06 PM, juansolo said:

It's always baffled me that the VCS has speaker grilles but no speakers

 

I've always wondered about that too.

 

BTW like the idea of putting the AVox inside.

[juansolo]

On 1/26/2020 at 7:30 PM, Prizrak said:

Amazing work, love to see these old system being modified and given a new life.

Some more atari restores here: http://80.229.1.38/geekery/atarivideo.html

 

I really must update my website at some point. The Console/Computer collection section is massively out of date...

[spspspsp]

On 1/27/2020 at 1:06 AM, juansolo said:

to an 8-way switch

What switch specifically did you use? I had been thinking about doing this too, but wasn't able to find a suitable switch.

[juansolo]

30 minutes ago, spspspsp said:

What switch specifically did you use? I had been thinking about doing this too, but wasn't able to find a suitable switch.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/8P2W-8-Pole-2-Way-Slide-Switch-Model-Railway-Hobby-CY04/362635750770?hash=item546ec66d72:g:w9EAAOSwF2hcxiat

 

Only thing I didn't switch was the ground line, all the others went through that. Fits perfectly, and invisibly, in the now empty hole for the RF lead. It's too big to fit where the A/B switch hole is.

[Shawn]

Nice work! I like it.

[spspspsp]

@juansolo Thank you!