Alternative 2600 motherboards?

[WhyLee commotari.club]

Hello Guys!

Is there a rebuilt open source motherboard available (maybe made with KiCad)?

I think the 2600 hardware is so simple that playing around with a lot of mods would be a lot of fun.

My background:
I grew up with commodore (VIC-20, C64, Amiga 500) and never had a single atari product.
So, i was a Commodore 'fanboy', i would say.

Now i am more interested in keeping the 8-bit generation alive and i am not entirely focused on one brand.
And I have to say, that the 2600 woody is the most beautiful gaming console ever built (all other game consoles look ugly or simply like a random box).
Also the newer 2600 flat plastic models look like shit.
So, i am currently looking at ebay for some 2600 woody and maybe other cheap ones (just for spare chips).

What i want to do with it?
1. I want to explore the world of gaming on the 2600.
    Of course compared to the C64 the games will not look that good and the sound is not that good and yada yada yada.
    But that is ok. It is an older generation and the first really mass marketed console with software in a cartridge.

 

2. I want to look at modifications.
  The reason for that is, that of course it is limited in so many ways but one point is the accessibility.
  Better modern power supply circuits (DC/DC converters) would make it cooler and lower the power consumption.
  Direct video output circuit without the modulator - or the modulator as an option.
  And a lot of other fantasies: Added sound chip, different cpu, ram + rom, added module for network (microcontroller with wlan or bluetooth), sd-card, etc. etc.

  But everything has to start with an open source motherboard.

  From my understanding is, that the Commodore world was a world of machines where it was always possible to develop. switch on and you could program in basic.
  In the Atari world there are consoles - only for consuming, not for developing.
  This did not create a good environment from the beginning.
  And as I can see in the forum overview, there is no 2600 hardware forum, only for the very specific harmony cartridge.

So, is there not much hardware development going on for the 2600?
Or maybe should I look into the 7800 which is somehow compatible and go from there?

Thanks for your patience to read all that stuff :-)
  WhyLee. (commotari.club)

[InfoMan]

You can't compare the 2600 with a Commodore home computer. But Atari also made home computers that you could "switch on and you could program in basic" (and lots of other languages). Look at the 400, 800, and the XL and XE lines. And there have been tons of mods done on them - starting when Atari first released them.

[Keatah]

10 hours ago, WhyLee commotari.club said:

And I have to say, that the 2600 woody is the most beautiful gaming console ever built (all other game consoles look ugly or simply like a random box). Also the newer 2600 flat plastic models look like shit.

That's right.

 

10 hours ago, WhyLee commotari.club said:

2. I want to look at modifications.
  The reason for that is, that of course it is limited in so many ways but one point is the accessibility.
  Better modern power supply circuits (DC/DC converters) would make it cooler and lower the power consumption.

This is good.

 

10 hours ago, WhyLee commotari.club said:

Direct video output circuit without the modulator - or the modulator as an option.

This is good. I might suggest that RF/Composite be present for use with vintage CRT. And then either HDMI or DP for modern displays. Shit like S-Video, VGA, RGB Component, or DVI are inferior interim standards to be done away with. Too much effort for minimal gain in a world where those standards are fading.

 

RF & Composite = Vintage

DP or HDMI = Modern

 

A necessity. A great balance!

 

10 hours ago, WhyLee commotari.club said:

  And a lot of other fantasies: Added sound chip, different cpu, ram + rom, added module for network (microcontroller with wlan or bluetooth), sd-card, etc. etc.

While that sounds impressive on paper. It starts to significantly change the personality of the machine into "not VCS". The essence of the console should stay original and whole. And this essence is born of the 3 existing chips and all the limitations they enforce. The 6507, the RIOT, the TIA. But if you want to experiment, great. Absolutely no one is stopping anything.

 

On the other hand, a built-in Harmony subsystem would satisfy some of those requests. And it'd be easy peasy. Turn on the console without a cartridge and it reads from the SD and uses the Harmony subsystem. Insert a cart, the Harmony is disconnected (via simple tri-state buffering) and the cart port functions normally. The only outward difference in appearance would be slit in the back for the SD card.

 

And there could be a switchable SaveKey & AtariVox, too.

 

10 hours ago, WhyLee commotari.club said:

  But everything has to start with an open source motherboard.

Or an internal breakout expansion board. Maybe.

 

10 hours ago, WhyLee commotari.club said:

  From my understanding is, that the Commodore world was a world of machines where it was always possible to develop. switch on and you could program in basic.
  In the Atari world there are consoles - only for consuming, not for developing.
  This did not create a good environment from the beginning.

This was a limitation of the amount of tech that could be economically packed into a console. Among other things like the nature of the language VCS games are programmed in. I mean the dev has to write their own OS for each game so to speak, to handle everything that happens.

 

10 hours ago, WhyLee commotari.club said:

  And as I can see in the forum overview, there is no 2600 hardware forum, only for the very specific harmony cartridge.

It seems the vast majority of vintage gamers like the VCS as it stands. It's got its own special aura. I know I wouldn't want to change much if anything. And (IMHO) even the video mods are kinda iffy.

 

Many nice games have been done on the Harmony over the years. I personally consider it the premier expansion module. Then you have the video mods, the controller mods, Amiga Mouse, Quadtari, AtariVox & SaveKey, and others that I'm not recalling at this instant.

 

10 hours ago, WhyLee commotari.club said:

So, is there not much hardware development going on for the 2600?

Kinda depends on the definition of "not much". For such a simplistic console with about 12,000 transistors, interesting architecture changes to the system modify its personality too much and soon it's not the VCS anymore.

 

Then again it would be be interesting to see a real 6502 instead of the 6507, and some more RAM, on the system board.

 

How about experimenting in FPGA. Lots of stuff could be done there!

[WhyLee commotari.club]

10 hours ago, Keatah said:

How about experimenting in FPGA. Lots of stuff could be done there!

Yes. When it comes to the video chip, there is no way around an FPGA at the moment. And as i am working for a US semiconductor company that also makes FPGAs, I have easy access to tools and a devboard for that.
I have a motherboard in mind with some pcb-cards with connectors. One for the Video chip. So you could swap out the card that contains the original atari chip (probably also containing the oscillator?) to a different card that holds an FPGA doing the video stuff and then maybe adding something else or having a conversion to HDMI etc. on it. So, the whole system could go a little bit more into modularity.
Maybe also with a cpu card. An original one with the 6507, a different one with a 6502 or a 65C02 or a 65816. Having a kind of module based system would also allow others to explore their nerdiness ? 

[+Al_Nafuur]

@WhyLee commotari.club maybe you should have an look at this thread:

 

[eggimac]

On 8/20/2021 at 9:33 AM, WhyLee commotari.club said:

Yes. When it comes to the video chip, there is no way around an FPGA at the moment. And as i am working for a US semiconductor company that also makes FPGAs, I have easy access to tools and a devboard for that.
I have a motherboard in mind with some pcb-cards with connectors. One for the Video chip. So you could swap out the card that contains the original atari chip (probably also containing the oscillator?) to a different card that holds an FPGA doing the video stuff and then maybe adding something else or having a conversion to HDMI etc. on it. So, the whole system could go a little bit more into modularity.
Maybe also with a cpu card. An original one with the 6507, a different one with a 6502 or a 65C02 or a 65816. Having a kind of module based system would also allow others to explore their nerdiness ? 

If you're into FPGA programming, you should give the MisterFPGA a try. It's a compact evaluation board for a reasonable price (in relation, what you get for it). There are a large number of cores available - open source. There is even a Atari 2600 Core.

 

I can understand your interest in adding better video, RAM, ROM and other things to the system. But… as Keatah wrote, the charm of the 2600 lies in it's simple, minimized design. If you wanted to program it, you had to race the beam. This is one of the most interesting real time programming environment, I've ever seen. 

Anyway, I am wondering, if it's possible to design a new board with PAL & NTSC capabilities. This either means, you have to have both versions of the TIA built in it or replace it with an FPGA. Examining the boards of the JR version as an example shows, that these are the same for PAL and for NTSC. Slightly different assembly in the video part and different timing components. 

I personally use mine with a CRT display, since a lot of games don't have the same touch on a TFT display.

 

My humble opinion on it.

Edited September 29, 2021 by eggimac

[InfoMan]

35 minutes ago, eggimac said:

If you wanted to program it, you had to race the beam.

 

If you're serious about learning, this is the book to get:

 

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/026201257X/

 

This is also good:

 

https://smile.amazon.com/Making-Games-Atari-2600-Steven/dp/1541021304/

Edited September 29, 2021 by InfoMan

[reinheitsrobot]

 

Agreed on original post.  I wonder if the hesitancy or lack of development has been that the 2600 had 3 major case redesigns and mobo configurations.  I believe with the Ultimate 64 board (commodore 64 board), it would work in almost all existing cases.  If you were to design a new 2600 board with the ability to drop in the big chips, you’d have to do three different designs.  Interested and following topic.

 

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[benybob]

I have recently come across this 2600 PCB, Don't know if anyone has built and tested it but worth looking at.

ATARI 2600 - EasyEDA open source hardware lab (oshwlab.com)