Handheld Atari 2600 VCSp 80
Mzilikazi writes: "This enterprising chap, Benjamin J. Heckendorn, has taken the chips out of an Atari 2600 and hacked together his very own portable VCS!
The site has a lot of detailed information and photographs detailing the construction of the unit. The screen came from an old Casio handheld television, and yes, it does feature an attractive woodgrain case. "
Re:STAY AWAY! AVERT THINE EYES!!! (Score:1)
STAY AWAY! AVERT THINE EYES!!! (Score:1)
Re:For the VCS fan (Score:1)
http://website.lineone.net/~london.burning/ep004.
Re:And the Jaguar had Jeff Minter... (Score:1)
Re:What's Atari have to say? (Score:1)
The Jaguar was, like most other of their later products, killed by stupid marketing, low volume, and not realizing software sells systems, not the other way around. I presume there was a limit to the number of times you could play Tempest 2000 until it got boring.
However, they did have a portable system - the Lynx - which beat the Gameboy in every respect except the three that counted:
Atari VCS on FPGA ? (Score:1)
Re:Milling machines? (Score:1)
-james
Re:For the VCS fan (Score:1)
Very cool though.
-Julius X
Re:For the VCS fan (Score:1)
A new awards ceremony/show should be made, that clip wins every year until Sol collapses and we all die.
Geoff
Cute but I dout Atari cares (Score:1)
The only thing they MIGHT do is copy the machine and say "It's ours so your portable is also ours" stuff all the software on one box (one rom) and sell it for like $50 as a handheld toy for geeks, yuppys and people who want 1980s memorabila. As well as kids and well.. teachers trying to teach history... (Oh gods. yeah 1980s is history now...)
Re:"understanding" Pink Floyd requires kindbud (Score:1)
Re:For the VCS fan (Score:1)
---
Re:What's Atari have to say? (Score:1)
-m
Re:And the Jaguar had Jeff Minter... (Score:1)
Re:"understanding" Pink Floyd requires kindbud (Score:1)
I got so burned out on Floyd, and thought the pretty worthless, but that's because my high school friends only played Dark Side and later, and played, and played.
Then I started getting live Floyd from 71 and 72, whoa. Set Your Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Fat Old Sun, trippier than 90% of the Dead's output.
George
Re:Hero (Score:1)
George
Re:For the VCS fan (Score:1)
Sus
Kee
Rist
That was insanely funny. Don't bail before you see the Matrix bit, I damn near spit beer out my nose!
Regards, your friendly neighbourhood cranq
Re:For the VCS fan (Score:1)
Re:WooHoo! All my old games... (Score:1)
Re:What's Atari have to say? (Score:1)
Sweet! (Score:1)
a word of warning... (Score:1)
---------///----------
All generalizations are false.
Whistler already invading the world !! (Score:1)
Wow. (Score:1)
Wow... Just, wow. This is, like, the coolest thing ever made by humans. Like, ever. I'm speechless.
So when do the mass produced models come out? Although a better solution would probably be to shove an emulator on a gameboy advance or something, THAT'S NOT THE POINT!!!(*#@$(^
WooHoo! All my old games... (Score:1)
Now if I can just find that atari box in the attic.
Re:Worth a new Casio TFT TV? (Score:1)
I know the feeling...
Which way did he go? (Score:1)
Those are the largest "next" and "prev" buttons I've ever seen! =)
Kinda like the giant number buttons on my nearly blind Grandfather's telephone.
(..aww, come on... please don't troll me. It is funny, isn't it??)
Re:What's Atari have to say? (Score:1)
Yep. Plus, Hasbro released all rights to develop for the Jaguar. Damn Tramiels... If it weren't for them, Atari would probably still be alive today.
But did it beat the Game Boy in resolution? (Score:1)
Atari Lynx_____________: 160x102
Game Boy/GB color______: 160x144
Game Gear_____________: 160x144
Game.Com_____________: 200x160, touchscreen (in 8x8 blocks)
Neo Geo Pocket/NGP Color: 160x152
(Color doesn't mean much to me)
However, this Lynx FAQ [landfield.com] says that a "160 x 102 "triad" standard resolution (16,320 addressable pixels) (A triad is three LCD elements: red, green, and blue) [A] Capability of 480 x 102 artificially high resolution" is possible.
Sounds squished. Can I flip it sideways and play shooter games that work better with a tall screen, like on the WonderSwan?
Re:Which way did he go? (Score:1)
I remember back around `83 our whole class went on a field trip from upstate New York to Niagra Falls. One kid had a 2600 that his dad had stripped down and a "portable" (by early `80's standards) TV, along with a battery pack to run 'em. He played Atari games on the bus, and we were all envious as hell.
I never thought I'd see something like this. Absolutely beautiful.
-Cybrex
Re:KARMA WHORE ALERT- Signal11 (Score:1)
Re:What's Atari have to say? (Score:1)
Rock 'n Roll, Not Pop 'n Soul
You're kidding me... (Score:1)
I'm thinking about grabbing the old intellivision or coleco adam out of the garage and sending it to this guy as a sort of demonic torture experiment.....
Re:WooHoo! All my old games... (Score:1)
Re:WooHoo! All my old games... (Score:1)
Re:Worth a new Casio TFT TV? (Score:1)
Arch, you win the blue ribbon.
Re:Worth a new Casio TFT TV? (Score:1)
Sheesh, there always has to be one asshole in the group with some stupid criticism.
Re:You're kidding me... (Score:1)
Okay, I'll admit it. I had to read that last bit twice before I realized that "OFF" wasn't some computer acronym that I didn't realize.
"Oh-eff-eff? What the heck is an oh-eff-eff?"
hymie3
Re:What's Atari have to say? (Score:1)
OTOH, I'm sure Atari went through several iterations of the Stella, and one of the things that kept the VCS cheap was broad tolerances (and forgiving gamers).
Remember, too, that home television has always driven color purists mad. NTSC, it has been said, stands for Never The Same Color, and that's about right. Walk into your local Sears (I used to work there) (well, probably not in yours) and go to the Wall of Eyes in 57 and watch the different renditions on each set. Twenty years ago it was worse, so the chip didn't have to be terribly consistent.
In fact, when my game was tested for Europe, we just dropped the cart into a PAL 2600 plugged into a PAL set (special wiring for that, of course, 220 single phase and maybe 50 HZ, or it may have been a cleverly designed frequency-tolerant set), said, "Well, those are colors, anyway. Not the same colors, but... Hell with it - ship it!"
Re:Proofreading and Stuff (Score:1)
The 6510 did, however, have a serial port on board, although I don't recall it being used for much of anything in the 64. (Unless that was the bank switch...anybody remember?)
Oh, and as long as we're going after nits , it was MOS Technology, not Mostek. Easily confused.
Re:What's Atari have to say? (Score:1)
Re:Proofreading and Stuff (Score:1)
I'm not even sure that the on-chip serial port was used for much of anything. My feeling is that the 6510 was built to be a more comprehensive controller chip, and was used in the C64 mostly because why not? when you own the chip company, you might as well use the latest and greatest. That, or maybe as the later design it could be more cheaply manufactured. As I recall, that extra port took a lot of hand-holding, whereas a RIOT or something would do most of that for you (but it's been almost a Slashdot reader ago that I did this stuff).
Yes, a converter to bump up to RS-232 rings a bell. Then again, you needed some sort of converter to plug almost anything into a Commie. I was sort of surprised they didn't make us wear special gloves to type on them.
Re:Sweet! (Score:1)
Proofreading and Stuff (Score:1)
1) On page4.html he writes that the Commodore64 used the 6502 processor. I am pretty sure this is wrong. The C64 used a special variant of the 6502 known as the 6510. It was able to address about 128k by switching RAM/ROM banks 16k at a time.
2) On page5.html he writes "lone gone" when I think he meant "long gone."
I love this project! It is the absurd waste of time kind-of-thing that I wish I had the time and talent to do.
PS - Page6.html mentions "the Computerized Router that I used to make the case." What the hell is that and where can I get one?
Re:For the VCS fan (Score:1)
Nit to pick (Score:1)
It does just make the thing look better (than a real 2600) of course, and he did do a really nice job on the shroud.
Re:For the VCS fan (Score:1)
Whoooaaaa!!!! Quick, let's give this guy an award (Score:1)
Re:WooHoo! All my old games... (Score:1)
Wasn't that the game that had the extra controller with just buttons?
Re:WooHoo! All my old games... (Score:1)
Too cool... I used to love that game. It was a nice precursor to games like Elite.
Re:What's Atari have to say? (Score:1)
Computerized Router (Score:1)
Sounds like fun. :)
next project (Score:1)
Cute (Score:1)
Nonetheless, a cool project.
Re:For the VCS fan (Score:1)
Re:a word of warning... (Score:1)
Re:What's Atari have to say? (Score:2)
Mattel was, it appears, the first company to do this; Atari threatened to sue them, but the 2600 contains no copyrightable software (as the Intellivision and Colecovision did) and all off-the-shelf hardware (basically, three chips), so they really had no grounds to sue. Afterwards, other manufacturers began making 2600 clones.
The rest of that site [webcom.com] is also very good; it provides some interesting insights into, not only the Intellivision game system, but the people behind it and the dynamics of the early-80's video game market. Recommended.
Eric
--
You can pick up the TV new for $150 (Score:2)
DMCA (Score:2)
Atari's gonna come after you and poke you many times with a soldering iron, da?
--
Re:And the Jaguar had Jeff Minter... (Score:2)
Re:What's Atari have to say? (Score:2)
Since he didn't actually copy any of their stuff, only modified it, they can't complain.
Now if he started selling these things, they might take note.
Re:Proofreading and Stuff (Score:2)
Almost identical.
It was able to address any amount of memory through paging.
Re:Proofreading and Stuff (Score:2)
It did have a serial port, and no, I don't hink it was the bank switch.
It wasn't rs232.. I believe the signalling was intact, but it was at ttl (or cmos) levels instead of rs232 levels, so you needed a powered converter.
And the Jaguar had Jeff Minter... (Score:2)
The system also had, near the end, a CD player [gamma.nic.fi] (which sat on top of the unit making it look a bit like a toliet). As far as I remember there were really no good CD games - however, it did have a Jeff Minter lightshow (think winamp visual plugin) built in for playing CD's! That's the only reason I still hook mine up at all. It was such a great idea, I can't believe that no system since has included a lightshow of some sort for CD's.
Re:You're kidding me... (Score:2)
This guy decided to convert an old Atari system to a portable unit. Nothing he did by doing this caused me any direct or indirect grief, so I can't possibly think of any reason why he shouldn't do it.
Others may say he's wasting his talent on a useless project. Certainly, the potential use for a portable game system that is 20 years old might be limited, but all effort put towards these types of projects is experience toward other types of projects. This is a person who thinks up neat things. The next neat thing he thinks up and builds might a revolutionary PDA which nobody will consider wasted talent.
I'm sure he's quite content with his life the way it is.
-Restil
Re:Milling machines? (Score:2)
Nuts and Volts magazine ran a series of articles (later condensed into a small booklet for subscribers) a while back detailing how to do it (make the X/Y table, the Z head, adding a Dremel), but it could still set you back a grand...
Here in Phoenix, I was milling (no pun intended) around a place downtown (behind BOB), called Equipment Exchange - pretty cool place. Lots of chip fab equipment, much of it in VERY used condition - but there were a few gems. My favorite devices were the industrial robots (they actually had a Unimate! The thing was HUGE!). But one thing I did find in the expansive warehouse (it has to be seen to be believed), was three or four assembling tables of some sort (I think they were for SMT work, but not sure - for like auto-gluing of chips, or something).
Each table had a small X/Y board, with nice lead screws, and a small Z head. Each lead screw was powered by a stepper, with extremely smooth movement. The table even had a custom XT mounted on it.
I didn't ask the price of anything I saw (for one, I didn't know who to ask, as I was the only person in the warehouse, and two, it seemed like most of the stuff was out-of-range pricewise for me, and I didn't really have much need for any of it - I was just checking the place out), so I don't know how much one cost - but I imagine they might let you have one for a few hundred (for all I know, maybe even less!)...
Anyhow, that is what I found - so a homebrew job might be possible, if you know where to shop.
BTW (and totally OT): All you Apple IIe nuts in Phoenix: there was a stash of HUNDREDS of Apple IIe floppies in the bottom of the warehouse - in a couple of cases, they were in fair condition - I would guess around 1000 floppies total. Many cool programs (I found several Eamon disks in the stack).
I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
Re:Milling machines? (Score:2)
Though you might want to check educational electronics catalouges, I seem to remember playing with very basic CAM setup in a highschool technology class about 5-6 years ago, worked with an Apple ][ iirc, and could only mill plastic.
TV BOY! Overpriced 70's fun! (Score:2)
http://www.atari2600.com/catalog/Specials/GamTV
It's basicly just a 127-in-1 game rom, built-in controller and Atari compatable hardware in one small handheld unit. The big difference (and downside) is that you still have to hook it up to a TV. It allows standard joysticks to be pluged in, so it may be nice to put it in your backpack and carry it to your friend's house if he has a projection TV
Another big problem is the price: $99.95
That's way too much. You can get the real thing at a Goodwill with some games for well under $10, unless the guy who prices things is a total loon and thinks it could be valueable. Then the prices for a single cart could go up to $5 EACH. It's true, once I saw a copy of DOS on 5.25 disks for the low, low price of $20 (!?!?!?!).
Even though a handheld VCS is cool, the cost of making one is too much (except as a hobby project), considering the VCS can be found at garage sales in the "Please help us get rid of this!" pile.
What's Atari have to say? (Score:2)
Hero (Score:2)
- L. Hutz
Re:Sweet! (Score:2)
Re:Worth a new Casio TFT TV? (Score:2)
Re:Worth a new Casio TFT TV? (Score:2)
Re:Sweet! (Score:2)
I do remember chasing my tail for a day and a half after I changed something in the attract mode and the whole damned game fell apart. Turned out that the byte (honest to God, one stinking BYTE) had pushed a loop over a page boundry, causing the conditional branch to take that extra cycle (or maybe two -- it's been a long time), which blew the scan timing which blew the screen timing, which just plain blew...
Stuff like that made it interesting, but not really hard.
Milling machines? (Score:3)
Does anyone have any information on small computerized milling machines that are inexpensive enough to obtain for hobby use? The ability to work with plastic and aluminum would be a big plus... Something I could use to repackage things like my mouse or keyboard shell or create wild tape dispensers... etc.
~GoRK
Re:What's Atari have to say? (Score:3)
Finally! (Score:3)
Hack suggestion (Score:4)
There are several approaches. They depend on what voltages are used by the Atari. As far as I know, most of the Atari actually runs off 5 volts, so it could be run directly off the 3 AA cells. Find the voltage regulator (probably a simple 3 lead TO220 device) and remove it. This linear regulator probably sucks up half the energy coming from the 9 volt battery. Feed the output point directly from the 3 AA cells (4.5 V). Now only part that requires thought is to figure out if the 9 volts are used for anything else. If not you could eliminate the 9 volt battery completely. There is one possible gotcha in that the polarity with respect to ground of the 3 AA cells might be wrong. Verify that the polarity is right. If it is not right, read on.
A good refinement of this hack would be to construct a simple switching regulator with one of those ICs that need only a couple external parts (usually miniature toroid and a capacitor). This would be a better way to feed the Atari because the voltage seen by the Atari circuitry would be independent of what state of charge the 3 AA cells were in. Also, if there were polarity considerations, an inverting regulator could be used. This technique could also be used if a voltage other than 5 volts were needed elsewhere.
Finally, by using a switching regulator, and finding room for an extra AA cell, you would really have even longer long battery life. Power the the screen from the current setup, but feed the switcher from the extra cell at the top of the stack. By the way, the switching regulator circuit would not take up more than a square inch of space.
Worth a new Casio TFT TV? (Score:4)
For the VCS fan (Score:5)