CrossBow

Hopefully it works better than their previous controllers have? I've got their Dreamcast and combo Genesis/Saturn controller. The Dreamcast one nearly works properly but on some games, I've found it doesn't register all the way to the left as it should. As an example in the game Gauntlet legends, when you move the analog to the far edges, your character will run. But with their DC controller I wasn't able to get that to work in the left direction. Their combo Genesis/Saturn controller gave me similar issues with the Saturn functionality. It works fine for Genesis use but I've relegated that controller to the work lab instead.

After almost 4 months to the day from my original shipping notification...these finally arrived just today.

It isn't too difficult but it is more time consuming than most other cap jobs given the small spaces to work and having to reform the leads of the new caps to follow suit of the originals. If the caps are small enough you can get away with just bending the leads down and attach them down. But some of the spacing does require the caps to be installed in the same manner as the originals. Here is a shot of the left side of that same GG above with the new caps I installed last night. You will see examples of where I have the leads out and soldered down an some that are folded back down under the cap.

I know...I know... you hear it everywhere that everything in excess of so many years needs new capacitors and that will fix everything. Well, that isn't always the case as there are many electronics that date from much longer than 40 years ago whose caps while not perhaps quite within their original spec, are still working and doing their job. However, in the 90s there was an issue where most capacitor manufactures essentially had to start over with the formulas they had been using and as a result of this, many of the capacitors of that era have NOT held up well over time. One of the best examples of this, is in fact the Sega Game Gear. For those that don't know the GG actually uses standard radial through hole style capacitors just like most things. But, in an effort to keep costs low and have capacitors of that size fit in the small space of the GG. Sega used some very low quality capacitors that were then housed into a squared plastic housing. The leads of these caps were then folded under and trimmed so they could be installed onto SMD surface mount pads vs through hole. They did this so that the caps could fit flush against the PCB and be held into place with lite epoxy during assembly. Well again, over the past 20-30 years, those capacitors are not just dead, but decaying and leaking out over the PCBs. This causes not only the connections at the capacitor leads to no longer register contact, but can leech through the rest of the trace work and start to cause issues eating away at other places in the system. If you want to see exactly what I mean...here you go. If you look closely at the base of the capacitors where they are attached, you can see how the shiny silver of the solder is actually brown and almost dirt like in appearance. This is the tell tale sign of electrolyte leakage and corrosion having already begun. Also turn your attention to the green looking spots on the copper disc near the bottom of that picture? That is electrolyte that has leaked out over the board and started to interact with the copper of those discs turning green. It is like a syrup substance that has to be cleaned off. Want to see something really nasty but also quite typical of the GG capacitors? Well here is C1 and it is the main bypass capacitor for the power in the GG. This is what 30 years of crap quality looks like and what it does... That brown crud is the old electrolyte having eaten at and corroded most of the solder joints. That black color section to the right of it, is the epoxy they used to hold down the caps during the assembly process and is NOT an issue. In fact, it is best to just leave that be as trying to scrape it off the board can result in breaking traces in the process that are under the epoxy. So yeah...it all needs cleaned up and neutralized so no further damage continues. Here is the same C1 section and pads after I removed that cap and cleaned up the mess getting it ready for a new capacitor to be installed. This game gear is fully back to stock working condition now and will be set aside while waiting for the new LCD screen to come in as the owner of this GG has requested. So...yeah... get your Game Gear recapped if it hasn't already been done!

I'm really digging these blade runner and general cyberpunk like citiscapes. I've not had much luck using the search on those sites you've linked to really show me the kind of stuff like that I'm more interested in.

The BackBit Pro multi-system flash cartridge is quite amazing in all the systems it supports and the Atari 5200 is one of the newest systems to recently be added over the past few months. One cool thing that the BBPro cart has for the 5200 side of things that other similar devices do not have, is the ability to reset the console and go back to the game folder browser without having to power cycle the console. This feature works out of the box on the 2-port model 5200s by having a selector switch on the BBPro 5200 adapter set to the 2port Hard Reset mode. But on a 4 port 5200, having the switch in that mode will prevent the console from booting up properly. So the switch has to be set to soft reset mode on the 4port. However, even with that switch option selected, the 4port console will NOT work with the reset button on the BBPro cart unless a very small modification is made to the console to allow for this. Changes made to the 2 port main board design and later 4 port consoles allow them to work with the CX-55 adapter and those changes are also what allow the selector switch in the Hard Reset position to actually work and reset the 5200. But the earlier 4 port models do NOT have this ability. That is what I will talk about in this blog as the process to modify the older 4-port consoles to work with the reset switch is very easy to do and doesn't pose an issue with actual games so it can be left in place once done. What the modification does is run a new wire to an unused pin on the cartridge port that ties that pin to the reset line on the Antic IC. Turns out that Pin 28 on the cartridge port is perfect for this because that pin was NEVER designed for use with anything on either model of the 5200 and in fact isn't even attached to anything in the system. It is a floating pin on the cartridge port. As a result, it will be given purpose. On the 4 port model main board, it turns out that there is an unused via conveniently located near the cartridge port that is already attached to this reset line... NICE! The pic below shows you where this via is in relation to the cartridge port on the top component side of the main board. It is just to the left of the silk screen marking where pin 18 is on the cartridge port. And on the bottom side of the PCB, here is where that unused via is in relation to where pin 28 is located on the cartridge port. All that is needed is to run a small bit of conductor wire between that via and pin 28 as shown below. No traces have to be cut or anything. Just solder in a wire...simple. This attaches a connection from the Antic's reset pin to pin 28 directly so that it can be tapped for use by the BBPro cartridge adapter. As a result, it requires a small jumper pad to be soldered on the BBPro 5200 adapter. On the back side of the adapter, there is a DuPont style female connector attached, but to the right of that and center of the adapter board, is a jumper pad that is labeled as "Spare Reset (Pin 28)". You need to apply a blob of solder across the pads here to complete that jumper as shown in the picture below: And that's it! Now you can use the BBPro 5200 adapter on both a 2-port or 4-port console and have the BBPro on cart reset switch work on either model. Just have to move the selector switch to the right position depending on which console model you are using it with. It goes to the left for Hard Reset mode on 2-port and VCS adapter modified 4-port 5200s. Move the switch to the right for the Soft Reset option on 4-port consoles where you have applied the wire modification. I'm sure you are wondering what happens if the wire modification isn't done and you have the BBPro 5200 adapter for use with your 4port? Well that is easy to answer. Without the wire modification what happens is that the 4-port console will NOT boot up if the switch on the adapter is in the Hard reset position and it must be in the soft reset position. However, the button on the BBPro will not work properly and just crash the console requiring a complete power off/on to get it back up. Essentially making it operate like other flash cartridges that do NOT have on cart resets. It doesn't harm it to use the BBPro without the wire modification, but it does add just that more functionality to an already excellent product and is a fairly simple modification to perform if you are semi comfortable with a soldering iron. Thanks for reading, feel free to ask me any questions should you have any and Atari On! -Jesse Ivory Tower Collections

It has been over 6 months and we are now into a new year. But I released ITC#85 this morning as the first video for the new year and hopefully for more videos on the way in the future. In this video I go over the BackBit Pro multi-system cartridge designed, created, and sold by Evie Salomon (Sp?) in her BackBit.io store. As the name implies it is an SD flash cartridge designed to be used with multiple game consoles and computers. With over 20 different systems now supported by the BackBit Pro and other features it offers, I thought it would be good to shine some light on this wonderful accessory. Atari 5200 support and adapters were released a little over a month ago, and just today Evie has announced support and even pre-orders for the new 7800 adapter including POKEY audio emulation. I go into details about the cart from what I know of it and demonstrate its use with the Intellivision and Atari 5200 adapters. Thanks again for watching and happy New Year everyone!

@MaximumRD I have to ask, where are you finding/getting all of these? Many of them are ones I wouldn't mind having in some random rotation on my system but I never seem able to find any that I really like. I've been using an old Bing space related theme that carried over from my older win10 install that still works when I upgraded to win11. But yeah some of those are easily ones I'd like and you have so many of them. Are they just random from some URL that it grabs from daily or are these pics you actually have stored away somewhere in your computers?

Might have been Procomm. Again, I can't recall exactly. Once cable modem service was available to me, I haven't touched dial up or BBS sites since LOL! I do remember Roboterm for a bit as it had a hi res EGA terminal and character graphics it could use on sites that supported it.

As I said, I didn't do it maliciously. I'm NOT actually versed much at all on Atari 8-bit computers as I never had one growing up and didn't know anyone that did back then. I grew up specifically on MS-DOS on IBM compatibles only and so that is all I really know and remember. We have a dedicated break function on the keyboard but wasn't aware of the Atari equivalent else I would have tried that. So yeah for me, all the stuff I did in BBS land back in the early 90s was on my IBM setup using some specific ANSI Terminal I had that I really liked. I have NO idea what it was I used back then though LOL!

I was using emulation through Altirra last night. i do have a FujiNet but didn't feel like breaking out the 8-bit setup last night to set it up...LOL

That...might have been my fault actually.... You see I was checking things out on their menus and told it to show me the log for recent logins. But it after about 5min of watching it scroll across and no way to stop it I just disconnected. My guess, is that I've found a small bug in that routine that causes it to repeat the log over and over and therefore causes an infinite loop on the server. That is why I think it wasn't responding is because it was still looping that list and never actually disconnected from me when I dropped off. But...that is only a guess.

Not really the ultimate 5200. It has an old and no longer made s-video/cvbs processor board that was more time consuming and more damaging to the console to install vs the UAV we have today. Where I installed the AV jacks was NOT ideal and in fact I don't install them in the case shell anymore due to how thick the case shell is. It is best to install them on the expansion plate on the opposite side but as you can see, I installed my new dc power jack there instead. So a lot of things I did on this 5200 is not how I would do it these days. But it was what I did over 8 years ago when I first upgraded this 5200 and like a lot of things, I've learned much since then. It could also be argued that to make it more ultimate, would be to install a Sophia RGB output board into it. But I honestly have always been quite happy with the s-video output from this 5200 even from this older board that I don't really desire anything better from it currently. I feel the same way about my 7800 in most regards as well.

I originally did most of the work on this 5200 about 8 years ago. It was also one of the first projects I did and to be honest, the wiring work inside wasn't that great. For some time I had wanted to redo it all similar to how I redid my 7800 about a year ago but just never got around to it. Well, now that I have a new BackBit Pro flash cartridge and it was designed to allow resets back to the game menu, I felt it was time to perform a small modification to allow this function of my BackBit Pro to work and also decided it was time to redo the wiring work and give my 5200 a much needed bath. So first I will share some old pics of when I first AV upgraded the console. The wiring wasn't that bad I guess but it was before I was using better quality wire and wasn't using connectors so it was all tethered down. Also, not long after this was first done, the s-video jack kept coming loose on me so I had to hot glue it into place. No pics of that hot snot but suffice to say it was pretty ugly. Here is another shot showing how all the wiring was done originally in this setup. All of the wiring was completely redone with better quality wire and using install methods that I've been using on client consoles for the past 5 years. Some of the wiring was to redo the power and ground wiring as I now have it attached to the main power and ground rails that run along the middle of the board. As a result they are much shorter than they were previously. All the of the video output wiring was redone with a connector added in the middle to allow for easier removal of the main board in the future for servicing if needed. A connector was also added to the power modification wiring on the bottom side as well. A new s-video jack was installed as the original was in pretty bad shape from coming loose over the years and the hot glue just had to go. I used my dremel to rough up the area around the s-video jack and shave off a little bit of shell material so that I could install a new s-video jack and have the back nut actually secure it into place properly. Last to ensure it stays put, some epoxy was added around the s-video jack and securing nut. Audio wiring was redone as well and cleaned up. Finally a small bit of wire was added on the bottom side of the PCB that attaches the reset line for the system to an unused pin on the cartridge port. The BackBit Pro flash cart is designed to take advantage of this and with this wire in place, I can now use the reset button on the cartridge to take me back to the game selection menu. This is a feature that is sorely missing on the AtariMax carts as they require hard powering the 5200 console to get back to your game menu selection. At the end, I finally gave the case shells a much needed bath as it had been at least a decade since this 5200 had been cleaned. It was getting pretty dusty in those vent slots and just looking a bit dull. Now this 5200 is working better than before and ready to provide some more 5200 gaming for many more years!

Not me...LOL. I've got at least a half dozen different 2600 systems scattered around the house...yes scattered in that I know I have a vader and h6 in one room, a 4 switch in unknown condition in a close in that same room with some games. A Sears h6 that works in the telegames branded storage case in one part of the game room that is never used, another 2600 4 switch that is CIB and worked when I last checked it, plus the Jr I've got up in the lab, and pretty sure there is another Atari h6 in a bin by itself in the close in the game room also. That is just what I remember off the top of my head. I'm almost as bad in the Intellivision side of things. I've got fully working Tandyvision, Sylvania GTE model, Intellivision II, and not one, but two Sears Super Arcades. I've got another Sears unit that works but needs controllers and lots of TLC cleanup that is in the parts section along with an original 2609 that is strictly a parts unit. I've also got at least 4 5200 consoles... all 4 port units and working. I've got a spare or two of each console I play and collect for with the exception of my SMS, TurboDUO and Jag. Although I do have a Core Grafx II and US TG-16 consoles I can play games on. I do need to downsize when I think about it.

@Shauncan you provide some more information? What is the issue or issues you are having? Is it NTSC or PAL...etc?

I've got a junior model that someone gave me years ago. It is up in the lab area and works as far as I remember but I have no love for the Jr model personally. At the time it was released, I had my 7800 and felt overall it was a better looking design over the new 2600 look. And... I guess to me the 2600 will always be that larger system with the big switches and woodgrain. When I think Atari 2600, that is what I have in my mind instantly is the 4 switch woody that I grew up with in the early 80s. I had a friend of mine that bought that 'Under 50 bucks' Jr model and newer released games and sure we had fun on it still. But again, It just isn't iconic to me in the way the other models are. Now....as in back then... I just use my 7800 for all of my 2600/7800 gaming needs.

Well, I didn't specify in what way Q2 RTX didn't work. It would work, until I got to that first elevator on the first map. Once that elevator would change to the next part of the map, the game would dump me back to the desktop and Windows would show some sort of odd hardware driver error related to some RTX commands that I assume Q2 was doing. So when I think of it, I will give that another shot. I also need to specify on the DLSS comment. You have a few preset modes when using DLSS. They are essentially Performance, Balanced, and Quality. As the names might imply the performance mode gives you more frames at the expense of nicer looking and more realistic downsample/upsampling effects. Balance is the middle road with quality being the best it can look with DLSS enabled. On Portal RTX, all of these modes look the same graphically to me (I'm using 1080P btw for this game in RTX), but each does provide a performance hit as I would expect. I also found that even more performance is lost when using the non DLSS RTX options, but those too, look basically the same to me. So I've kept it at performance and 1080P for now. Q2 RTX I'm able to use the quality option at 1080P or balanced type mode at 1440p and still average nearly 40fps. So to me, Q2 RTX looks better with the RTX upgrade over portal RTX and performs better as well. But, portal isn't a game requiring fast reflexes or crazy high frame rates so it is quite playable on the options I've got set. I just wish it looked more impressive like the trailer for it an some screenshots I've seen. My guess is those were done with the new DLSS 3 mode that is only supported on the newer 4000 series cards. I believe DLSS and DLSS 2 is as far as the 2000/3000 series are able to go.

So I did download this and give it a spin the other night. I had to first update my vid drivers in order to get it to work and I didn't care for that much. See, the last game that nVidia worked with to show off some RTX goodness like this was Quake II RTX. Problem is about a year or so later, the newest drivers started to break that game from working anymore on my 2070 Super. I had to downgrade the drivers to get it working stable again. So yeah, not wild about having to update them to test this. I've not tested Quake II to see if it still works or not but I will. So... my thoughts on Portal RTX thus far? Mixed honestly... I can see where they were going with this but unlike the Quake II RTX it feels more like a mod add-on than a complete redo of the game graphically. Some elements are nice, but I really don't see that huge a change on this game in RTX vs normal game as much as the change was with Quake II RTX. On my 2070 super I used the recommended settings and changes by using the Alt-X combo to bring up the additional graphical options and setting them to what they recommended. One thing I will say about DLSS is that at least for me on my 2070, it does make a difference, but the different modes do NOT look that different to my eyes and that really surprises me as well. Then again, I've had a feeling that the 2070 series have some flaws in their designs that might prevent the RTX from working as well as it should and has been demonstrated. I would like to see some screen caps from your setup to see it looks and what settings you are using and then compare with mine to give some examples.

The main concern with replacing the switches is more about using too much heat or leaving the iron on the legs for too long as it could start to melt the plastic inside the switches internally. As for the solder, you only need enough to make a nice little volcano like look on the bottom and although there are 4 pins on each switch. They are a pair that are attached so as long as one of the pins is attached to the trace needed for the switch signal to go through, you are good.

The switches are a good beginner project because it is all through hole and you don't have to worry about aligning them up in any particular way because they will only fit in place really in one way. You don't even have to remove the RF shielding to replace them out although it would be a little squeeze to work around them.

Oh for sure this is something I've had to do quite often. I always test out the panel switches when working on 7800s. If they test out fine during testing, I usually leave them be. But if even one of them is flaky I will suggest to the owners to go ahead and swap them all out. It isn't that big a deal or expense to do so and it is one less issue to likely have to worry about in the future. The switches on this one were working quite well and I hadn't planned to replace them out originally. But the rest of the board ha obvious signs of flux splash all over as even some of the main ICs had spots of old flux dried up on them. I cleaned all of that off and didn't think much of it. Wasn't until the power LED was requested to be swapped out for a different color that I saw what my initial cleaning had missed and couldn't get to and decided to look under the power switch to get an idea. Again, I'm glad I did as it really would have only been a matter of time. The CPU had to be swapped out on that 7800 also and that was actually quite clean under it on the board so my guess is that whatever happened, most of it seem to collect near the front edge of the board.

In the case of this one, it was a lot of q-tips an 99.9% IPA. What you don't see and I didn't mention is that the entire board on this 7800 was coated pretty badly with old flux. There were spots of splash from flux in the past. So prior to removing the switches, I actually sprayed the board down liberally with flux remover. But then again I was curious to see the switches because I notice the massive flux buildup under the power LED and I'm glad I did. I might have missed it or not checked if the owner hadn't requested a different color power LED. But given how much flux was on the board overall prior to my cleaning it, I should have known to check anyway.

This is a topic I would usually reserve as a blog post. But it is pretty important one that effects many many 7800 consoles over their lifetime. So lets talk about it... The main issue that comes up with the 7800 panel buttons is that over time, they start to fail in that they won't always register a press. The power button and reset seem to be the most problematic and that is likely due to them being used the most. So that is the problem but what is the cause? Well here is the cause... The above pictures are the remains and effects of left over flux from the factory when the consoles were manufactured. This one happens to be one of the worst I've seen, but it is crazy common how much I've seen similar. The extra flux is hiding under the switches and over time it can cause corrosion and gunk to build up around the switches and the vias they are attached to. This looks pretty nasty and the switches don't fair any better... These are the original switches that were removed from the 7800. I did NOT add any additional flux when I removed them. The gunk and wet sheen you seen is the left over flux that has been left for nearly 40 years under those switches. This old flux finds its way into the switches internally and causes them to corrode. As a result, the switches start to loose their contact ability inside them due to this corrosion. I've heard of folks taking the switches apart to clean them and then use some super glue to put them back together. But honestly for the time that takes, and as cheap as the switches cost. I don't mess with that, an instead I replace them out whenever I find this. Now to be fair these switches were actually still working properly. But due to other massive amounts of flux that was left over on other parts of the main board, I decided to remove a few to look them over for inspection and once I saw this, I didn't want to take any chances in the future and decided to clean up the mess on the boards and install new higher quality switches. You can get OEM style replacements from Console5.com inexpensively here and they would likely serve you well for many years to come: https://console5.com/store/tactile-switch-12mm-x-4-5mm-atari-7800-power-pause-select-reset.html The switches I tend to order and use cost 2x more each, but they are a much better quality switch that is rated for 1million cycles of use. That means, the switches you see above are likely to outlive us all. The switches I order I get are made by Alps and use silver contacts internally vs the brass or alum that is likely used in cheaper switches. Because I've found the Alps switches cloned with much crappier versions that look just like them, I only order them from Mouser to be sure I'm getting legit swtiches. https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Alps-Alpine/SKHCBFA010?qs=4aVxpR%2FL9VKjnfNtzVhXNg%3D%3D So if you find your 7800 panel buttons not working as good as they should. Just replace them out or find someone you trust that is good with a soldering iron to do it for you.

I wanted the more traditional looking version of this, but at the time I ordered this one, they didn't have the original grey and chrome original looking ones available, and I had NO idea that they would even re-release the original looking version as they did for their Black Friday sale...sigh. But, that said, the color scheme might grow on me and it really does sound amazing! It is replacing the Bose Sondlink Mini II that I'd been using for the past few years on my desk at work.