CrossBow
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Posts posted by CrossBow
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ITC# 59 is finally done and published. I've actually had this footage in the can for nearly a month but been so busy with my actual day job and retro commissioned work that I simply hadn't had a chance to edit it and get it online.
Finally I go into greater detail in the process I use when installing a UAV (Ultimate Atari Video) board into an Atari 7800. The most critical parts of this video compared to the overview of the installation I did previously, is that I show the most likely way you might want to install one of these into a 7800 without removal of any components at all. I also show my current method for filtering and routing the audio that keeps the TIA and POKEY/External audio volume in balance and doesn't kill the audio from the RF modulator as my previous video would have shown.
Links are provided in the video description for my UAV installation instructions and on where you can order UAV boards for your own Atari console and computer needs. As always, thank you for watching and for any comments left that help me improve the channel and its content.
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Hmm... I like the design of this quite a bit and can easily see me buying one of these once the AA thread is made for ordering them.
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ITC# 58 is finally released! Been very busy with commissioned console work again and haven't had much time to create much less edit any videos LOL. But I had been meaning to make this one for a while and a recent purchase for more battery holders jogged my memory to get this one done and released. Here I go through the process I follow when replacing out batteries on game cartridges. Specifically I install a battery holder that I have to modify to make as low profile as possible to fit in the confines of the cartridge case but I also show you how I do it without the possibility of losing any potential save game data on the game.
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Wanted to update this. I got word from MuhMullet that he is nearly out of these boards and isn't sure he will make more due to I guess a lack of interest in them? But it also appears he increased the costs a bit which is why I hadn't bitten on getting a second one of these for myself just yet. I do like the fact he includes the SCART cable so that there aren't any issues there. As to be honest I've tried 2 different model 2 Genesis/Megadrive cables with the board I have and cannot get it to look right. I either get no picture unless I make some crazy modified adjustements to the OSSC or I get a great picture but missing the color green?! I don't think it is the board as the guy making them stated he advises a plain SCART cable that doesn't have anything inside the connecto aside from a cap for the audio output line. Pretty much ever cable I've purchased (SCART anyway), has some PCB or other added components inside them to make them work and look the best on the actual hardware it was designed to be used with.
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I'm surprised there isn't a thread about this already as this isn't new. But sometime back in 2017 a UK member at Atari Age came up with his own take on the old Soundby s-video mod that was tailored for the PAL regions and found that is produced really good results on NTSC 7800s he had tested as well. So he began offering his kits. Fast forward to Nov. 2018 and he has an updated version of his kits that tweaked things a bit more and now his s-video solution is nearly equal to that of the UAV's s-video output. As a result of this, I've been installed a few of his boards in some recent commissions for lesser cost since his boards cost less than the UAVs and at the time were more available.
Few things to note about this Av board:
- It doesn't have any ground attachements on the board itself and it is expected you will just attach your AV out connections to any ground along the main board.
- It is S-video out ONLY. There is no composite filtering built into this board so keep that in mind
- Similar to the UAV, no components have to be removed from the console. So it makes it easy to reverse the modification if needed
- It includes audio filtering that the UAV does not currently include. However, while there are attachements for Left and Right audio, they are in fact tied together on the board internally in a dual mono fasion. So only one of the attachments points is needed. The audio doesn't have to be used if you have other audio modifications you would rather use..Stereo...etc.
- It features a 10k trimmer for dialing in and adjusting the Luma brightness for your particular needs
- It has the same initial installation that the UAV uses in that you attach wiring from the different Luma, colorbursts, etc to the Magic Knight from the same points on the 7800 main board.
- The kit is available both populated with AV panel mount connectors and hookup wire and as bare PCBs as needed. Other options are likely available as well if you ask Magic Knight about it.So yeah, it is good s-video out solution for the 7800 I'd recommend if the UAV availability and recent cost increases aren't your thing. Again it doesn't have composite filtering on it and while it is possible to use an s-video to composite adapter to get composte. It had pretty bad color bleeding using one of these adapters. Magic Knight is looking into the possibility of offering a slightly more complicated board in the future that could have both composite and s-video selected with a toggle switch or hardwired for one of the other if desired.
Here is a sample video of the Magic Knight s-video board in action on several games both 2600 and 7800, along with examples of both the Harmony and Uno flash carts so you can see how the menus are displayed through this board. The checkerboarding and audio distortion are not actually present and are artifacts from my camera pointed at the LCD while recording. The Audio distortion is because I had the audio plugged directly into the Mic input on the camera and that is a powered mic input and not designed for line level audio. So all audio comes in hot because of this. Still it gives an excellent idea visually of the clarity this kit can provide.
Original thread from Magic Knight that goes into ordering details etc can be found here:
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/236273-new-7800-s-video-board-available/page-3#entry4155428and finally attached is my basic installation guide for installing the Magic Knight S-video board into an NTSC 7800.
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ITC# 57 went live ahead of schedule and finally has me taking that needed break from hardware work and videos and getting back to playing some video games! Join me as I go through a complete long play of the unreleased game for the Atari 5200, The Last Starfighter! I give you information about how the game is played and some interesting tips I've found to help make playing the game easier. In all honesty, this being an unreleased prototype and only thought to be the final completed game, could be me exploiting some bugs that remained in the game not yet polished out. But who cares, as it is a lot of fun to play!
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ITC# 56 went live this morning. This will likely be the last hardware tech video I do for a while as it seems that is all I've been doing for the last several months. Truth is, I've been so busy doing commissioned modification work on other retro gamer enthusiasts consoles, that I haven't really had any time to play any actual games as late. So it was easiest to just make videos of the consoles I was modifying at the time and well...there you go.
With that, here in ITC# 56 I go through the process and give you some tips should you ever need or decided to replace the capacitors in your Roland MT-32 sound module. It is pretty retro game related as this module, along with the original Adlib is what really started the sound card boom of the late 80s and early 90s. Therefore if you were a PC gamer in that era, you likely had or knew someone with an Adlib or Sound Blaster card, but all of you were drooling for one of these MT-32 modules like I was! Video features some new custom music composed for my channel and music from some well known PC games that really pushed the MT-32.
Thanks for watching and enjoy!
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Okay I own both an NA TG-16 and my JPN TurboDUO. I naturally use the Duo since I can play pretty much everything on it. If you want to get good composite and left/right stereo without a ton of money (Turbo Boosters are damn pricey people!!!), then Might I suggest this route?
Although currently out of stock... but I would check with them from time to time to see about getting one.
https://console5.com/store/av-adapter-cable-module-for-nec-turbografx-16-tg16.html
Also there is a member on the FB group who goes by MuhMullet I beleive? He created an RGB amp board you can use to plug into the back of any TG-16 or PCE to get RGB out for a crazy low price as well. He also includes the SCART cable to make sure you get one that works properly.
But because I never take my TG-16 out of its hard shell case and only use the DUO, I don't use these options myself. I actually added in standard RCAs to the back of my DUO for stereo audio and composite, and wired in an S-video circuit. That is how I play and am honestly quite pleased with the results. But I do have to say that the composite on the TG-16 and PCE is some of the best I've seen from a classic console of that era.
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This game is one of the highlights in my Turbo collection as small as that collection is. I actually have a JPN TurboDUO as my main playing system. I use the Everdrive for the Hucard games and purchase the actual CDs when I seem them for playing back since the CD games aren't region locked or anything.
I don't play my Trubo near enough either...
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I do too but I've had issues with mine and had to take it all apart tonight to fix the down control that stopped working due to the down trigger wire coming loose. I went ahead and redid most of the solder joints making sure the wire went through the holes on the solder tabs for extra mechanical strength and reversed the trigger wires on the buttons so those were in right order now. Added some shrink tubing to the resistors too for preventive measures. If you didn't look in the pic, the boss post on both top and bottom halves was broken off because there wasn't room for them with the side button places where it is. That could have been done better because I only have 3 screws able to hold my controller together and really if that button had just been placed about a centimeter towards the front of the controller, there wouldn't have been a need to cut that post. The button still wouldn't have sat flush with the sides due to how the case is molded but it would have been more secure overall.
Still I scored my highest on commando when using it yesterday and it does respond and work really well otherwise. Does make more a bit more cautious on spending that kind of money again in the future for a controller though. But I've made it so it should last me a long while now.
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Well perhaps when you are ready for this, the other new options teased by BennVenn electronics will be available as well. No real details other than he will be releasing it soon for both Lynx and Game Gears and supposed it costs 1/2 the price of the McWill kit. But again no other details other than words.
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I searched and didn't see this mentioned here yet so thought I would toss this out there...
Curt Vendel is almost done with the XM modules and slated to be shipping them soon. In the meantime he has also created some new arcade style controllers for the 7800 and 2600. He started offering these around the middle of this past December. I ordered one of these and thought I would share my thoughts and provide some pics for others to see and get an idea about them. They come in both a left handed or right handed configuration on the joystick placement.
I'm a right handed person, however, I've always been used to arcade style controllers and thus I ordered the left handed version controller. In fact, the exact left handed controller that was sent to me is the one that is shown in the pic of both controller types that curt posted on the AA forums.
Control wise it feels really good and everything responded exactly as I needed it to. It is a bit more clicky than I would like in that it is loud when using it. Same for the buttons and I've been toying with the idea of perhaps putting leaf switch versions into mine.
Speaking of the buttons, they feel nice but are reversed on mine. That is when using the 7800 diagnostic Utility in the Joystick test, Button 1 on the left is actually button 2 on my controller and vice versa. So it could be awkward to use if you are used to the buttons being mapped differently. I might change these at a later time to match what I'm more used to.
The paddle controller works well or at least it did for the game of Steeplechase I was testing it with. On mine the On position is actually 7800 controller mode and the off position is Paddle mode. But I did find it odd that when using the Joystick test in the Diag utility, that the paddle has ZERO response on the other inputs variables and I'm used to see number values move across when using standard paddles in the ports for testing before. But the paddle does indeed work.
Also an odd quirk to be aware of if you should you get one of these, is that on mine at least, it doesn't matter which position the switch is in, but if you move the paddle to the far right clockwise, it will always activate button 2. So in the game Commando for instance, if I had the paddle all the way to the right, then I would be tossing grenades constantly one after the other until they were depleted. So if you find odd button 2 behavior, you might check that you haven't moved the paddle knob all the way clockwise.
I've included some pics of my controller in this post and of the inside so those asking about the circuit on how the switch controls the paddle lines..etc could have a better idea on how that is being done.
Here is the original forum link over at AA regarding when these were announced and additional details from Curt about them:
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/285914-new-desktop-arcade-controllers/page-1#entry4175100
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4 minutes ago, Justin said:
Hi @CrossBow would you be willing to make that mod for me as well? I've always wanted to have a Lynx McWill LCD modded but it's beyond something I want to do myself. Thank you!
I can, but it isn't cheap. The kits are $120 + shipping alone and then I always advise that the power components and caps be replaced as well. As such there is quite a bit of labor involved so yeah..not cheap. If you have the kit already then naturally that takes a chunk off the costs overall, but still a pricey upgrade to have done.
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On 2/7/2019 at 3:56 PM, A31Chris said:
He no longer has any and if you still rather rude to deal with.
That is surprising because I just put a McWill LCD mod into an AA members Lynx like 2 months ago and they needed a replacement flex for their Lynx II as I noticed the power on/off wasn't working very well and once they received it back they stated other buttons started to act up as well. Point is, they were able to get the flex circuit for their Lynx II so did everyone suddenly up and buy them out in the past two months?
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ITC # 55 is now released. In this short video I show you my collection of unique Music albums for the Sega Genesis that have been released over the past couple of years. These albums aren't normal albums in that they are on actual cartridges or in the case of one of them on Sega CD. As such they are designed to be listened to on the actual Sega Genesis or Megadrive itself. There is some amazing sounding music on these cartridges and really shows what the original synthesis chip on the Genesis was capable of. This video doesn't show any specific music graphics from these carts but there are links throughout the video and in the video description where you can view the carts in action. While these aren't games, they are a very unique part of my collection and one I'm always happy to add too as more of these get released. Thanks for watching and enjoy!
Got a new camera about a month back and this is the first video shot with it. Still doesn't handle low light as well as I had hoped but still has more clarity with less graininess compared to the older camera I was using. Done in 4K as well, though not sure how many videos I will actually shoot in that mode as my nearly decade old computer had a heck of a time with it during the editing process even with GPU acceleration enabled.
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ITC # 50 - has been replaced with a new video. This was done because I had comments (Mostly be email) advising me to remove the video since the original board featured in that earlier video was no longer available and had been replaced with a different board set. This new ITC # 50 episode details the installation of this new board now known as the M1 Mini Mega. It is both an amplifier and mixer replacement board for use with the model 1 Genesis systems va0 - va6 only. There are a lot of odd edits in this one and that is because originally it was shot with the intention of showing both the M1 Mini Mega installation alongside an M1 Double Mega board installation. However, the M1 DBL Mega isn't available currently and I already have a separate video detailing the installation of that board.
Thanks for watching as always and comments are always welcome!
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Uploaded today is ITC#54 where you come with me to see the process of replacing the capacitors on a model 1 Sega Genesis. The video is sped up through most of it but was originally shot in real time so that you can get an idea on the amount of time involved with a project like this. Features a few midi tunes as captured from my Roland MT-200. So sit back, relax, and see what is takes to replace the capacitors in a classic console such as the Sega Genesis featured in this video:
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Well this will come as a shocker, but I honestly do not have any memory of Roadblasters in the arcades at the time. I do remember paperboy and Xenophobe and Rampage. And all of those were games that I had hoped would get 7800 releases back then. Xenophobe and Rampage were two games that made me want the 7800 to begin with.
Where I'm going with this is that I never had heard of Fatal Run until much later when I picked up retro collecting again in the late 90s and early 2000s. In fact I was quite surprised but all the games that I never knew existed for the 7800 back then. Midnight Mutants, Fatal Run, Tower Roppler, Jinks...etc. They were all unknown to me and I do NOT recall seeing any of these later titles released in the stores. Then again, if they were released after '88 I likely didn't pay attention as I was pretty deep into the PC culture by then.
But I do own Fatal Run, it isn't a game I pick up and play very often as I'd rather play Food Fight, Commando, Xenophobe or any of a bunch of other titles on the 7800 today. But I can see how with a little bit of work, Fatal Run could have been made into Roadblasters and I've certainly had a lot of fun with that game on my Lynx.
- PlastikCogLiquid and Justin
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Wanted to give some more thoughts on these controllers...
I haven't tested both of my controllers...just the one I've actually take out of the box. I mentioned before about the keypad buttons sticking down? Thankfully that really hasn't been an issue in actual game play and I've found that those buttons are quite sensitive and do not require that hard a press to engage them.
But one thing was bugging me at first and I'm glad a fix of sorts has been found.
The issue was that I was playing Wolf3D (Jag version is my favorite version btw), and I was noticing that frequently when trying to turn left on the d-pad that I would actually move up and left. I found I had to press down on the bottom edge of the left d-pad side to make sure I only moved left and didn't move diagonally up/left. Well other buyers of the controller reported the same issue.
Turns out the problem is that there is only a single center mount screw that holds the PCB in place. Because of this there is some play in the PCB allowing it to rotate up and down a tiny bit. If you have the d-pad side down too low, then it is easy to actually be hitting both the up and left contact pads on the pcb at the same time, hence the movement issues.
The fix is to basically loose the center screw holding down the PCB, rotate the PCB just a few mils up on the d-pad side, wedge something between the PCB and the plastic that frames it, and then tighten the screw back down. It was mentioned to use a post-it-note folded up into a small square. I chose to use about 2cm from a cable tie I clipped off and fold that in half to wedge in there.
It did indeed fix the issue.
They could have avoided this by doing two things:
- design the PCB with guide holes in it and plastic pegs molded into the top shell to align the pcb properly. You know like Nintendo and most other controller companies have been doing to ever now?
- Make the contact pads on the pcb a bit smaller so that there is less risk of it happening in the first place.Still I've been enjoying the heck out of this controller as once I got that issue resolved it easily is the best controller I've used for playing games on my Jag.
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Been a while since I did a real video on my channel and that is simply because I've been busy with clients sending me their systems for modification and repairs. However, I decided to use that oppurtunity with a 7800 I was working on to come up with this short video regarding compatibility issues with some 2600 games on the 7800. Especially those 7800s made in the late 80s.
ITC# 53 demonstrating some of the compatibility issues that are commonly known and one very simple and quick fix I tend to use to correct most of those issues in one go.
Enjoy and thanks again for watching!
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Still available so here is a little bump for good measure. I realize this is a very niche item and not for everyone. But still it has a lot of capability and while everyone goes nuts for SC-55 Mk II modules etc. This is basically the same thing with a few more features to boot in its favor. I especially like the ability to record midi music as it plays through the module using its record mode and being able to save them in the exact way they were played through the module later to disk or flash drive.
AgaCart - New SD Multicart for Atari Lynx
in Atari Lynx
Posted · Edited by CrossBow
I just released a video on this cool SD flash cart and go into the modes of operation it has.