CrossBow

I already touched on this in an earlier blog post not that long actually, but I will summarize again really quickly. Main issue is that in 7800 mode and games, one or both fire buttons might show as being pressed without a controller plugged in. Plug in a controller and everything behaves as it should but ultimate, the console shouldn't read anything actively from the ports without a controller plugged in. In my previous blog, I mentioned that an out of spec resistor located at R35 was only reading about 217Ω while the schematics state that this resistor and the on next to it, should be reading 220Ω. Most of the resistors in the 7800 I believe are 5% tolerant meaning that the value of the component should read within +|- 5%. In this case, such a resistor would still be technically in spec if it were reading as low as 209Ω or as high as 231Ω would still be within that 5% tolerance. So a resistor reading 217Ω is well within the tolerance spec of the resistor. This was likely fine years ago when everything was much newer, but it seems as the equipment begins to age, these values become more and more tight and the tolerances allowed will no longer work. Because to fix this 7800 over the weekend, required that I again find a replacement resistor that was reading closer to 220Ω to resolve the issue. In this case, the resistor reads 219Ω. I've attached a picture that shows the location for these resistors. R34 affects player 1 and R35 affects player 2. And again, these resistors only seem to come into play as causing an issue when the console is in 7800 mode. You can actually remove these resistors and the 7800 fire buttons will still work properly on 7800 games. But they will not work in 2600 mode. So the resistors are only needed for 2600 mode but if will actually effect 7800 trigger readings once they get to a certain threshol. To be fair I don't think these resistors are just suddenly now starting to read off spec. I suspect the issue is actually the TIA starting to show signs of failure internally as swapping out TIAs will also fix this. But for now, with TIA being much more expensive to replace than a simple resistor, I'm going with changing out resistors to be more in spec going forward and I might just start stocking up and replacing out R34 and R35 with 1% types as part of preventive measures.

As stated in another blog, I have a few 7800 sent to me for repairs and eventual upgrades. This 7800 had an interesting problem where as soon as you plugged in the DC power to the console, it would immediately power on and would NOT turn off. While there are a few components in the mix that can cause, this, I've found really only two components well technically 3 that should be looked into as possibilities: The first component and the one most people already know about, is the power switch itself. But in this particular case, it wasn't the switch as the console would still power on even with the switch removed. The next component is the 4013 IC flip-flop. This chip controls the actual on or off signals sent through the console when you press the power button. However this had already been replaced in the past as on this console it was mounted in a socket. Removing the 4013 did NOT change the condition on this console and it would still power on immediately. This pretty much only leaves one more component... There is a large transistor mounted in spot Q10 and labeled as an MJE210. These were used on both the 7800 and the 5200 that I know of. This transistor receives a signal from the 4013 telling it to actually switch the unregulated power over to the 7805 voltage regulator. I quickly found out this was the issue when I removed the 210 and the issue went away. This was replaced out using another one from a donor 5200 parts board as the 5200 actually has a pair of these bad boys on them. Here is what the MJE210 looks like. In this picture, the failed one is the green one on the mat and replacement from a 5200 has been installed into place. These only work installed in one direction and that is usually with the MJE labeling facing towards the back of the 7800. So yeah, if you have power on/off issues those are the three main components to check for first as the other components are mostly passives and not as likely to go bad.

A few 7800s have been sent to the ITC for repairs and eventual upgrades. Before any upgrades are done, I always get the consoles back to fully working stock condition first. This 7800 was working but had very dark, fuzzy, and as such very poor RF output. Now yes, RF output doesn't look that hot on modern displays to begin with, but this was obvious something was wrong. After looking over the board for a bit, it became apparently that someone in the past had replaced or tried to replace the 74LS32 IC chip that resides just above the Maria IC on the 7800. This chip handles quite a bit of the output signals from the Maria and through to the RF section so this chip not working or being faulty will produce no picture output conditions, scrambled looking picture output or similar video output related issues. Upon removing the chip, I quickly found 3 main problems as the cause and they were all due to poor connections due to damage from when the chip had been replaced prior. Here is a picture of the top of the board with the spots identified that were the issues. I will state that the bottom of the PCB actually looked much much worse with lots of burnt PCB marks indicating that perhaps much too high a heat was used when trying to remove this chip originally. But, only a single VIA pad was damaged on the bottom and wasn't connected to anything so it wasn't critical damage. I used three very small sections of 30awg solid wire kynar to repair these broken trace sections. I then placed a new socket on top of it all and then soldered it all back down into place. The original 74LS32 tested good on my chip tester so it was put back into service in the new socket and now everything is good to go! BTW, while a UAV install would bypass a bit of these signal lines, the sync and Lum1 are processed through this chip and so if that chip is faulty, it can result in affecting or preventing output from AV upgrades as well. So yeah... if you find yourself with some squirrely looking RF output but can still kinda make out a picture, you might look at this IC as being a possible part of the problem. Again, in this case it was due to what I assume was the chip being replaced out in the past, but whomever did the previous work damaged some of the traces and via pads in the process making the replacement not making contact where needed.

@sramirez2008 Didn't Muddy mention there is a special edition version of E.X.O. that will be released in physical form that has like a novella with it or something? I wasn't able to attend PRGE but I will get the game physically at some point from the AA store.

As there can be some confusion on how to install the UAV into a 4-switch NTSC 2600 console due to the variants that exist, I thought I would try and collate all of the basic information needed for installing the UAV into these model 2600s. While the different revisions do have some slight changes between them, in all cases the area where to get the signals needed for the UAV to work are located in the same basic locations. This is is not a comprehensive guide but more of a quick reference for those that already know how to open up the 2600 and are semi familiar with the layout inside of the 4-switch NTSC consoles. UAV (Ultimate Atari Video) Layout:- The UAV has basically remained the same on its design and layout since around 2017 when the current revision D was released. I only use the basic UAV board in all of my installs as I find that easier to wire to and provides me in more flexibility overall. Below is a diagram showing you the spots on the UAV you need to be concerned with on NTSC 2600 Installations. In all installs, the UAV will need to have power, ground, color signal, and a few other video signals provided to it for it to function properly. Take NOTE that you attach the signal wires for S, 1, 2, & 3 along the center and smaller vias on the UAV. If you have a pre-built UAV with a header block soldered here, just solder wiring to the tops of the header pins to make it easier. Different revisions:- The 4-switch NTSC consoles come in revisions starting with rev12 and ending up with rev17 that I've seen personally. Meaning there are variants in between but the good news is that there are really only about 3 different layouts for the components between all of these revisions in the area that we are concerned with for the UAV. Look around the top of the main board to see which Revision of the board you have so that you know which of the sections below to refer to for your UAV install. Power, Ground and Audio:- All revisions of the 4-switch NTSC consoles share the same points for power, ground, and audio that can be used for UAV installations. While the top board trace layouts look different in the areas below and the location of the RF output RCA jack is in different spots, the actual points are the same and in the same locations. I've provided pictures that show how this area is on the Rev 12 - 14 and Rev 16 & 17 models below. Revision 12 & 13 NTSC TIA signal locations for UAV:- The revision 12 and 13 NTSC consoles is pretty straightforward as the signals are all in a line from the main resistor section just to the right of the TIA chip. The signals for S, 1, 2, 3, & Co In are shown below. Revision 14 NTSC TIA signal locations for UAV:- The revision 14 NTSC console layout is similar to the earlier revisions with the only change being where you grab the signal for connection 2 to the UAV. The signal points for S, 1, 2, 3, and Co In are shown below. Revision 16 - 17 NTSC TIA signal locations for UAV:- The revision 16 & 17 NTSC consoles have their signals in the same location as the Rev14 show above, with the one change being an extra 820Ω resistor that was added to the board layout that has to be disconnected from the circuit. This resistor is located directly right of the TIA and is marked as R234, although you cannot see the silkscreen indicating this until you lift the resistor out of place. If you do not disable this resistor, you will end up with incorrect color hues on all colors from the UAV that cannot be adjusted out with the color trimmer. You can either clip the leg of the resistor, de-solder it, or remove the resistor completely. The signal points for S, 1, 2, 3, and Co In are shown in the picture below. The picture shows an alternate location for the S signal, but you can also get it from the same location as the Rev 14 in most cases. UAV output colors appear horribly off kilter? As mentioned in the Rev 16 & 17 section, there is an extra resistor on the main board that has to be disabled. While this resistor doesn't have a dedicated location on the earlier revision 4-switch NTSC consoles, it was sometimes added from the factory and therefore bodged into place. Look the presence of this resistor either on the bottom of the main board attached to pins 6 and 9 of the TIA chip, or possibly soldered on the top component side next to the TIA socket. In these cases, it is easiest to just clip the resistor on one leg to disable it without fully removing it. You might want to add shrink tubing or some other way to insulate the lifted/cut leg of the resistor so it can't short against anything. UAV output wiring:- The output side of the UAV is along the same point that you attached the TIA color signal wire to. All of your output signal jacks will require a connection for the signal output and also ground. What I usually do in my installs is to run a shared ground wire for both audio and composite video from the ground pin near the composite output on the UAV. I then run another second shared ground for the chroma and luma outputs for s-video using the ground pin between Co In and chroma out on the UAV outputs. The diagram below shows the S-video connections on the female s-video as viewed from the front of the s-video jack. What about that blue box thing on the UAV, what is that for? :- The blue box near the output side on the UAV is a trimmer adjustment for changing the way color artifacting looks through composite output. However, this trimmer has no impact when used on the 2600 console as it was mainly put into place for using the UAV on the Atari 8-bit computers where more games used NTSC artifacting.

I concur on this. I was looking online at other picstures of the super pong output and it appears that on CRTs it isn't nearly as saturated and blown out on the colors as what is shown above. That said, I did find another picture of the output on an LCD and it was similar to what the OP is getting. So my guess on this is that at least through RF, the signal for the colors is just going overboard on a modern display. Possible this might clear up and look closer to what you get on a CRT if you run it through a VCR and then use the composite output on the VCR to the TV or perhaps get the pong unit composite upgraded. Although that isn't something I'm versed in but I know it can be done.

The super pong units look like that normally? They have the different colors on different sides of the screen like you are showing.

Easy... Rebrand the channel as suggested, but you...yourself... you keep your identity as the 7800 Pro Gamer. So basically you introduce things as.. "Welcome to the Atari Network I'm the 7800 Pro Gamer...."

I would have to fire it up to know for sure. But the pics on the labels do match the games that were put onto those carts. They were originally programmed and made by CPUWIZ at Atari age. The carts actually have an onscreen menu that pops up where you select the game you want to play. Both of the carts however, have some games on them that are glitched up either do to a bad eprom programing or because the eproms themselves were a bit off. Same with the Bob collection as Moon Cresta has one or two invisible enemies on each wave making it difficult to take all of them out, and Space Invaders will lock up on any level where you have the Shields active.

Just adding ball tops to the controllers is enough to make them much more usable at that point! Highly recommended as I didn't care for the OG feel either.

I agree with @RickR, if you have one that is stock and this is a spare, then mod it with more games! And yes there is a limit, although it has been a few years since I did mine and I can't quite remember what that limit was. But basically you have to compromise between wanting a lot more games, or still wanting the ability to have save states on the games. Because what I do remember is that each of the save states were quite large (Much much larger than the actual game roms), and they were what all of the empty space was needed for. So if you fill that space with more games, then you can't have 3 or 4 save states per game anymore and in some cases if you completely fill it, you can't have any at all. This only becomes an issue because the modded consoles OS can't really tell that the space isn't there. So if you don't have any space left and you try and use the save states, it usually ends up locking up the thing at that point. I think I settled about 30 more games being safe to add in most cases and that would still provide you with like 1 or 2 save states per game doing it that way. Another thing you can do, is that since all of these are based on the same tech internally, you don't just have to put NES games on it. What I did was actually mod my SNES mini with both additional SNES games and some NES games that I can choose to play on it. I left my NES mini stock, but then on my Genesis mini I added some more CD games and a few 32x games if I remember along with additional genesis roms I'd want to play on it.

Been wanting this one in the collection for a very long time. It is just the disc and front manual but the disc is in good condition and I'm happy to have this regardless.

The loading bars are present on the SC games because that part of the emulated tape loader was added to the Uno and Pluscart. But Fred didn't see a point to them so he opted to leave that loader screen out when loading up SC games on the Harmony flash carts. That said, the Unocarts do have issues with multi-tape/load games. Survival Island for instance will basically lock up when you get to the island. New FW exists for the Uno that fixes this, but I use the newer FW that looks similar to the Pluscart and that hasn't been updated as yet.

Actually rainbow shifting you see in the whites and text... is unfortunately just how the composite output comes out on the CV. On good quality TVs you can even make out some of this rainbow banding through the RF output on the whites although not as pronounced. Crayon King is kinda working on his own CV video upgrade setup that would provide RGB but also provide a new composite and s-video outputs too. If it comes out looking nearly as good as his other kits, it will be the one I'm likely to stock to have on hand for those that want composite and s-video even if they don't want or need the RGB aspect of it. But, that said, his kit working the way it does, would also mean that the 2600 expansion module 1 would NOT come through the new AV upgrade. So you would lose that function unless the RF were left in place to handle that still.

Well, another thought is that Atari could have been working on such a module, and then figured out how to do it within the cartridge and normal hardware of the system as both Berzerk and Baseball were released in 1983 after that article was published? Another thought is that whomever they were getting their information from with Atari could have been mistaken about how the tech was being done, or it was deliberate as it would be quite something to have speech working from the console and games without extra hardware when the competition required separate modules to be purchased to accomplish this. It would be the shining gold star on Atari's image and on the hardware if it was suddenly announced that they could do the same thing without the extra cost required to consumers. So it is all speculate at this point. We know Atari was able to do it as both of the games listed demonstrate. Perhaps mention of a module exists in some paper archives in some body's house still yet to be discovered?

I've always considered this to be the first "Tower of Power" setup vs the Genesis + 32 + Sega CD setups. That said, I also find it funny that Atari came up with the least elegant looking solution for VCS gaming on a different console. That wouldn't get corrected until the 7800 was released.

I'm going to also answer similar to @MaximumRD and state that this should be possible yes. All of those 2600 clone add on devices work the same way. They are basically self contained 2600 consoles that are only using the power from the parent console to operate. They aren't using any of the actual logic from the parent console. The audio and video from these devices is done by the add on module itself as it is injecting its own audio and composite video output back to the parent console and through the parent consoles RF modulator. So if you provided separate power for the devices and add AV jacks along with possible AV upgrade components likely being needed to get a usable composite signal, then yeah, they can all be converted to be stand alone 2600 clones.

You would think that... but VecFevers have sold for nearly a grand in the past in USD money before. I think they are technically still being made as there are newer versions that have been released, but I believe the guy that makes them ONLY sells to actual game devs. I state this because I kinda had to go through some loops back in the day in order to get one by going through another dev to order it for me. That said, I did just update my VecFever last night to the latest version and I gotta say, the Galaga and Bosconian emulated games are really nice!. The actual Time Pilot arcade game is also available to play but I still prefer the way Vector Pilot plays overall.

@- Ω - this is what you are looking at if you want all of the Vector arcade games working on a Vectrex. VecFever on Ebay. Need some deep pockets though! So glad I was able to get mine when I did years ago!

Pretty sure we have talked about this before? But as will come to no surprise, my 7800 is my main console I use for both 2600 and 7800 gaming. I had a 4 switch woody originally when I was child, but it was given to my cousins in the late 80s when I got my 7800 and it replaced that 4 switch in our house back then. I have just about each model of the 2600 (Minus a 2800 but I've few of the SVA IIs). I do like the Vader models, but I would say my favorite looking one would be the 4 switch woody. Again, it was what I had when I originally grew up with Atari so that will always have that spot even if I don't use one today.

You guys better take a lot of pics for the rest of us!

Most of my games that I either bought from many weeks of allowance collecting or on Birthdays/Holidays was because of the box-art and back of the box screen shots. And it was also the folly of some of the choices I made. My mother to this day will not leave me alone about my buying Sneak n Peek back in the day because I thought the graphics on the box looked so cool and fun!. And then we find out to actually play the game the 2nd player has to turn around and not look at where the first player ends up hiding..etc. Such a crap game but I still state it had decent graphics for the time on the 2600 LOL! But yeah...most of the games I bought back then were usually because I was familiar with the arcade game or because the artwork and screenshots looked awesome to me.

Again there are threads over on AA that go into more detail about this and I think a few games even through the Tink5x might still have on occasional hiccup here and there. I do notice that when I've played ESB for instance, that while my screen doesn't go completely blank when I blow up an AT-AT, it does shift down one pixel for a second and then comes back up. Odd but you get to where you don't really notice it with the rest of the color cycling taking place at that time and the screen doesn't blank out so it doesn't jump out at me. So I do see a few things here and there, but at least with my fairly cheap AV setup, it handles it well. I had a buy whose 7800 I did complain because on Battlezone on his CRT through both composite and s-video, the entire gameplay field would move up and down as he moved his tank. It didn't do this through RF so he blamed the UAV causing this, but in reality Battlezone also has incorrect scanline count issues and as I stated before, the other inputs are much less tolerant of this so it was being shown on his TV with a slight jitter up and down that moved with the tank.

Who will these new users be exactly? Other Gen x types like myself that grew up with the system but unlike us, they forgot about these systems and want to relive that past history? New generation of gamers that might think these old games are hip and cool? I'm genuinely curious to know because I feel that while this is a great step towards what most of us would have really liked in a console like this, I do think it will be a 'fad' that once the anniversaries have all come and gone, it will be back to them just publishing old IPs as new versions for modern consoles with a few possible new games here and there.

Apparently the Tink5x Pro with its triple buffer mode corrects for a lot of this on 2600 games. I'm not aware of any 7800 games that exhibit this issue as it is caused by those 2600 games not adhering the proper scanline counts that NTSC signals use. On TVs they were much more tolerant of these slightly out of spec signals, but modern displays and the scalers don't expect these changes and so they either can't process when this happens (Blank screens), or they take a sec or two to adjust to the new sync. I actually don't have these issues on my UAV upgraded consoles because I have them all going through my Extron multi av selector. It converts all of the composite and s-video inputs as a standard VGA output. So in my case, my Extron is cleaning up these out of sync issues. The ONLY game I have that still gives me issues on my setup is Buck Rogers on the 2600. The title screen and level number screens are a wavy scrambled mess, but the actual game itself will play without issue. Should also note that even some CRTs will exhibit issues with composite and s-video upgraded consoles, because again, through RF it was expected to have some odd sync issues within the signal. But the CRTs expect a perfect scanline signal on composite and s-video which, just does not exist on some of these games created back in the day. So, yeah, apparently a Tink5x Pro can handle these issues and my setup seems to work okay. I think there are also some modified ROMs for some of these problem games to correct for these issues that can be found.