DegasElite

Wow, I don't want to say this but Jack really was a cheapskate miser.  He actually thought he can save money by throwing out inventory instead of selling it?
No wonder why Atari Corp. was dead last in everything...

Another great read Lance. 🙂 I want to pull my hair out along with you, over those lost Mario Bros. XEs and the 400s. A shame so much good hardware thrown away over Jack's pigheadedness. 🤬
More XE Eproms is great too! A shame the one is not reading, but looking forward to your next EPROM post. :D

This post kicks ass! 

@Video 61 I think this is your greatest Blog post yet   

hi,
 
most likely dead.
 
lance
www.atarisales.com
 

I wonder how good the old Naki battery packs for the Atari Lynx work. They have been around for decades and it would be interesting to see if one would still work. 

I wonder how good the old Naki battery packs for the Atari Lynx work. They have been around for decades and it would be interesting to see if one would still work. 

hi Trekmd,
 
 
awesome price for sure. nice find!!!
 
lance
www.atarisales.com
 

So, this is the one I found on Amazon.  The price is high because it is not just the charger.  It comes with 8AA/8AAA/4C/4D/2 9V rechargeable batteries!  Here's the link to it:  Tenergy T9688 LCD AA/AAA/C/D/9V NiMH/NiCd Battery Charger + Premium 26-Cell NiMH Rechargeable Batteries
 

Alex, I tested my Avox+ and SNES2Atari adapter and didn't encounter any issues on my primary 7800. But, to be on the safe side. I did cut all the traces to the channel select switch and run new wire from the pause board and back to the RIOT to a slightly modified channel select switch to allow me to turn that pause line on/off just in case. It would be better if I could find switches just like those used originally but with longer switches so they can poke through the back of the shell better. Currently I've been reforming the pins on the bottom and using the front set of vias closest to the edge of the board to mount standard difficult/channel select switches. I did it on both my main 7800 and on an extra in the lab that I actually sold last night in a record 20min time.
Anyway, thank you again for that suggestion!
 

Wow, all excellent info! Thanks! Well in my case, I believe I still have my channel select switch in place on my console and since I removed the RF from it over a year ago to add in the audio input jack, seems as good an option for making it useful again as possible? I will reform the leads on it a bit so I can try and move it further back a tiny bit to make it easier to reach.

The AtariVox will work just fine (the gate input are high impedance and do not affect the levels of the pins), but the pause mod can be triggered while the Atari communicates with the device. Whether this causes issues or not depends on the specific game. The fact that current games work fine doesn't exclude the possibility that future ones might have issues.
 
The SNES2Atari adapter supported, for example, by "Attack of the PETSCII Robots" for the 7800, uses pins 1 and 2 to send the clock and latch signal to the SNES controller. The Savekey uses pins 3 and 4 for the I2C serial data and clock protocol. The "Compumate" for the 2600 uses pins 1-4 on both ports for the bankswitching of the Computer ROM.
There are some roms that use the ports to communicate with a computer serial port, or to drive external devices, and it's possible, for example, to use them to connect two consoles and play multiplayer games that way...
 
 
The 2600RGB mod uses a similar method of "impossible combination of inputs" to add an extra SWITCH on the controller to allow for remote RESET and SELECT switches, as well as an hardware PAUSE (it halts the CPU) and a PALETTE select function.
That proved to be incompatible with the mentioned trackball games (which caused disappointment to the unaware customers), but also in other cases which are less obvious:
e.g. "Track and Field" is unplayable (with a standard joystick, not only with the "Track and Field" controller that allows to press left and right simultaneously) if you have a RGB mod with the extra function wired to the controller port. And doesn't matter if you actually have the extra switch installed on the joystick.  That's because, for whatever reason, the code in the game briefly pulses pins 1-4 LOW in both ports on each frame!
 
My point is that the pins on the controller ports are general purpose Input/Output ones, and the game code has full control over them. Not only different controllers can pull up/down different combination of inputs, but the code itself can drive them directly, even when nothing is connected to the port, and the pause mod cannot tell the difference. The possibilities are infinite, and new games and controller/devices keeps being developed. That's why I suggest to have a switch to disable the function: if you ever encounter a game (or controller or device) that conflicts with it, you can just temporarily turn it off.

I wasn't aware of the AtariVox functions being affected by this? I will have to give that try as one of the other many mods on my 7800 is an Audio input jack that I plug my AtariVox into to be mixed within the console and come out with the rest of the audio so I don't have to connect it to separate external speakers.
But the reason I use Up+Dn is not just because this pause kit also does, but because I originally years ago was using the Left+right combo and the Harmony cart did NOT care for it at all. I do have a diode pair inside my controllers to isolate the signals from each other independently, but the actual SMS kits only use a pair of 220ohm resistors off the inputs.
As for the driving controller and trackballs? I own them, but I never use them on my 7800 as I just don't play any games that use them.
 

Nice mod and very clean job!
A couple of notes:
1- You don't need to wire the second port, but you cannot just leave the inputs of a logic gate unconnected, else they'll show erratic behavior, electrical noise and increased power consumption (especially with HC/HCT family ICs like in this case).
Simply tie "2U" and "2D" inputs on the mod board to +5V if you don't want the pause function for the second port.
 
2- Consider adding a switch to disable the mod (e.g. break the connection between the "PB" output of the board and RIOT pin 21). Else, some controllers such as driving controllers and trackballs will trigger the pause (or B&W switch in 2600 mode) function.
This can also happen when a game uses the ports as outputs: for example, pins 1 and 2 ("up" and "down" in a joystick) are used to interface with an Atarivox, and the RIOT outputs can be set simultaneously LOW by the code while trying to communicate with the device, even if nothing is plugged in the port, and that again will trigger the pause/B&W switch.
 
Given the number of different controllers and devices (and the new ones that the homebrew community keeps developing), and the great flexibility of the 2600/7800 controller ports I/O pins, there isn't a combination  that is really "impossible". There will always be some game or device that will trigger it, so you need to be able to disable it if needed.

Love reading these!

P.S. - we found 3 new eproms. theyre all for the xe. 2 of them i know what they are. one of them i can’t read. expect me to make another "raiders of the lost eproms" blog post about this sometime soon with the latest update for you.
thank you,
lance
www.atarisales.com

hi,
thanks for the info. thats how i get the the atari logo to pop up on some of these e-proms. the save mary e-prom that i was using, was a single 27256.
 
lance
www.atarisales.com
 

Also worth mentioning, I checked a 7800 Motor Psycho proto I had near my desk and the number 2 EPROM is in the upper position.
 
Mitch

I am pretty sure those Save Mary EPROMs are for the 2600. If you look at the edge of the chip you can see the bottom half of the text AM2764. I have a set of 2600 Save Mary EPROMs and they have the same text. They are 8KB chips.
For the PAL 7800 games, are you testing on a PAL 7800? PAL 7800 games won't work on a stock NTSC 7800. You can swap the NTSC BIOS with universal "Asteroids" BIOS and then they will play.
Nice find on the Road Riot 7800, I hope you can find the other half of the game.
Mitch

hi Jinroh,
 
the touchdown football my have been a improvement, or a bug fix.
thanks for the info,
 
lance
www.atarisales.com
 

Great stuff Lance! 🙂
Would be interesting to see what comes of those EPROMs. 🙂 Wonder why the Touchdown Football is labeled so late if it's NTSC. Maybe someone actually made it more fun? 😛
Sending the defective carts to South America is bleh, not something I agree with, but in the Tramiel mindset, it keeps from having to destroy them, and how can you get bad press for a bugged game pre-internet if it's all the way down in South America, I'm sure that crossed their minds.
The monitor EPROM maybe is a code debugger of some kind of burn in or test cart, who knows. 😛
Interesting stuff as usual. ❤️

I have both chips for the fixed 7800 Impossible Mission. While they fixed the original bug they introduced a new one. The new bug involves the bonus game that gives you free items when you win. After a couple rounds it will tell you that you entered the wrong sequence every time. Even if you got it correct. That may be the reason it didn't get released. I posted the ROM out on the internet a few years ago, if anyone wants to try in an emulator.
Also, Commando used a Pokey sound chip but no extra on cart RAM.
It's great to see this stuff, I hope you can find more working games.
Mitch

The IPL/Monitor label..looks exactly like the labels used on actual Parker Bros proto and WIP games. Same size lable...same looking dot matrix font printer used to print that label. 
So I'm wondering if that might not be something from PB? I know it looks a lot like my labels on my PB protos of SW:TAG WIP build and Rls1 of Gyruss that I own.
Also...IPL usually means Initial Program Load or Loader. So it could essentially be a firmware type chip for something unrelated?
 
 

Cool ideas!  I have solar panels on my house and a 25 KW generator should there be power loss (like during hurricanes) that can run my entire house.  I never considered, however, getting rechargeable batteries or a solar charger for those batteries.  I'm going to look into that.  I saw some chargers on Amazon that run for about $100.  Those look nothing like what you have posted here, though. 

That is when you are not using the Lynx or Battery Pack for an extended period of time.  Forgot to add that.