It is true, you have heard me. I am making an Atari Jr. 2600 (PAL) portable
Why?
-I had a board available
-I'm using a PSOne screen anyway, so it can be a little bigger without contributing to additional size
but most of all,
-Challenge
As far as I'm concerned, this hasn't been done, much less with a PAL model. I've been working on these two:
pretty much all weekend. Why?
because I can. Also, it's a christmas present for my father (for which he is conveniently paying)
I've encountered lots of problems during my journey, but more on that later.
The first step:
the first step was actually trying to get composite out of the damn thing. I found a guide for getting s-video. But it needed tons of parts I didn't have, so I took the points and made something based on bens composite mod (which would not quite work in it's pure form for me)
Now, after I had composite displaying on the screen, I could start hacking up the board. Though not as small as the original one, it can be made smaller.
First step:
I removed the RF box and some crap over it (controller port, difficulty switch, RF out)
It's still working beautifully, without any modifications. Excellent.
As a next step, I removed the stuff on the left, I don't have a picture of it, so here's the area I removed next marked:
Not working. Obviously. I removed the 7805. After rewiring that, I find myself in front of an atari board which is still refusing to work. There were a total of 6 connections from that part of the board to the other, so I soldered wires over from one to another to replicate the board being intact again.
What I do next is snip one wire after another, till it stops working. A total of 2 wires were left in the end to have it working again. Next step: removing components from the board until it stops working. Found the necessary component. It's some... black thing (a fuse?), well anyway, bridging it works just fine, so I connect the two spots on the "good" side of the board with each other, and it's working again. Next step, removing the top crap. Everything over the cartridge, basically. I accidentally broke off some of the "good" part of the board. 3 connections coming out of the cartridge port. After finding out where they go on an intact atari board, soldering wires there, it's still not working. Same procedure. Reconnecting everything, snipping off components. I'm left with one resistor. Bridging that doesn't work, so I'll have to relocate it. I also have to connect a couple of spots on the back with each other. And: Bingo! It's working again!
Did I mention that since I removed the left part of the board, and the color tint potentiometer, my picture is black and white? This was probably the most bothersome part to get to work. After finding out where the spot that isn't ground or +unregulated goes, the problem still isn't gone. Turns out I need to rewire a little capacitor from previously mentioned spot to ground as well, contrary to on the original atari.
it's the green thing.
The composite circuit is probably the thing I soldered apart and together the most, and it shows:
I'll probably redo that, or maybe not.
Anyway, it's working:
my wiring on the back:
On an unrelated note, how do I always manage to post these walls of text in my build logs? Does anybody actually read all that?
