Possibly Making an Atari 2600 Portable

Unidentified Assilant · Mon Feb 14, 2005 5:33 am

I may make an Atari 2600 Portable... but I have some problems with making these... I don't have an Atari 2600

Theres some stuff I could trade for one:

Dreamcast (Semi-Working, PAL)
Super Nintendo (Working, PAL, Model One)
Megadrive 1 (Semi-Working, PAL)
Megadrive 2 (Working, PAL)
Amiga 1200 (Working, 2 Disk Drives, Hard Drive, PAL, No Monitor)
My Kidneys

Post by **gannon** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 5:59 am

now, when you say your kidneys, do you mean only one or both? I'd really like them both if you don't mind

HK-47 · Post by **HK-47** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:04 am

Well, do you want to kill him and take all his stuff, or do you want him to survive on the one, and make a cool portable.
What Id do: Take one up front, wait till he finishes the portable, then come back for the other kidney. Once hes dead, you take all his stuff and run back to the US.

Unidentified Assilant · Mon Feb 14, 2005 10:25 am

Fine, no portable, I want both my kindeys (but I swap lungs and a dreamcast for someone elses lungs)

JackFrost22 · Post by **JackFrost22** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 3:18 pm

what if i made a lung out of a beer can?

Post by **Sparkfist** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 4:06 pm

JackFrost22 wrote:what if i made a lung out of a beer can?

Dont you mean kidney like when Homer tried to make a an artifical kidney for his father and it was nothing more then a beer can and whiste.

As for your stuff, if my atari were not already cut up (possibly dead) and NTSC I'd see about trading for the Amiga, but then theres always ebay and that were I got mine.

Unidentified Assilant · Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:37 am

But can you get an amiga with an internal hard drive? And sorry, an NTSC atari 2600 is no good in england, maybe we should just use NTSC instead? Because PAL creates Letterbox Mode for some games, which sucks. Sonic 3 PAL has real bad Letterbox stuff when played on a TV that supports SCART

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 1:59 am

Do yourself a favor: Don't bother. You'd be better off making your portable from scratch. Besides... you wouldn't want to kill a perfectly working 2600, would you? It's like this:

Hacking a 2600: Works as a console at first, then you take the risk of it NOT working once you portablize it.

BUILDING a 2600: It's just a hand-full of parts. It can't do anything. So if it decides it doesn't want to work once it's put together, then you're no worse off than you were before.

Besides... when you do it from scratch, you can put the parts where you want, and probably make it smaller than the standard 4" X 4" board.

Plus it's also easier to work with because the 2600 can be on the same board as the rest of the circuitry, rather than having to find a place for that seperate 4" X 4" board. Here's a thread I started about building one from scratch: http://benheck.com/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/ ... php?t=2649 So what do you think? Is building from scratch too much work?

Rain

soundwave · Post by **soundwave** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:01 pm

He'd still need to buy all the components, which HK could order (seems to order other people lots of stuff from Digi-key and stuff), and he'd trade one of the said items (probably the kidneys) for the parts, and we are back at square one.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 5:08 pm

soundwave wrote:He'd still need to buy all the components, which HK could order (seems to order other people lots of stuff from Digi-key and stuff), and he'd trade one of the said items (probably the kidneys) for the parts, and we are back at square one.

Um... what's wrong with just... buying things?

Trading is for two people that have something the other one wants, and they either a) don't want to spend any money on it, or b) can't find it elsewhere. Just go to http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/ or http://www.vintagefunworld.com/items.asp?ID=31, as suggested by HK-47. You can get the three chips at either of those two places, and you can get anything else at Jameco or Digikey. No offence to the people who do so, but trading for parts just sounds stupid to me. Just buy them yourself.

Rain

HK-47 · Post by **HK-47** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 6:23 pm

soundwave wrote:He'd still need to buy all the components, which HK could order (seems to order other people lots of stuff from Digi-key and stuff), and he'd trade one of the said items (probably the kidneys) for the parts, and we are back at square one.

I only did that because they posted in my thread about selling vifeo mod kits. And it was a one time thing. I already ordered and recieved the parts so unless you want a video mod kit, im not sending you anything!

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 12:16 pm

I have a six switcher (not heavy sixer, it is made in Taiwan, not Sunnyvale) I have opened it up, does not have 2 boards, just one. I tried a RCA mod, and gave up (not messed up, still is it good cond.). Works still. No P/S, no controllers, no games, no RF, just console. I would be interetsed in a NTSC Jaguar with Alien VS. Preditor, and DOOM, 1 COntroller, powersupply, and RF adapter.

Post by **bicostp** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:31 pm

I have a 6 switch Sunnyvale unit. It had 2 boards, one for the switches and cart slot, the other was the motherboard.

You're right. I took apart a non-functioning Taiwan 6 switch, and there was just 1 board in it. (turns out a disconnected AV wire caused all the trouble.)

Yet to take apart the Sears Video Arcade, though.

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 8:07 am

So I can use a Taiwan 6 switch as portable?

Post by **bicostp** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 7:04 pm

Most of the board is empty space. The stuff under the RF shielding is prewtty small.

SIDE NOTE: There is so much empty space in the 2600 because Atari origionally designed it to have dual stereo speakers internally.