Atari portable with CRT project

Wayne Venomous · Post by **Wayne Venomous** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 1:13 pm

Just thought I'd let you guys in on my current portable project. Just to be different, I thought I'd use a CRT instead of an LCD screen.

The actual housing is inspired (READ: copied!) from one of these things:

Whilst they are "portable" they certainly aren't "hand held" (the weight of the batteries made sure of that!

) so I think "table top" is proberbly more of an accurate description for this type of game. May have to make the proportions of the housing slightly bigger to accomodate the CRT.

As for the screen I'm using one of these:

My local Woolworths was selling these for Â£5 GBP so I figured what the hell and bought one. It's black and white but this leads me onto my other obsession - colour overlays!

I'm a big Space Invaders with overlay fan and it lead me on to thinking how many 2600 games would work with a single colour overlay. There's quite a few like of course Space Invaders, Galaxian, Breakout, Pitfall, Circus Atari, even stuff you wouldn't expect seems to work really well like Asteroids (the asteroids change colour as they move!) even things like Defender although slightly strange at first, you very quickly get used to it and it seems to add another dimension to already well-played games.

Power-wise, I'm not expecting batteries to last long but again, they never did in Astro Wars or Pac Man or any of the other old generation CRT games so I'll proberbly end up just using a transformer from the electric supply like I did in the old days.

Any comments/advice/insanity notices greatly appreciated.

paul4990 · Post by **paul4990** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 1:31 pm

sounds great, i have one of those, they have RF and composite in!

Wayne Venomous · Post by **Wayne Venomous** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 2:38 pm

paul4990 wrote:sounds great, i have one of those, they have RF and composite in!

Yeah, another advantage!

My other thread about NTSC/PAL differences explains the difficulties I've had with extracting composite from a PAL machine

Mind you, I wouldn't need to bother with the Chroma connection as it's black and white anyway! Plus smaller screens seem to be less prone to the vertical lines ("Hanover lines" I'm told they're called by a TV engineer friend)

paul4990 · Post by **paul4990** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 3:51 pm

watch yourself in there though, even though its small, it bould still pack a punch!, ask your TV engineer to discharge it for you while your working with it...

Wayne Venomous · Post by **Wayne Venomous** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 6:55 am

It's ok, I've already been a victim of the:
HERE CATCH!... *throws a fully charged HT capacitor at me and like an idiot, I catch it*

It's not difficult to discharge the main HT capacitor, just ground the terminal (do both one at a time if you're not sure which is +) to the TV chassis. Done quite a bit of work on CRT TVs over the years.

G-force · Post by **G-force** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 10:27 am

Hee hee, I still have to do that to my friend... Problem is I can never seem to get both him and the capacitor around at the same time.

Looks like a fun project. I hope you can get it to happen. Are you really gonna power it off batterys? Seems like a waste since it will be too big to carry in your hands. If you have to set it down on something to play, you might as well power it off the wall.

Wayne Venomous · Post by **Wayne Venomous** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:23 pm

Definatly NOT gonna power it by batteries. I'm only ever 3 places (work, car, home) so wherever I am, there's always a power source.

I'm from the school of K.I.S.S. Keep It Stupidly Simple so the modifications to the original boards are gonna be kept to a minimum. It's kinda like my other hobby (Volkswagen Bugs) simple and does the job using tried and tested old technology,

Wayne Venomous · Post by **Wayne Venomous** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:49 pm

Oh yeah, it's gonna be stereo too!
Mainly because I just blew the audio transistor on the 2600 Jr that I'm using as the donor

Ah well, if it ain't broke...... it's about to be!

paul4990 · Post by **paul4990** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 6:12 pm

cool, im intrested because:

i have one of those tvs
your from the uk
im bored

Post by **bicostp** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 7:33 pm

Just a couple suggestions:

1. Watch out while tinkering with the inside of a CRT. Mistakes can be quite shocking

2. If that TV is anything like mine (probably is, many of the ones I've seen are similar), there should be a huge empty space at the bottom of the TV where the 10 C cell batteries go. I'd suggest putting the hacked down Atari board in there, and having an external battery pack. (Mainly because battery life with a CRT is awful, and you said you were just going to use it as a tabletop game anyways...

Wayne Venomous · Post by **Wayne Venomous** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 1:08 pm

paul4990 wrote:cool, im intrested because:

i have one of those tvs
your from the uk
im bored

Hi Paul, whereabout in the UK are you? Looks like most Woolworths 'up norf are selling those TVs off for Â£5 each.

I'm thinking about having a changable overlay, one with the colours striped horizontal, one with the stripes vertical, one with just one colour like a green screen and maybe just clear. The overlays would be on one long strip of cellophane and wrapped around two reels either side of the screen (think overhead projector in school assembly!

) Would be much less work if I can come up with a compromise overlay that works fairly ok with most games though.

Wayne Venomous · Post by **Wayne Venomous** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 1:14 pm

bicostp wrote:Just a couple suggestions:

1. Watch out while tinkering with the inside of a CRT. Mistakes can be quite shocking

2. If that TV is anything like mine (probably is, many of the ones I've seen are similar), there should be a huge empty space at the bottom of the TV where the 10 C cell batteries go. I'd suggest putting the hacked down Atari board in there, and having an external battery pack. (Mainly because battery life with a CRT is awful, and you said you were just going to use it as a tabletop game anyways...

Yeah, read the above post about "Here, catch!"

Not bothering with batteries - wherever I seem to be, I'm always near a power source. Plus it keeps the cost of the project down considerably! So far I'm using an Atari 2600 Jr I got given for free, a Â£5 GBP screen, an old joypad I got along with a load of other stuff from a second hand store for Â£4 GBP, and even the case is proberbly gonna be made from stuff I've got lying around.

Wanna see if I can get this whole project up and running BELOW Â£20 GBP, which is about 35 US Dollars.

paul4990 · Post by **paul4990** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 5:17 pm

im fron Manchester (the lancashire one)

i really am from salford, manchester.

ill check woolworths saturday.

Wayne Venomous · Post by **Wayne Venomous** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 6:29 am

Was fairly near Manchester at the weekend, was picking up some wheels for my VW Baja Beetle from Sheffield. Crashed over at a mate's in Bradford. That M62 is a lot of fun!

You could (allegedly) be doing 100 mph and there's still people overtaking you!

paul4990 · Post by **paul4990** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:37 pm

weird eh, driving at 60, ppl at 40 overtake you...

btw vw is the pwn!