is it easy to laptop-ize atari 800

ganonbanned · Post by **ganonbanned** » Tue May 16, 2006 4:12 pm

i seen ben's and i think it looks really cool, i wanted to do one. how much does it cost, and how easy is it?

blackbox_dev · Post by **blackbox_dev** » Tue May 16, 2006 4:24 pm

In short: no its not easy.

daguuy · Post by **daguuy** » Tue May 16, 2006 4:32 pm

did you read the making of? that pretty much explains it. it's not easy.

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Tue May 16, 2006 4:35 pm

Yeah, the making-of makes it sound almost impossible for anyone but Ben to build.

Krepticor · Post by **Krepticor** » Tue May 16, 2006 4:44 pm

it is possible but the thing would take so much time and effort that you would have had to have been an uber uber uber fan of the 800 for it to pay off

Ben mainly did it for a contracted build (that means cash)

Post by **Sparkfist** » Tue May 16, 2006 5:51 pm

The hardest things I would say is money, getting the Rom programmed (talk to Mr.Atari) and wiring everything together. Ben likely invested over $500 to make the system, nearly $200 for the screen alone. Then in order to have the system read file off an ATA style drive (hard drive or Compactflash), and Mr. Atari lives in Dutch so you're going to spend some money to have it shipped. The screen well you'll have to either check RadioShack where Ben got the screen for the Atari 800 laptop, or you can try the site Ben used to get the screen for the nPod.

I would say the Atari 800 was number 2 on Ben's most difficult portable list. So it's something you shouldn't think you can do just like that.

ganonbanned · Post by **ganonbanned** » Tue May 16, 2006 7:14 pm

does anybody actually have a list of his of easiest to hardest to portabalize? thanks.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Tue May 16, 2006 8:29 pm

Hardest to easiest.
PS2p
Atari 800 Laptop
Neo Geo MVS
N64p
PSp
Atari 2600s
Coleco
SNES
Sega Exodus
NESs

At least this is how I see the difficulty. Just rember one thing, Ben has been soldering for a long time, wiring up 60 wires isn't a challenge for him.

arfink · Post by **arfink** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 11:27 am

Neo Geo would not be hard, because the board is jamma, so all the contacts on the thing are gigantic. The problem with that is cost, since finding one of the MV-1C boards is a little tricky. This of course assumes that you do not move the cartridge slot. That would be around 200 point to point wiring connnections. OWWWWW!