Wow, non-Port Washington news for a change! Weird, huh?

This is a custom Atari 2600 VCS portable I built for someone. I decided to finally use a 5″ PS1 screen for an Atari portable since I haven’t before. I call this the “Pancake Atari” because that’s what it reminds me of.

For some making-of info and photos of the guts, visit the Atari Pancake Page.

It’s light colored, shades of off-white. Isn’t it amazing how anything Apple builds immediately sets the standard for all electronics (color designs) for the next few years? Not just the white iPod, remember the “translucent neon-colored case” trend of the late 90’s? That was started by the iMac. And I’m sure some Apple product started the “brushed aluminum” trend of the early 2000’s. Just an observation…

This will probably be the last portable I make for a month or so, as I’m taking some time off from movies/portables/using my brain in general. Hopefully in May I’ll return with a vengeance!

Be sure to stop by on Saturday April 1st to download and watch my new full-length movie Port Washington! Plus this Sunday the soundtrack will be available for download off the PW site, so you can jam out to that.

I re-obtained my old Colecovision today and set about to restoring it. (Was stored in a less-than-optimal place, so it was kind of messed up) Since I was going to put in composite video out (as I did with the Coleco portable) I decided to snap some pics and share the process with the world! Thus:

Ben’s Colecovision Composite Video Mod!

It’s pretty simple, in fact this penguin could probably even do it.

 Enjoy!

Hey anybody see on that new “King Kong” DVD, Peter Jackson recreates the long missing “Spider Pit” sequence from the original film? Since the original footage could never be found they used the old script and storyboards and emulated the “next best thing”

Now in videogame land one of the most sought-after “lost prototypes” is surely Color Dreams’ “Hellraiser” for the NES. The big gimmick was it would have used a coprocessor (likely a Z80) and extra RAM (about 64k) to do effects a normal NES couldn’t dream of. This including having bitmap graphics as opposed to the NES’s tile-based system. It also had some sort of color switching scheme to increase the palette, although that part sounds a little flakey.

Every so often I get an urge and go looking around the internet for info on this thing, like Indiana Jones trying to dig up lost artifacts, but without the cool hat. Anyways, last night I came across an article where the Color Dreams guy states “the hardware was done, but no code was ever written” He then elaborates on the hardware a bit.

From this I think I can guess how it might of worked. So, like Peter Jackson and old giant monkey movies, maybe us videogame fans can fill in a missing part of history! If you’re familiar with the Z80 and might consider taking a whack at it, please see my “Hellraiser Proposal” page. The old-school Nintendo community would really get a kick out of something like this, maybe a homebrew could even be made. Call it “Hellraiser” even if it has nothing to do with the movie. I know cost was a factor in killing the game back in 1991, but now a person can get a Z80 and some RAM fairly cheap. Or perhaps this “Super Cartridge” could take memory cards (like the Cuttlecart 2) and allow a variety of homebrews to be programmed and run. Whadda think?

No, not a Super Nintendo, but a regular Nintendo that’s super. Sort of.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the NES since I’m trying to design a mass-producible version of my NES Micro. There’s a TON of great info at http://nesdev.parodius.com/, it’s been very informative for me. A great read for tech junkies.

Along the way I’ve found and come up with a few ways to “improve” an old 8-bit NES – including getting a stereo separation in the audio! For information on how I souped up my old NES a bit, please visit Ben’s “Super” Nintendo page. I’ve also drawn up a cartridge pinout and Famicom converter that I believe to be a bit more accurate than most floating around the ‘Net – enjoy!

I’m still looking for a good source of OEM NES on a chips (NOAC) I’ve had several leads but nothing has completely panned out yet. What I’d really love is one or two evaluation units (that I’d pay for of course) so I could design a PCB before buying a large number of the things.

I have enough different datasheets now to narrow down which is the most common model… seems to be a SMT QFP – 0.65mm pitch – 100 pin 20x30mm. Called either a NT6578, SH6578 or UM6578, depending on manufacturer.

If I could find NOAC’s like these for $10 a piece (or less), I believe I could make portable NES clones the same as my NES Micro (with 2.5″ screen) for $200 a unit. I think these would sell fine, my goal would be to make 100 units. So if anyone can help, let me know!

Note: I don’t want links to IC wholesalers or anything like that – I could find those myself. I’m looking for people who may have access to them directly, and could possibly help with samples. Thanks…

You know it’s funny, the only “old school” game system I’ve ever made portable is the Atari 2600. Everything else I’ve done is a lot newer… Until now!

Yes that’s right, the classic Colecovision has now been made portable! While making it I remembered (or remembered how I forgot) how advanced it is compared to an Atari 2600, or even an Intellivision for that matter. Heck, its processor is quite a bit faster than a Nintendo’s even! Had the gaming crash not ended this console’s life who knows what might have happened?

Well anyway, if you’d like to take a look at the guts and read my typical “making of” shenanigans simply click here: Colecovision Portable Making Of. Enjoy!