The Vagabond board as of 10-14-00...

It's a lazy Saturday afternoon in Wisconsin, and I've been soldering again.

The sloppy blue lines on this picture indicate how much of the board will be left when I am finished hacking. However, in the yellow section there is some sort of voltage regulator type circuit. Curses! It sends voltage to the processor and the RIOT chip, so it must be important. BUT I need to hack that part of the board off. So what I did was copy the circuit and desoldered the components. I then moved them onto a small piece of perfboard and re-built the circuit there. (so I didn't have to spend more on new resistors) The circuit consisted of 2 transistors and 7 resistors. The 'transplant' went well, only one mistake on my part. I should have noticed that a resistor prong wasn't connected right off the bat, but, oh well.

 The dark lines on this piece of breadboard (or perfboard or whatever the heck it is) represent where I will slice it apart. I don't need the whole thing. I can use the leftover parts on... MORE ATARIS! This circuit takes 5 volts in and sends out about 1.8 volts on one line, and the other line is ground I believe. It also has a big fat capacitor (not seen). It may seem pointless to rebuild the same circuit, but the thing is, if it's not connected to the main circuit board, I can position it anywhere in the new Atari unit and connect it using wire. There are gaps in the TV's circuitry where this little piece of perfboard can be nestled, and it will save on the overall size and depth of the unit.

As for the size of the new Vagabond, I am aiming to make it not much bigger than a Gameboy Color. It will still be somewhat thick (probably about 1.75 inches) but that's still thinner than the VCSp was and this unit will have the cartridge insert in the back, like a Gameboy.