The Vagabond as of 11-21-00...

I am getting ready to chop apart this board. I know what you're thinking "Didn't you already do that?" Well, I did, but the board you saw picture a few pages back... has died. It sustained a lethal short circuit someplace that caused the trigger to be stuck on. Attempting to fix it resulted in more death and despair. At last check I had it sort of working, but I mostly just use it for reference now. I have begun surgery on another Atari. It's almost all wired up, like the last one, but I'm going to prepare better before hacking the parts off. Also I will make sure that dust is blown away from the chips when I saw the board apart.

So, different board, same amount of progress. On with the show!

I worked today on attaching the ribbon cable for the game cartridge in the new way, like I talked about on the last page...

See the faint red lines? That's where the cartridge slot used to be. Used to be. I desoldered it because I want to chop that part of the board off. Note the blue lines (also faint, sorry, I didn't want to obscure the picture). Those blue lines indicate how much of the board isn't going to make it. Sniff sniff.

So, the problem was, how will I hook up the cartridge port if that part of the board is gone? Now, on the original VCSp, I simply soldered a ribbon cable directly up to where the cartridge slot was. (to those holes you see in the red lines). But now those holes won't be there. The solution was, obviously, to follow the circuits from the holes and find out where else they go. Then, I could wire a ribbon cable DIRECTLY up to those spots. Turns out most of those spots were on the RIOT chip (big surprise) and a few went elsewhere.

I drew out a map of which wires went where (tongue twister), stuck a fresh tip on the 15 watt soldering iron, fired it up, and went to town!

Here's a close up of the RIOT chip. (usually the top most chip in a 2600)  I spent about 2 hours wiring the cable to the appropriate locations. (I know because I had a movie playing while I did it) My new tweezers sure came in handy! (glad I bought the kind with grip-flex on them) That black thing holding the cable down is just a piece of electric tape. God, after doing this I think I'll be squinting my eyes for a week. I used an old Ultra SCSI 3 cable since it was very thin wire (and it was just lying around anyway). I can just hear the cable talking now...

"Whuh... whuh... where am I?"

"Hello, cable. Must be nice to be out of that drawer, eh?"

"Ben, is that you? I... I don't seem to be in your computer anymore. I feel like Spock in that one Star Trek episode where they take his brain..."

"Well, as long as you don't quote Star Trek 5."

"Ok, so, where am I?"

"I have cut you apart..."

"WHAT?..."

"...and placed you... somewhere new..."

"WHERE? FOR GOD'S SAKE, WHERE?"

"You will now be a part... of my new Atari."

"...Uh, uh, uh ATARI?????"

"Thuh, thuh, thuh that's right!"

"Ben, how could you do this? After all the data I processed for you! After all we've been through! Remember... (sniff) when you first got me and you were so excited?"

"Sorry to break this to you, but I was excited about the HARD DRIVE I was hooking you up to..."

"........."

"Hello? Cable? Are you quite done doing your Ninja Gaiden impressions?"

"You used me!"

"Yeah, basically."

"So, then, this is the end of me? Plugged into some 8-bit dinosaur that probably can't even run 'Frankenstein - Through the Eyes of the Monster'?"

"Silence! Don't you realize? You're going to be part of a great new system, the Atari Vagabond! You'll be a hero!"

"I... I will?"

"Yes! I will hook the other end of you up to the cartridge connector. It's your job to deliver the super high tech Atari data from the game cartridge to the Atari. Are you up to it?"

"Well, it's not the same as my old Adaptec, but... I won't let you down!"

"Super! Now I'd better stop talking to a personified SCSI 3 cable before someone hauls me away!"

Ok, the re-wiring is done (time lapse kinda like a cooking show) You can see the yellow SCSI cable that's connected to the chips, and how it goes up to the cartridge slot connector. I used the same cart connector that was on the Atari. (Whereas on the VCSp, I used a hacked-up 5 1/4 floppy drive cable connector) A few things stumbled me a bit. There is a +5 volts and 2 grounds coming out of the cartridge. For those connections, I had to use some thicker wire, the SCSI stuff was too thin or something. Well, whatever. I got it working.

The nice thing about the old Atari cartridge connector is that is has 2 screw holes on the sides, so I can place it where I want in the new unit and just design the bracket with some screw holes and screw it in! Whereas on the VCSp I had to use resin-bond to adhere the old floppy disk connector to some acrylic connectors that went around the sides then that was bracketed into the case then 2 screws held that in and IT WAS A COMPLEX MESS!. On the VCSp, the cartridge connector was one of the trickier things for me, since I made it custom and it had to be pretty precise. By time I was done with that I thought "Crap, why didn't I just de-solder out the Atari's cartridge port instead of making this hackneyed custom garbage?"

 Well, now I have done that, and this new Vagabond connector will be much easier to work with because of it.