Dateline: January 7th, 2001

The first Vagabond update of the new millennium, millennium, millennium!!!!!! (Ok, I promise, no more millennium, millennium, millennium!!!!!! stuff!)

I had to wait a few days after New Year's while my brain cells regenerated, but now I am ready to build Ataris!

The electronics portions of the Vagabond are finished, they've been finished for weeks. What's holding me up now is the case...

   (Pictured sideways to save valuable screen space)

Ok, you're probably wondering what this is. The white thing is an actual-size paper pattern of the Vagabond. I've been printing them out to give myself a visual design reference without cutting out expensive material. The Vagabond will be built in 2 halves. This represents the rear of the Vagabond unit. This is the half I will make first. (just like the VCSp, I made the rear first)

Obviously this is an Atari cartridge and a Sony Info lithium battery. I can place the items on my paper pattern to decide if I have enough room or not. Now, a design philosophy I've been using on the Vagabond is "make the case as small as possible and THEN figure out to put things in it". One difference with the Vagabond from the VCSp is that the VCSp was limited by the size of the Atari board. With the Vagabond, I've gotten the board very small, smaller than the cartridges themselves. So, other things become a bigger factor in the size of the unit. Like the cartridges!

As you can see, the Vagabond is barely wider than the cartridge. In fact, there is only.... uh.... let me think... less than a tenth of an inch space on each side. The battery is also very tight. Now, they fit 'on paper' (literally) but there still has to be material over the top of them to hold them in! And this material must be attached to the back-plate somehow. The problem is, that there is no room to put the usual screw holes in, since those usually require at least a quarter inch of space. The solution I came up with was to use a piece of aluminum for the backing and have wide tabs on the edges, which will be bent over to encase the cartridge. The aluminum will be 'folded' into shape. One problem with bending aluminum is that the edges where the bends are come out kinda rounded. And that might keep things from fitting tightly enough. However, the aluminum is rather thin (sixteenth of an inch) so that might not be a problem...

But I won't know till I try! Next weekend I will probably attempt to build those parts, so, wish me luck and look for an update!