So around a year ago or so, I did a blog on some updates and cleaning up I did on my personal 5200 here at the ITC. Well yesterday I found myself with some spare time and decided I would revisit my 5200 again. Only this time, I was really going to redo pretty much everything.

Originally my 5200 had an older LHE style AV upgrade in place and for the time when I installed it about a decade ago, it was excellent and honestly has provided great results that I never wanted to change it out even with UAVs now being the main thing for these consoles. But, I also purchased something else about a year ago that I decided I would install. But it would require having to remove the old LHE setup completely so... everything pretty much was redone. 

First some quick flashback moments to what I had before:

This older AV upgrade worked by attaching actual pins from the GTIA directly to the board itself for the cleanest picture output possible due to the shortest signal path being made. However, you can see it is a large board with lots of passive components on it and the wiring while tidy wasn't that great. You can also see on the far upper left in this picture where my DC jack was added to the center of the expansion plate as this being a 4 port, I didn't want to deal with the RF switchbox it required. This will come into play again a bit later. Again, all done about 10 years ago. But one issue with this setup that never really bothered me too much but I didn't like, was that the RF was rendered useless as a result of the pins from the GTIA having to be separated out of circuit for this setup. Also, while I was okay with it, solutions like this that require semi destructive actions to the ICs are frowned upon now. The whole setup basically makes the AV upgrade very permanent in that it is hard to remove the board from the GTIA pins without damaging them. Well, this all changed yesterday...

About a year ago I purchased a Sophia 2 board for my own use. But I wasn't sure if I wanted to put it into my 5200, an 800XL that I have nearly mint in the box still, or possibly my 130xe. Reality is that the 5200 was pretty much always the main target for me getting the Sophia if I'm being honest though because the 800xl as I said is near mint in its box and original packaging, and the 130xe has both a UAV and a VBXE installed. So the Sophia is quite redundant in this case.

So enough words let me share some new pics of the ITC 5200 as it looks today inside and out:

My 5200 now has a UAV setup to replace the older LHE configuration. As I have s-video and RCA jacks installed from years ago, I wanted them to still be useful so the UAV was a logical choice here. And since the older setup make the mating of the GTIA and the AV board semi permanent, the Sophia was an obvious solution since it completely replaces the GTIA altogether. So in addition to those two changes, what else do you see in this pic from the old? Well, the original voltage regulators were removed a few years ago and replaced with DC-DC switching type drop in replacements. There is a pair of older Traco 1-2450's installed to do this. Also, this 5200 has a brand new cartridge port installed that I just bought a few months ago from Console5. I did spritz out the power on/off switch with some contact cleaner as it was acting a bit flaky as well. I do see having to replace that switch completely in the future if I'm not able to take it apart safely to really clean it. There is a blue LED installed that I've had for years but I also added a new resistor to limit the current to it and drop it down from being a laser eye blinding beam to a pleasant dull blue glow.

 Details... the UAV install:-

The UAV setup for the 5200 requires you to install the UAV either in place of the 4050 IC video buffer (Which disables the RF output), or find a way to keep it in circuit so that you can retain the RF functioning if you want. I always keep the 4050 in circuit on all installs and the usually way I do it isn't the best but it is the most secure way to attach the UAV and keep it low profile enough to fit under the shielding. What I usually do is remove the original 4050 socket as Atari used single wipe sockets which, after 40 years aren't making great contact anyway. I then solder a new solder ontop of the 4050 IC chip and then solder the 4050 and socket combo onto the main board directly. The UAV is then configured and build for 5200 use and then plugs into that new socket that was soldered to the top of the 4050. I did something similar here, but decided to still make the 4050 easily replaced. Many years ago, I found a source for solder in IC pin sockets designed for special edge cases where you want a socket but either can't find the size type needed or don't have on hand. These little pins got into the vias on the PCB and then you solder them into place to provide what is then a socket on the main board itself. Here is how that looks in the case of where the 4050 goes on my 5200:

The caveat to these little guys is that they can be a pain in the keester to solder into place at the correct same height and they are expensive! They also require that the vias be at least .95mm in width in order to fit. Most vias in system boards tend to be .8 to .9mm in width so they won't always fit. However, luck would have it that in the case of older Atari consoles and computers, they do.

So with that setup and ready to go, the UAV is able to be plugged in as one assembly and still be low profile enough to fit under the RF shielding.

The wiring I had was then shortened up and made to work with the UAV output back to the s-vid and RCAs I installed years ago. So that takes us to the Sophia 2.

This as an easy thing as the Sophia is designed to just be a drop in replacement for the GTIA. Most of the older Atari consoles like the 5200 and their earlier computers, have all of these ICs in sockets. However, just like the 4050, the sockets were single wipe and not that good. So I did replace the socket with an actual IC socket that I keep on hand. I pay the bigger bucks to have 3M sockets that have bent pins designed to stay locked into place when soldering onto the board to make it easy to install them. They are also dual wipe sockets to they make contact with the IC legs on both sides vs the one from single wipe. The Sophia doesn't use IC legs however, and is using rounded pin. But it still works for these sockets, it just means that normal ICs aren't likely to fit very well since the pins on the socket are being pressed out further to allow for the rounded pins the Sophia 2 uses. Still it snapped in with a very satisfying click when I finally was able to get enough pressure on it to get into the socket.

The Sophia 2 is as I stated before an FPGA replacement for the GTIA chip itself. It fully replicates the GTIA functions as is evidenced by the fact that the UAV still works with this in place and the UAV requires the GTIA signal pins and color output to function. But the Sophia can provide DVI (The default setup on them), VGA (What I'm using), RGB, or YPbPr component output. All that is needed is to setup the Sophia 2 with the output you want it to provide and then create your wiring to match. The Sophia comes with a connector like you see and cable that I could have used and cut what I needed to do the job. But I might want to keep that cable later for DVI output or something in the future. So I took a more difficult route and soldered the output wiring from the bottom pins of the connector in this case.

So  remember I said that the old DC power jack and where it was located would come back into play a bit later? Where here you go.

I didn't have any spare expansion backplates and the 3D printed ones I have on hand were all designed for the much larger DVI output to be used. As I wanted to use VGA in this case, that meant I had to find a way to get the VGA output installed and still have my DC jack. The other side of the console was too busy to allow for this so I opted to widen and square out the original opening from the DC jack to allow for the VGA connector to go there, and then had enough room to drill a new hole to the side for the DC jack to be reinstalled into. I also added more shrink tubing to the DC jack to cover the exposed filter cap and just make is much more solid.

Now as the original hole that the DC jack was larger overall than the VGA would normally require, it meant that even squaring it up, it isn't the cleanest looking setup. But it allowed me to reuse what I already had in place with some careful modification and filing. I will state that given how large VGA plugs tend to be, that were I to do this on a fresh backplate, I would install the VGA a little higher up by a few more MM and move it over more to give more balanced symmetry between the power jack and the VGA jack. But again, there was already a hole in the center and I had to work from there.

And how does that VGA output look? In a word... 'Stunning!' The UAV and the s-video is something I'm used to from these consoles, but to see essentially an HD output from something that is 40 years old is crazy when you first see it for the first time. These are direct captures but don't look as good as what I see on my TV. The reason is because my TV and my Extron can handle the odd resolutions just fine that the Sophia puts out, but in order to capture through my AverMedia device, I have to use an old VGA to HDMI converter and it converts to a 640x480 image that is softer and brighter than what I normally see. Still, you get a good idea.

My 5200 is pretty much as upgraded as I can imagine it being at this point and with a little UV protectant applied after dusting it off again, I think it is ready for some serious 5200 gaming in the future!

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