It's times like these...
Entry posted by Nathan Strum in 2600 repair
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...when I'm really glad I've documented all of the previous mods I've installed.
So... many... wires...
I've been modding away at several consoles for Champ Games' booth at PRGE, plus a couple for John's brother, Paul.
Four of the mods are CyberTech S-video mods, and four are UAVs.
I prefer working with the CyberTech mods for several reasons:
- Superior picture
- Adjustable
- Way less, and much easier soldering
- Easily reversible/removable
The downsides of the CyberTech?
- No composite video (not really needed... but nice as a back-up)
- PINS OF DEATH!
I'll elaborate on the PINS OF DEATH! I've mentioned them before, when I was fixing the CyberTech mod in my own 2600. They're really long (and prone to bending/breaking off), but more to the point, they're so thick, that they bend the contacts in the TIA socket, to the point where if you remove the mod, the TIA no longer fits back in the socket snugly. For those consoles where I've installed then removed a CyberTech mod, I ended up replacing the TIA sockets.
To avoid that this time, I removed the thick pins, and replaced them with thinner ones using two long-tailed sockets, stacked on either side of the board. I soldered the top socket to the mod, only where 1) there were actual circuit traces on the front row of pins and 2) at four points along the far row of pins (to help anchor it down). The pins of the top socket stick through the board far enough to press-fit the bottom socket onto it. And it is on tight, too. No need for soldering. This makes the whole thing more easily reversible later, if needed (if a pin breaks off, for example). More on "more easily reversible" in a minute.
An original CyberTech is on the left, the modified one is on the right:
This still gives the necessary clearance when installed, but with much thinner pins that don't thrash the contacts.
Macro close-up! Look at those super-beefy PINS OF DEATH! They require so much force to insert them into the TIA socket, I'm always afraid I'll break something. So they had to go!
The original pins are 0.80 mm:
The new ones are just 0.48 mm. Almost 1/2 the thickness!
Now then... did someone say "more easily reversible"? Well, the original sockets do not go gently into that good night. I'm pretty good at desoldering things, and have an excellent desoldering gun, desoldering wick, and the whole bit. But there was just so much solder holding these in place, there was no way to get it all out - even after clipping the pins off. So... time for some drastic side-cutter action! Chop-chop!
Yep, I had to snip the sockets off in pieces, to get access to desolder them. Fortunately, they're hollow, so they cut easily. Once chopped off, I clipped on some small clips to the fat ends of the pins, and suspended the board upside-down.
Then from the other side, all I had to do was hit each pin (or remnant) with my soldering iron, and the weight of the clip pulled them right through. Bloop! (It didn't actually go "bloop", but it should've.) I've found this is a handy trick for desoldering all sorts of stubborn things – just clip a little weight to it, and make gravity earn its keep!
Besides getting the CyberTechs sorted out, I had two consoles to fix: a light-sixer and a Vader.
The Vader was sent to me as a non-runner by AtariAge member McCallister. It looked fine, but there was some gunk on the main board. I cleaned some of it off, recapped it, but still nothing. The chips tested fine in another console.
I had two other four-switch boards to try. One was from John, which had been killed off by lightning (you can see it at the end of this blog entry). That was an RF console (no mod), and it just showed a garbled image, even after recapping and chip swapping. (To "fix" his original console, I put a different working board in it.)
The third board was sent to me probably 20 years ago, as something to test as part of my (now long-neglected) mods comparison project. Someone had hacked together their own version of a mod, using several potentiometers bodged together in a really sketchy "installation". The email accompanying it said it was a problematic board to begin with, where if a game didn't load, you had to unplug the power, and re-plug it in again. I had ended up stripping parts off it over the years, so this was definitely the farthest from a working board.
The board from McCallister seemed most likely to get running, except the more I looked at it, the more gunk I saw. I cleaned it, and cleaned it, and kept finding it everywhere. Then I recognized the smell... it was beer! Someone had dumped a beer in this 2600 at some point, and it was everywhere! Under every component, in the IC sockets, the cart slot, and certainly in the RF modulator. The only way to possibly recover this thing, was to remove every component, clean everything, and then put it back, hoping it worked, or that I could at least figure out what died in the great beer deluge. Way too much work.
So... the "beer board" was out.
The "bodge board" was going to take a lot of work to put the missing components back, not to mention extricating the "mod" from it. Plus, again, it was problematic to begin with, so that meant troubleshooting it even after getting it back together.
So it was back to the "lightning" board. Even though I'd removed a few parts from it to fix another console, it was physically in the best shape. I just had to figure out what the lightning fried.
Everything looked fine (admittedly it could've had a baked transistor or something I couldn't readily see), so I thought maybe it was the RF modulator. I realized I'd never tried a mod in it, so I took one of the CyberTech mods, shoved it in there, and presto! It worked!
So one, down, one to go! Once I put the rest of the parts back. 
(Kind-of need to have Select and Reset switches.)
For the light-sixer, I had two sets of boards. One was in better shape, so I focused on that. I recapped it, tested the chips, etc. No picture. But... what if this was also a bad RF modulator? So I threw the CyberTech in there, and presto! That one worked too! Two dead 2600s, brought back to life! No RF, but these were destined for mods anyway.
I didn't take pictures of everything as I was working, because I really didn't have the time (I wasn't really planning to blog this much). But I was glad to get them all up and running.
The remaining four consoles bound for PRGE – two more Vaders (one from Chris Walton), a Sears four-switch, and a Sunnyvale heavy-sixer (!!) – all work just fine. They'll get recapped as well, and the heavy will get a CyberTech mod, since it's fully reversible. After PRGE, that will become my RF test console. I've never actually had a proper heavy-sixer before (this was also donated by Chris Walton), and I'm really impressed by just how different it is from the light-sixer that followed it. The lower-half of the case is entirely different. The top half is, as near as I can tell, identical. A really clever re-use of that, given that it was designed to fit the heavy base. It's pretty obvious why they changed the bottom half though - besides the heavy weighing probably twice as much, it's also a bit more complicated to assemble and run the RF cable out of. They greatly simplified the mold, the assembly process, and the weight (and therefore manufacturing and shipping costs). Really interesting stuff!
The two consoles I'm working on for Paul are a 7800 (no expansion port, but a nice, clean example), and a four-switch Woody that has one of those horrid eBay HDMI "mods" in it. I haven't taken it apart to look at that horror show yet, but it'll all be ripped out in favor of a UAV. Paul has a RetroTink to get HDMI.
The 7800's UAV is all done, but to my chagrin the composite-out isn't working. Checking with Crossbow, it seems likely there's either a bad cap underneath the board, or I may have whacked it out of place it with my soldering iron. So after everything else is finished, I'll take that back apart, and see what I can figure out. I really need to finish the rest of these up for PRGE, which is coming up fast.
I wanted to get started on these much earlier, but my workspace had become unusable. I had a tiny, disorganized, antique slant-top desk in the corner, which wasn't big enough to work on, plus I had no usable storage to speak of, so it was all just a cluttered mess.
I finally had the time to fix it up recently. So the antique desk got moved to the living room, and I bought an electric height-adjustable desk off Amazon. I bought some drawers and bins, organized and labeled everything, then hung some shelves on the wall behind the desk for storage.
To access it, I just hit the memory button to raise it up high enough. I positioned the shelves so that even at its lowest height, the desktop won't hit anything.
Anyway, enough goofing off. Time to get back to finishing up these consoles!
Speaking of goofing off... I've been meaning to take an infrared picture of the inside of a 2600 for years, and finally remembered to!
Hopefully I can remember to do the same with the sixer when I have that one opened up.
(BTW, the orange dots on the Reset switch are reflections of the heat from the ceiling lights. Same thing with the glow at the top of the RF modulator. It's hard to not get artifacts like that on shiny things.)
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