-^CrossBow^-
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Posts posted by -^CrossBow^-
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43 minutes ago, Dantaipan said:
@-^CrossBow^- nice overview. Is there any advantage in tapping the signals from the topside as suggested above vs directly under the TIA as I have done and seen other diagrams for?
Only that the wire runs are much shorter this way or can be made shorter and it is less risk to the TIA since you aren't soldering directly to the chip? I just think it is easier for me to have them all right there withing a few inches of where I place the UAV and for some it might be easier to solder to component legs vs the chip directly.
I only provided these as a reference, folks can use whatever they wish. In a more comprehensive guide, I would have the TIA pins labeled along with this but again, folks have expressed confusion on this in the past so the pics above are just what I've been doing for the past few years on 2600 consoles.
I do something similar on the 6 switchers and do NOT use the 4050 attachment method.
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9 minutes ago, Novastar said:
Thank you for this. I keep putting off my UAV work on my Vader because I didd not feel confident in the variants and didn't want to just rip out failed attempts until it worked.
Most Vaders that I've worked on were Rev14 but either way, you should be covered and I'm happy to help or provide additional assistance if you need.
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As there can be some confusion on how to install the UAV into a 4-switch NTSC 2600 console due to the variants that exist, I thought I would try and collate all of the basic information needed for installing the UAV into these model 2600s. While the different revisions do have some slight changes between them, in all cases the area where to get the signals needed for the UAV to work are located in the same basic locations. This is is not a comprehensive guide but more of a quick reference for those that already know how to open up the 2600 and are semi familiar with the layout inside of the 4-switch NTSC consoles.
UAV (Ultimate Atari Video) Layout:-
The UAV has basically remained the same on its design and layout since around 2017 when the current revision D was released. I only use the basic UAV board in all of my installs as I find that easier to wire to and provides me in more flexibility overall. Below is a diagram showing you the spots on the UAV you need to be concerned with on NTSC 2600 Installations. In all installs, the UAV will need to have power, ground, color signal, and a few other video signals provided to it for it to function properly. Take NOTE that you attach the signal wires for S, 1, 2, & 3 along the center and smaller vias on the UAV. If you have a pre-built UAV with a header block soldered here, just solder wiring to the tops of the header pins to make it easier.
Different revisions:-
The 4-switch NTSC consoles come in revisions starting with rev12 and ending up with rev17 that I've seen personally. Meaning there are variants in between but the good news is that there are really only about 3 different layouts for the components between all of these revisions in the area that we are concerned with for the UAV. Look around the top of the main board to see which Revision of the board you have so that you know which of the sections below to refer to for your UAV install.
Power, Ground and Audio:-
All revisions of the 4-switch NTSC consoles share the same points for power, ground, and audio that can be used for UAV installations. While the top board trace layouts look different in the areas below and the location of the RF output RCA jack is in different spots, the actual points are the same and in the same locations. I've provided pictures that show how this area is on the Rev 12 - 14 and Rev 16 & 17 models below.
Revision 12 & 13 NTSC TIA signal locations for UAV:-
The revision 12 and 13 NTSC consoles is pretty straightforward as the signals are all in a line from the main resistor section just to the right of the TIA chip. The signals for S, 1, 2, 3, & Co In are shown below.
Revision 14 NTSC TIA signal locations for UAV:-
The revision 14 NTSC console layout is similar to the earlier revisions with the only change being where you grab the signal for connection 2 to the UAV. The signal points for S, 1, 2, 3, and Co In are shown below.
Revision 16 - 17 NTSC TIA signal locations for UAV:-
The revision 16 & 17 NTSC consoles have their signals in the same location as the Rev14 show above, with the one change being an extra 820Ω resistor that was added to the board layout that has to be disconnected from the circuit. This resistor is located directly right of the TIA and is marked as R234, although you cannot see the silkscreen indicating this until you lift the resistor out of place. If you do not disable this resistor, you will end up with incorrect color hues on all colors from the UAV that cannot be adjusted out with the color trimmer. You can either clip the leg of the resistor, de-solder it, or remove the resistor completely. The signal points for S, 1, 2, 3, and Co In are shown in the picture below. The picture shows an alternate location for the S signal, but you can also get it from the same location as the Rev 14 in most cases.
UAV output colors appear horribly off kilter?
As mentioned in the Rev 16 & 17 section, there is an extra resistor on the main board that has to be disabled. While this resistor doesn't have a dedicated location on the earlier revision 4-switch NTSC consoles, it was sometimes added from the factory and therefore bodged into place. Look the presence of this resistor either on the bottom of the main board attached to pins 6 and 9 of the TIA chip, or possibly soldered on the top component side next to the TIA socket. In these cases, it is easiest to just clip the resistor on one leg to disable it without fully removing it. You might want to add shrink tubing or some other way to insulate the lifted/cut leg of the resistor so it can't short against anything.
UAV output wiring:-
The output side of the UAV is along the same point that you attached the TIA color signal wire to. All of your output signal jacks will require a connection for the signal output and also ground. What I usually do in my installs is to run a shared ground wire for both audio and composite video from the ground pin near the composite output on the UAV. I then run another second shared ground for the chroma and luma outputs for s-video using the ground pin between Co In and chroma out on the UAV outputs. The diagram below shows the S-video connections on the female s-video as viewed from the front of the s-video jack.
What about that blue box thing on the UAV, what is that for? :-
The blue box near the output side on the UAV is a trimmer adjustment for changing the way color artifacting looks through composite output. However, this trimmer has no impact when used on the 2600 console as it was mainly put into place for using the UAV on the Atari 8-bit computers where more games used NTSC artifacting.
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On 10/1/2023 at 5:23 AM, TheQueenV said:
Hi I'm Victoria. My wife and I did the power bypass mod on our four-port 5200. It seems to work great until we put a cartridge in. The cartridge will power the unit on and we aren't able to shut off with the console power switch. This leaves us having to unplug the unit. Has anybody come across this? Did we do something wrong? Everything checks out per the instructions. Please help. Thank you
This should have been posted in the 5200 section, but my initial instinct is that that 4013 flip flop chip itself might be at fault here. Luckily that chip is usually in a socket on all models of the 4 port 5200 and is a cheap IC chip to replace out. It is also known to go bad on the 5200s.
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The 800ish Ω resistor for the color saturation on pins 6 and 9 has to be removed for UAV installs as the colors are all off kilter on their hues. To really answer your question...
The only way to correct for the colors 100% on the UAV would require changing some of the resistor values on the UAV itself. This is because the UAV uses its own set of resistor values to use the different signals. But doing this would then effect all other consoles it can be used with. So the compromise is what it is. To have the UAV present those colors more properly would require a different UAV board specific to the 2600 in this case. But the design of the UAV is pretty much set in stone and not likely to be changed until current stock of UAVs are sold out making way for such a new design.
Installing on top of the 4050 doesn't make any difference as you are still taking in the signals the same way, just from the 4050 directly vs the pins off the TIA directly. Although there have been some instances where the input voltage to the 4050 can be lower than it should be for the UAV to work, so one thing I do advise is to take +5 from somewhere else and run that directly to the UAV if you use the 4050 install method.
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10 hours ago, cvga said:
I found the email from when I had my lightly modded 7800 fixed...
It's done! I cleaned up it a little as far as the mod is concerned. I put it on a PCB and mounted it to the motherboard and changed all the wiring to be color coated and solid copper vs stranded. Not that it wasn't right before, but there was opportunity of something to get jostled on its way back and a wayward wire create some short (I also like it to look clean:)). Also, in the picture where the red box is over a wire, I added that wire as it adds in POKEY sound for games that use it. Tested it with both TIA (Robotron 2084) and POKEY (Ballblazer) sound and they're both working. The red port I added is just a little bit off on measurement. I thought that I got it right, but I was just a bit off, it's close though. I'll get it boxed up and sent back next week.
I'll bet yours is the same issue. Evidently some early mod kits didn't include that last step since Pokey chips weren't highly used at the time.
The problem with audio is where you are getting the TIA audio from. You are taking it directly off the IC legs as I can see in that picture. The problem is that it is before the resistors and not after as is needed for proper balance between the TIA and POKEY. What you have in this picture will work for actual cartridges without issue. But if you use a concerto or some of the newer homebrews that use HOKEYs in them, you are likely to run into issues with still not being able to hear the POKEY/HOKEY audio properly.
The audio signals need to be taken from north ends of R5 and R6 next to the audio adjust coil.
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7 minutes ago, prorok said:
Debugging continues...
I purchased another 7800. This one appears to be entirely stock, though I haven't opened it up yet to verify, and PETSCII Robots runs just fine on it. With one working and one non-working console, as time permits, I can start running increasingly invasive experiments to see if the problem moves with component swaps.
Note which CPU is present in each one as far as the brand of CPU. Also any other differences as well in the component layouts or stuff being present on one that might not be on the other...etc.
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Did you make sure that when installing the ICs back in that you had them oriented the proper way? As you say pretty much everything else is working, what about controls? Are you able to start a game and have it control properly?
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12 hours ago, RB5200 said:
The 4 port loopback board ( as shown in pict.) Are $25.00 new.
The 2 port boards are $30.00
new.
The cart. Is $49.95 new if it is v1.1, not sure if that's what it is since the label is gone, but if it is, then yes they work together for diag. Of the machines.
Actually you can get the diag carts made to order here from the AA store for $30. That is how I got my v1.1 and v2.3 carts made up that I use. I also have the 4 port loopback although I got mine quite a few years ago so I don't remember how much I paid for it from Best back then.
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2 hours ago, Wilheim said:
Update: the glitches disappear when I disable the Pokey emulation on Subcart.
something related with the emulation?
Interesting you mentioning this. I don't have the same hardware setup you do, but I did try for the first time, to play this game with the actual cartridge through my VBXE output last night. I wasn't getting the same glitches that you were showing in your video, but I do get what I can only describe as sparklies along the screen that are fixed in place on some screens and I noticed that the sparkling/twinkling effect of the pixels doing this seem to increase and decrease with the music. It is really noticeable on the title screen. My hardware is a 130xe with the VBXE running the new NTSC palette core and a TKII with dual pokeys for my stereo output. Switching to mono mode didn't change this effect either so it did seem to be tied to audio somehow?
Speaking, I have the audio ran separately off the TKII to the left/right inputs on the 9pin mini din I use for my RGB output so it is separate from the RGB although it all uses the same ground on the MD9 output of course.
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Okay... so quick update on this. I was mistaken in my earlier comment about the game not working on my main console. That wasn't the case it is actually my lab test 7800 that is an A3 unit that the game was glitching up on me with. My actual main 7800 is an A1 series and the current build seems to load up and play find from my UNO. So yeah...just doesn't seem to want to work properly on my A3 7800 console.
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On 10/9/2023 at 9:43 PM, ZackAttack said:
I have some other work in progress that I want to complete before we release a new version. Unless you're seeing glitches/crashes there isn't much point in upgrading.
Um... what about supporting the supercharger multi load games? Because, that isn't working on the current FW I have on my UNO either? Just causes crashes when trying to load up the next part of Survival Island for instance.
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On 10/7/2023 at 10:23 AM, Just Jeff said:
Hello!
Here's the WIP .bin that will be displayed at the AtariAge booth in Portland next weekend. Enjoy!
-Jeff
I was trying this newest .bin last night on my 7800 and wasn't able to get it working for me properly.
What was happening was similar to what we saw when Jame's was getting some odd graphical glitching that was causing the taxi to immediately register a collision detect and crashing it. But I didn't see any graphical issues taking place in my case. Here are some more details...
I'm playing on an A1 model 7800 using my Uno cart with the UCA FW load on it.
At first it was playing fine but then after I got the third person to their platform and then tried to pick up the 4th, as soon as I landed on the platform, the game reset itself back to the title screen? I then tried to play again and it started to do the crash reset back to title screen as soon as I would try and descend to the first platform to pick up the first passenger? Just did that over and over. I then found out while this was going on, that if I placed my difficulty swiches from Right (Where they were sitting at the time) to the Left, that I was able to now get past the 1st screen and could pick up the passenger and go up. But then as soon as I got to about 1/3 of the way down from the top on the second screen, it reset again back to title and kept doing this over and over.
Power cycling my 7800 did NOT correct this issue and it continued to behave this way from then on. So yeah... I'm basically not able to get any further than maybe a few passengers (at first) before it starts to crash and reset itself back to the title screen.
My UNO is the only cartridge I have that I think can play this game. I have an older Harmony and it just gives a file load error when trying to run the .bin and the BBPro 7800 adapter doesn't seem to support this file size or banking system yet either as it just gives a scrambled screen when trying to load.
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Check for input voltage on both sides of the MJE210s. They are just lower left of the RF modulator. Also check for voltage on the power resistors just after them that are side by side.
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30 minutes ago, Zilch said:
I think you got it! VR2 is giving me voltage readings, but VR1 on the backside of the heat sink is reading nothing at all. I'm assuming it's toasted and will replace it. May as well get VR2 while I'm at it...
Optimism! Thank you!
Edit: I noticed quite a bit of heat from the heat sink with power on for a minute. I assumed this was the heat sink doing its job, sinking heat. Is it possible the faulty VR was making it cook a bit too hot, also?
You should still be showing input voltage to both VRs? If you aren't showing input voltage then something else prior to the VRs is faulty and will voltages checked along the way to see where the issue might lie.
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If you don't mind the shorter cord, I can also strongly recommend these replacement power supplies that work great on the 5200. I use one of these in the test lab in fact.
https://console5.com/store/triad-magnetics-power-supply-for-atari-5200-twin-famicom-pal-snes.html
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35 minutes ago, MrZarniwoop said:
Same issue with Sandisk Extreme Pro 32GB card. Tried Mac, Windows, and Windows SD Card Formatter Tool format. All ROMs load fine, just no firmware update.
Don't have another handy card to try but will order some.
I ordered up some of these sometime back and have had good luck with them. But I will admit that I'm using these on my BBPro and DF carts. I'm using an old 4gb micro sd in my 7800GD. Perhaps give these a try and see how they work?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KL71CFN?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1
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4 hours ago, retrosix said:
Zero jailbars. But if you are using new RetroTink hardware that causes jailbars.
Here is RetroTink 2X Pro and 5X
Here is using OSSC and regulator monitors that support S-Video also
Could you confirm if you are using retrotink for testing as if so they are poor quality and add noise/jailbars
I'm talking based on the pictures that @FireStar posted above. In all of his s-video pics, you can still see definite jail bars present. I've not used the new v2 board so I don't know how it would look on my setup. But I can tell you that with the earlier board on my 2600jr, the s-video had severe jail bars similar to @FireStar's pictures and that was s-video directly to an LCD that has s-video inputs. But it was also present on my PVM with s-video. The composite looked better so I stuck with that output on that 2600jr.
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9 hours ago, TwentySixHundred said:
Small update:
- graphic bug fix - was appearing when displaying the last life sprite - still not sure why as it just started happening after a couple of builds and used the sprite counter index to plot the sprites.
I was going to report on this as on both emulation and actual hardware, what happens is that starting on the 5th wave, the lives counter regardless of how many you have, seems to get corrupted and show up as a big grey box with some textures in it?
I will fire up this latest version a bit later and check it out. Thanks for the update!
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11 minutes ago, Shawn said:
Heat gun and a razor blade has never failed me.
Well, I've never had any luck with it in the past with the paper sticker either tearing still in the process, or the plastic getting deformed due to the heat.
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On 9/28/2023 at 11:13 PM, phoenixdownita said:
Great job by @ZackAttack
messaged me a test version of UCA 2.3.18 with std cart emu from RAM and my problems seem solved.
Dig Dug, Phoenix and Xenophobe no longer glitch, and Pitfall and Pitfall II still works (likely not the same emu).
This is good, I like the selection screen and the small font much better because it allows to see more of the directory content.
As to why my 7800 and/or my UnoCart I am not sure, it can be one the other or the combo that trips the glitching std cart emu.
[I am not even sure what the std cart mapper covers in terms of cart types]
Any idea when this test version will become a final version for others to try out?
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42 minutes ago, Ben_Larson said:
I was actually able to salvage 3 of them using JB weld.
The shrink tubing is a good idea, though. On 2 of the posts I fixed, even the first round of epoxy wasn't enough because when I inserted the screws, the posts promptly cracked again.
For the second round, I left the screws in and added more epoxy where it cracked. That seems to have worked.
The shrink tubing once it cools basically hardens up like plastic. So two layers of it around each of the posts secures them in place well and even if the plastic internally should crack, then the tubing keeps it in place enough to still do the job. Another idea although tricker would be to epoxy the pieces in place including the centers and then drill them back out and tap them. But I'm not that accurate enough with a drill for that kind of precision.
Also, I'm sure you already know this, but I use a scoring tool to scratch the plastic internally in the area for the repair and around the base if needed, and then clean it all with IPA. The scratches give the epoxy something to leech into and secure into place as an anchor vs just drying on top of the smooth plastic.
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2 hours ago, karri said:
Unfortunately this design was too tight. I gave up and cut away some plastic.
And that is one of the more brittle case shells discussed earlier in another thread. Again, I can tell by the rectangular shape around the original RF opening where the plastic is different textured and out of place from the rest of the shell. So not sure what you used to cut it but you did good!
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37 minutes ago, Yurkie said:
I have not had any 2600RGB kits in months.
I was pretty sure of that, but the question was made that someone was going to reach out to his US distro to see if they had them and I knew you handled that so I tagged you in my reply.
Thanks for confirming that the kits aren't available currently.
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Atarimax 5200 Ultimate SD Cart Latest Firmware/Menu?
in Atari 5200
Posted
I don't believe there have been no. I know mine only had like one update ever from when I first got it back in like 2016 or something? The only changes I know of from mine to now, is that there is a button on the cart to reset back to game select whereas I have to power cycle my console.