USB/Memory Card hack for FB2

Fort Apocalypse · June 27, 2007

Has anyone seen any hacks to the FB2 (or 2600 for that matter) that allow USB or MMC (Multimedia Card), CF (Compact Flash Card), IBM MicroDrive, SM (Smart Media Card), SD (Secure Digital Memory Card) , MS (Memory Stick) and MS-PRO (Memory Stick PRO) or anything like that to let you somehow load and choose bin files and play them?

I know the FB2 portable is planned to have USB which will be totally awesome. But I just started wondering whether I missed a thread somewhere where someone made a hack similar to this? Granted I'm not sure how the menu to choose the rom would work (maybe a separate screen and set of buttons to choose the rom?).

Thanks!

werejag · June 27, 2007

Has anyone seen any hacks to the FB2 (or 2600 for that matter) that allow USB or MMC (Multimedia Card), CF (Compact Flash Card), IBM MicroDrive, SM (Smart Media Card), SD (Secure Digital Memory Card) , MS (Memory Stick) and MS-PRO (Memory Stick PRO) or anything like that to let you somehow load and choose bin files and play them?

I know the FB2 portable is planned to have USB which will be totally awesome. But I just started wondering whether I missed a thread somewhere where someone made a hack similar to this? Granted I'm not sure how the menu to choose the rom would work (maybe a separate screen and set of buttons to choose the rom?).

Thanks!

curt hasnt even shared the pinout for the fb2. fat chance in a mod

Fort Apocalypse · June 29, 2007

curt hasnt even shared the pinout for the fb2. fat chance in a mod

It isn't Curt's responsibility to produce mods or to even give out info on mods. However, Curt has provided much more info on the flashback 2 line than most people have about the development of their products. The work Curt is doing is making life more interesting for a lot of people who used to like to play the Atari 2600, and the stuff he is doing with the FB2 portable including adding a USB hookup to it gets me totally psyched!

Back to the topic at hand, if anyone has made this mod, has tried to make it, or at least has looked into it before, I just thought it would be neat to hear about it. Kind of like watching the pre-game show before the super bowl.

werejag · June 29, 2007

curt hasnt even shared the pinout for the fb2. fat chance in a mod

It isn't Curt's responsibility to produce mods or to even give out info on mods. However, Curt has provided much more info on the flashback 2 line than most people have about the development of their products. The work Curt is doing is making life more interesting for a lot of people who used to like to play the Atari 2600, and the stuff he is doing with the FB2 portable including adding a USB hookup to it gets me totally psyched!

Back to the topic at hand, if anyone has made this mod, has tried to make it, or at least has looked into it before, I just thought it would be neat to hear about it. Kind of like watching the pre-game show before the super bowl.

if we do not know the pinout of the asic we cant or it will be rather hard to do stuff like the stereo mod or this usb mod. so thats why i mentioned curt. he only knows the pinout at this point.

for a usb mod you going to have to tap into the cart points and use a bit of eeproms. or if we get more info maybe he has a secret usb port

Fort Apocalypse · June 30, 2007

if we do not know the pinout of the asic we cant or it will be rather hard to do stuff like the stereo mod or this usb mod. so thats why i mentioned curt. he only knows the pinout at this point.

for a usb mod you going to have to tap into the cart points and use a bit of eeproms. or if we get more info maybe he has a secret usb port

I understand you are really interesting in hacking this thing, but let's take a step back and think about this...

Maybe I'm really out of it, but I don't remember any Atari 2600 games supporting stereo, since to my knowledge the original unit itself didn't support stereo.

There is absolutely no chance that there is some hidden support for a usb port to easily be hacked onto the first FB2. It would be a very serious hack to enable the console to have a usb port for loading games, eeprom for storing them, and a menuing system to manage it all. That would be a substantial effort, and would require a great deal of time and work. Curt has taken this on, and we are all totally salivating to get a hold of the FB2 portables because this is so darn cool.

I'm sure that the reason you even mentioned the possibility of secret support for a usb port is because there is support on the FB2 for a cartridge connector to be hacked on. But, if I remember correctly, they originally planned on the FB2 having a cartridge connector to allow playing of cartridge games in addition to the built-in ones. And the original 2600 had a cartridge connector, so I imagine it wasn't that big of a jump to have support for a connector there on the board. Yes, it probably did cost them some extra money to have that on there which they didn't need to spend for the typical consumer. But hopefully they made up for that loss when all the people interested in hacking it bought units and spread the good word to their non-geek friends about how cool it was to have a FB2. From what I remember, they ended up not including the cartridge connector because there was no value to the typical consumer that didn't have old carts and wouldn't buy them off of eBay, and also due to the possible nightmare scenario of people either expecting their old dusty and rusty cartridges to work. But they weren't hiding that functionality.

I think it is totally awesome that Curt and others have kept the whole legacy gaming stuff fresh, and it is really exciting to be able to read about his progress and hacks that people have made. It really takes me back, and I like that we are all participating in the market research and development of these products. It's really neat.