My Project - Codename: 1300

[Dastari Creel]

To give a little history, I'm a big fan of the FC Mobile 2. This is a handheld clone NES system. I love the idea of being able to take my games with me wherever I go. Now the FC Mobile 2 has taken some undeserved flak and some deserved flak. First, on the undeserving side, people often complain that the game sticks up out of the back of the thing. Honestly, who cares? Its not like that makes it harder to play in your hands. The fact remains that its portable and you can play games for a non-portable system on it with really good sound and picture reproduction.

 

Now this system also had some failings. Failing #1 is a lack of understanding of basic layouts. For instance, the connection for line power is on the top, which is a really akward place to put it since you usually have the power cord at a pretty good stretch when you're playing this at home. They put the headphone jack on the bottom. It would have made a lot more sense to reverse those positions. Failing #2 is a lack of 2-player compatability unless you're playing on a TV (more on that later). Failing #3 is that the system was confused. They made it a handheld system but they also wanted to make it as a true clone replacement for the NES, by giving it composite out compatability and giving it some IR controllers that you could use to play on the system when it was hooked up to the TV. The problem is that IR is a really poor means of control and you have to line your controllers up "just so" for it work. Otherwise you have jerky control or no control at all. They also packed a zapper in with the same system. While I can see that holding a controller in a certain position may not be so hard, how they ever thought anyone would be able to use the zapper consistently with this system is beyond me.

 

My point is that there is a certain failing when people develop systems. They go for everything including the kitchen sink and don't even think about who is going to buy the product. Its the same idea that had someone at Atari thinking they could create a Rubix Cube game. Who'd buy the more expensive non-portable software when they could just buy a portable Rubix Cube for less? To me, NES clones or refurbished NES's are so easy to come by. There's no reason to give it capability to hook to a TV. Is that nice? I suppose but there are a lot of other things that I'd be more interested in.

 

However, I do like the basic idea of the FC Mobile 2, and now that I'm getting back into Atari I want to propose something similar. The first thing that I did was sit down and look at a list of things that I'd like in a handheld system and break them down into needs and wants. I came up with the following:

 

Needs:

 

1.) LCD Display

2.) 2-player joystick game support

3.) Joystick and Paddle controllers

4.) Difficulty switches, reset switch, level select switch

5.) Battery power /w option for line power

6.) Battery low indication

7.) Speaker, volume control, and headphone jack

8.) >95% Cartridge compatability

 

Wants:

 

1.) 2-player paddle support or 4-player paddle support

2.) keypad

3.) 100% original cartridge compatability plus homebrew cartridge and Harmony compatability

4.) TV Output

5.) Wood Finish

 

Now I'm pretty confident that I can get the electronic side complete for this if I use the original Atari 2600 components. My reservations, especially if I want to make this into something that can go on forever, is that it may be more prudent to either go with an ASIC or an emulator approach. Again I'm confident about the hardware but I know nothing about creating custom silicon and I know nothing about programming emulators either, so I'd definitely need help and support from the community if I were to go those routes (A discussion of pros and cons will follow probably tomorrow).

 

My other reservation is on the shell for this system. There's a reason that I'm an electrical engineer. I've never been that great with "machine shop" type stuff. I did order the Ben Heck book and hopefully it'll make the idea of creating a full 3D model of my shell simple but I have a bad idea that I'm going to need to be an expert CAD person to get that to work so if I get that far and if it is as difficult as I imagine I hope that some kind person may help me with making my 3D model for the CNC machines.

 

For now here's some quick sketches I made. Please note that this is NOT in any way to scale. This is just where I see the relative positions of everything at this point. I'd definitely like some comments on the layout. Please note that while most people making portable Atari mods are going with the Nintendo layout of having your left hand for the direction controls and your right hand for your action button (I know people generally call it the firing button but its not always for firing, see Pitfall) but to me if you're going to do this project of an Atari system, you should try to emulate the Atari design ethic wherever possible, so the joystick is on the right and the button is on the left. Beyond that, comments are welcome.

 

 

Soon I'll post my thoughts on implementation of the project and welcome any feedback people may have but for now I'll leave you with the sketch and the basic idea to see what you think.

[Dastari Creel]

I just wanted to mention briefly that the reason that I never did my followup post is that my wife fell down the stairs on Sunday (the day after I posted) and hurt herself very badly so I've been busy trying to work and take care of her and our daughter all the same time so there's no time to worry about starting a new hobby (as interesting as it might be). I will get back to this when the family is back up to 100%.

 

In the meantime I really would like feedback about anything and everything in the above even if its negative (as long as its constructive negativity).

[tetrode kink]

First of all, I hope your wife is OK. From experience, those stair falls can be nasty.

 

Now, since you asked, do you ever check for replies to your old posts? I replied to a post you made in the Atari Flashback Consoles forum that I'd like your thoughts on. Originally I thought you had posted it in the Hardware forum, but now I see you posted that question in both forums.

 

Also, now that a PCB exists (Project Unity) that is made from the start to be used in a portable VCS using the original chips, do you plan on using it in your 1300 project? It would save you the work and time involved in designing your own board, so all you'd need to do is design your case and build it.

 

-tet

[Dastari Creel]

First of all, I hope your wife is OK. From experience, those stair falls can be nasty.

 

Thank you for the well wishes. Its been rough, especially since my job has gotten far busier lately and has required mandatory overtime from everyone so trying to juggle being at home to take care of my wife and young daughter while also putting in all the time that work required of me has been pretty stressful. However, today my wife was able to move around for a little bit without pain (this is while on medication) so that's a positive step. I'm hoping that as long as she doesn't overdo things that this trend will continue.

 

Now, since you asked, do you ever check for replies to your old posts? I replied to a post you made in the Atari Flashback Consoles forum that I'd like your thoughts on. Originally I thought you had posted it in the Hardware forum, but now I see you posted that question in both forums.

 

In general yes. However, that thread hadn't had a reply in 5 days so I'd given up on it. Under normal circumstances I may have checked back even after 5 days but with all the stress lately I was just paying attention to this thread since this is the only one where I had an open-ended question that no one had responded to and its the one that I have the most interest in myself.

 

Also, now that a PCB exists (Project Unity) that is made from the start to be used in a portable VCS using the original chips, do you plan on using it in your 1300 project? It would save you the work and time involved in designing your own board, so all you'd need to do is design your case and build it.

 

Someone already linked me to Project Unity and it is a neat concept. I'm waiting to see the finished project but yes I have a feeling that I will at least use some of what Longhorn engineer is doing. For the same reason I've also picked up Ben Heck's book. The only thing is that Longhorn is clearly trying to design the shape of his system around a gameboy analogy and I prefer something more like the FC Mobile 2. I'm also not to picky about how small the system is. I guess I'm old school even with my portables. If its over an inch thick I'm not going to break out. But I'm not sure if my design will fit with his board but we'll have to see. I may need to design my own board as well. That part really doesn't work me though. Anything have to do with circuitry isn't a big deal for me. I'm more worried about sourcing suitable parts and (moreso) designing a shell. I'm an electrical engineer rather than a mechanical and I fear trying to do a CNC design on my own since I assume that requires a 3D model and I'm not a draftsperson and because I am stubbornly going my own way and designing my own circuitry, the shells that Mr Heck and Longhorn Engineer are designing won't be suitable for my application. I figure, thought, that as long as I get everything working electrically that I should be able to pay someone to make the shell for me from my rough outline sketches so I'm not going to sweat that one yet. To me that isn't the interesting part. To me the interesting part will be the circuit and the few "unique" functions I plan on my system having that others won't have.

 

Once I get some "proof of concept" going and get a prototype built I'd probably like to revisit an ASIC implementation or an emulator. Some of what I want to do may prove bulky and we all know that if you use the original hardware you're going to have a bulky power system at least. Designing the chip may not be that hard since all the information for it is available but I'm pretty sure that taking the time to learn how to program emulators would take a LONG time. There's been discussion on other threads that an emulator optimized to run on specific hardware (rather than a PC) and without all the extra functions like debuggers could probably be designed to be 100% perfect but I'd definitely need a partner for that and my understanding is that there is only one dedicated Stella programmer so that may not be feasible although to me its the most attractive option for numerous reasons which I hope to get into later when I have time.

 

Probably a longer reply than you wanted but I've been giving this a lot of thought over the last few weeks since I purchased my 7800 and learned that the Flashback and those controller units aside there are no Atari clones.

[Dastari Creel]

Someone already linked me to Project Unity and it is a neat concept. I'm waiting to see the finished project but yes I have a feeling that I will at least use some of what Longhorn engineer is doing. For the same reason I've also picked up Ben Heck's book. The only thing is that Longhorn is clearly trying to design the shape of his system around a gameboy analogy and I prefer something more like the FC Mobile 2. I'm also not to picky about how small the system is. I guess I'm old school even with my portables. If its over an inch thick I'm not going to break out. But I'm not sure if my design will fit with his board but we'll have to see. I may need to design my own board as well. That part really doesn't work me though. Anything have to do with circuitry isn't a big deal for me. I'm more worried about sourcing suitable parts and (moreso) designing a shell. I'm an electrical engineer rather than a mechanical and I fear trying to do a CNC design on my own since I assume that requires a 3D model and I'm not a draftsperson and because I am stubbornly going my own way and designing my own circuitry, the shells that Mr Heck and Longhorn Engineer are designing won't be suitable for my application. I figure, thought, that as long as I get everything working electrically that I should be able to pay someone to make the shell for me from my rough outline sketches so I'm not going to sweat that one yet. To me that isn't the interesting part. To me the interesting part will be the circuit and the few "unique" functions I plan on my system having that others won't have.

 

Huh, so apparently I can't edit my posts. I don't know why that is. ANyhow I reread what I wrote last night and I see that I mispelled a lot probably because of how tired I was. I should have said that designing my own board doesnt worry me and I won't freak out if my design ends up being over an inch thick.

[A.J. Franzman]

Sometime in the past three years, Al shortened up the "editing permitted" time window, to something less than 24 hours from the time of the original post. The window was originally infinite, then some schmuck abused the system by going back and deleting ALL of his own posts, so Al shortened it to about a month, for a while. Apparently even that was too long...

 

Anyway, the point is, you'd better read your posts immediately after sending them and make any needed edits right away, because you probably won't be able to do so later.

[Dastari Creel]

Ok so getting back to this. My wife is recovering so I can devote some time to thinking about my hobby again. I'd hoped for some people to comment on my sketches and see if they could deduce some of the functions I was thinking of adding that no portable VCS has had yet, but that's fine. Hopefully at some point there will be interest.

 

For now I wanted to discuss my next topic, which is how to implement the design. My choices are using the original chipset, an ASIC, or an emulation machine.

 

Original Chipset

 

Advantages: 100% compatability. This is a big deal. While compatability with all existing carts is probably possible with any of the other methods it would probably take a lot of R&D and to hit that mark. With homebrews coming out too there might be need to revisit the design from time-to-time as well so having 100% compatability right off the bat is great.

 

Disadvantages: Using the original chipset requires power conversion circuitry. Just look at any of the hacked portables and you see the heavy duty batteries they've had to install to run the things. I don't know about longevity but just the cost in size and weight makes this unattractive. The availability and cost of the chipset is another bad factor. There appear to be quite a few of these in circulation but they cost a pretty penny, meaning that this won't be a low-cost solution. Also, using three distinct chips is always going to be larger than using a single chip that combines all the functions.

 

ASIC

 

Advantages: Relatively high compatibility based on the fact that we have the design for the chips that went into the original VCS. My understanding is that this could be implemented relatively easily although the differences in packaging this all in one chip may still mean that some games do not run correctly.

 

An additional advantage is that the ASIC can utilize smaller voltage levels so we can get away with a more traditional 4-AA approach rather than the huge batteries used on the hacked homebrews. This would also save on real-estate.

 

Overall the footprint for this implementation should be very small, since its just one chip plus the additional circuitry needed to make it work. This means that it would be a smaller and lighter shell.

 

Finally, an ASIC once designed could be made as often as wanted, so the cost would be fixed and I wouldn't have to worry about them running out.

 

Disadvantages: I have absolutely no clue how to implement the ASIC design. While I believe that this is something that I could probably learn to do, the initial costs in making the chip sound like they'd be fairly hefty and there may need to be several iterations which would just increase the cost. While I'm sure the people on this board would love me for doing it, I'm not sure that I can afford it at least on my own.

 

Emulation

 

Advantages: Lower voltage levels again so no need for the bulky power circuitry. A microcontroller would be more compatible with modern equipment so there may be less need for additional hardware to make some of the functionality that I want to see implemented in my portable work. It would also be usable with modern televisions.

 

R&D costs would be less than an ASIC. This is because you could just keep reprogramming the controller until it works the way that you want it to.

 

These are readily available so they wouldn't suddenly become more rare and their cost spike.

 

Disadvantages: Again I have no experience with emulators. This would probably be a much more difficult skill-set for me to acquire since its farther from my field of study. However it is a subject that interests me and learning this side of things would no doubt help me in understanding how the hardware works which may assist me in my eventual goal of creating homebrew games.

 

Compatability is probably the lowest on an emulator and some games may be glitchy in ways they wouldn't be on the original VCS. The Stella programmer mentioned on another thread that a stripped-down version of Stella designed to run on dedicated hardware could be made and would be a much better emulator but the problem is the time factor. He was also confident that a 100% compatible emulator could be made but again time would be required which makes such a feat prohibitive.

 

I'd need to start shopping around to see what the cost differences would be between a finished ASIC and a microcontroller. I figure the microcontroller would have a higher cost per unit but the ASIC has a higher R&D cost but then cheaper per unit once you have a design in place.

 

Ultimately I think that any prototype will have to start with the original chipset since electronics are what I know best and what I would most quickly be able to make a prototype of. Once I have proof of concept I will probably want to revisit these options for making a lighter and more cost-effective design.

 

Does anyone think that I've missed any advantages/disadvantages in my brief perusal of the issues above. I know the debate of ASIC vs emulation has been made before but what do people think of the advantages and disadvantages? I'm interested to hear what people think.