Pocket Atari - lovablechevy's Flashback 2 in a 2600 cart

[Flojomojo]

Pure awesome sauce, thanks for sharing!!

[lovablechevy]

I haven't messed with micro usb to this depth so this might be entirely stupid, but would it be possible to cheat and use the shield as the 6th conductor?

 

If you're using micro male-to-male cable and the shield is electrically separate from all of the other conductors it should work. It's not like you're running any real high frequency data signals through the thing. Maybe use the shield for the ground and run the 5 direction/button signals on the 5 conductors.

 

usb ports only have 4 pins. the grounding is usable as a 5th pin. so, any usb format only has a max load out of 5 pins. so, no, you cannot use anything usb related for a standard atari joystick, as it needs minimum of 6 pins.

[BigO]

 

usb ports only have 4 pins. the grounding is usable as a 5th pin. so, any usb format only has a max load out of 5 pins. so, no, you cannot use anything usb related for a standard atari joystick, as it needs minimum of 6 pins.

100% agree for standard USB. Specifically speaking of USB Micro: I saw a lot of connector pinouts that show USB Micro having 5 pins + shield. In a deeper dive, it looks like one of those is normally an "ID" line which apparently means that it allows recognition of a device being plugged in (it's connected to ground, if anything).

 

So, technically, I'd bet that additional pin wouldn't be populated end to end even in a USB Micro male to USB Micro male cable.

 

If one were desperate enough to have a tiny joystick connector, the standard micro connector could very likely be used with custom made cables. Not many people are weird enough to make their own custom cables. Even those who are that flavor of weird would advise against wiring up a cable with standard connectors in a non-standard way.

 

I wonder how much damage one could cause by pinning all 5 wires straight through (plus shield) and using the cable in a standard usb micro application...

[Two-in-the-Belfry]

Oh wow, that is super cool! Where'd you get the idea for it?

 

i'm trying to see how much interest there is before i just go out of my way to start sourcing parts and waste my time.

 

You can count me as interested!

[lovablechevy]

Oh wow, that is super cool! Where'd you get the idea for it?

 

 

You can count me as interested!

 

i build portables as my hobby. when i saw how much you can cut down the atari flashback 2 board (about 8 years ago), i started planning this out. just took me a while to set it into motion. life and all. lol!