I have build my Ultimate Atari Flaskback Game System

[gespy]

Inside the case of an Atari Flashback 1, I have build a Rasberry Pi Zero with Retro Pi on it. It can be controlled with the original Flashback 1 controllers.

 

I have made a video of this project:

 

 

Please let me know what you think about it.

[Draxxon]

thats very impressive. I'm a big fan.

[Draxxon]

 

Picked this up just because of your post!

Edited March 27, 2021 by Draxxon

[TwoShedsWilson]

I'm looking at doing the same thing. I keep going back and forth on how I want to handle the controller ports, but I did come up with something I think is clever for the metallic strip that should give the same shiny look plus have the graphics printed on it. It works in my head, but reality doesn't always agree with my head. I'm also considering 3D printing a scaled-down 7800 cartridge port to complete the look, but I would need to see if there is room inside to do that or not.

 

I'm beyond a sucker for aesthetics.

Edited March 30, 2021 by TwoShedsWilson

[gespy]

On 3/27/2021 at 4:48 PM, Draxxon said:

 

Picked this up just because of your post!

 

Great! Let me know if you need any help.

[Keatah]

4 hours ago, TwoShedsWilson said:

I'm also considering 3D printing a scaled-down 7800 cartridge port to complete the look, but I would need to see if there is room inside to do that or not.

Maybe the scale would work out just right and a microSD card could fit in it? Just a thought about making it functional. Didn't watch the video yet. Don't know if Pi Zero interfaces to SD.

[TwoShedsWilson]

2 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Maybe the scale would work out just right and a microSD card could fit in it? Just a thought about making it functional. Didn't watch the video yet. Don't know if Pi Zero interfaces to SD.

I have no doubt it could be done, but it's not something I'm planning on. I'm just doing it for appearances. I don't think the scale would for for an SD card, they'd be too small, but you could probably make a scale cartridge and put it in there.

[Draxxon]

I feel I'm going to go the opposite route.

I'm fine with the red flashback 1 sticker and no cart port.

I would like to stick a pi3 or 4 in there. And concentrate on the ~100 Atari 7800 games.

[Keatah]

On 3/6/2021 at 10:25 AM, gespy said:

Please let me know what you think about it.

Love little shitbox projects like this. They're artful adaptation of new tech to old tech. Also like the color Atari logo at startup - much better than the modern monochrome metro crap so prevalent today.

[TwoShedsWilson]

On 3/30/2021 at 2:23 PM, Draxxon said:

I feel I'm going to go the opposite route.

I'm fine with the red flashback 1 sticker and no cart port.

I would like to stick a pi3 or 4 in there. And concentrate on the ~100 Atari 7800 games.

I realize I'm in a weird minority that would obsess over how to get the shiny metal sticker part as close as possible. For my purposes a Pi 0 will work just fine. I don't plan on running anything beyond the 7800 and it will handle those just fine. This should give me a nice "Atari" entry to go along with all my other mini-consoles. The giant orange buttons just don't sit well with me on the newer flashbacks.

[CmdrCyrus]

I'm highly interested in doing one of these for myself! I thought it would be a fun project to convert the Flashback into a proper 7800 mini. I picked one up off ebay and am making a shopping list for the Raspberry Pi parts you mentioned in your video. Is there any chance you could make some step-by-step instructions or some kind of schematic on how you wired everything together?

[Wizzard]

What kind of stella core does it run? Regular or 2014 version?

[sirlynxalot]

On 3/6/2021 at 11:25 AM, gespy said:

Inside the case of an Atari Flashback 1, I have build a Rasberry Pi Zero with Retro Pi on it. It can be controlled with the original Flashback 1 controllers.

 

I have made a video of this project:

 

 

Please let me know what you think about it.

 

Very interested in this project. Gespys final result looks fantastic.  I didn't quite follow how the controller interface was made, or how the flashbacks power button is connected to the pi. Is it also possible to share the sticker graphic so we can print it out for our own builds? 

 

Has anyone other than Gespy gotten around to completing a similar mod of the 7800 flashback? The plastic shell really is ideal for a 7800 mini.

Edited August 25, 2022 by sirlynxalot

[+fdr4prez]

Unfortunately the spoken audio is quite soft to hear, so you increase the volume and then get blasted by the loud music 

 

On 8/24/2022 at 7:00 PM, sirlynxalot said:

I didn't quite follow how the controller interface was made

The two DB9 ports can be soldered to the proper pins on the 40-pin header and then you install and configure the proper driver needed.  Basically the controller is wired directly to the Raspberry Pi, so no USB adapter interface is needed.

 

On 9/23/2021 at 3:57 AM, Wizzard said:

What kind of stella core does it run? Regular or 2014 version?

My guess is he is using the default lr-stella, which is quite old.

 

It doesn't support newer homebrew and it only supports joystick games.

 

For other controller types, then you'd need a USB adapter, and you'd have to install the standard alone version of Stella.

 

But the current version of Stella does not run well on the Raspberry Pi 0

 

The last version of Stella that runs well on the RPi0 is ver5.0.2, so when I use a Raspberry Pi 0 in one of my Ultimate Atari Joystick builds, then I need to use that version.

 

I've been trying to get my hands on the new RPi0W-2 to see how that works with the newer versions of Stella, but the current chip shortage means Pis are hard to get these days.

 

[+fdr4prez]

On 3/6/2021 at 8:25 AM, gespy said:

Please let me know what you think about it.

You can add some configuration changes to hide that rainbow splash screen, and to hide the emulationStation splash screen.

 

It makes the boot up be more clean.

 

The boot process will give the impression that nothing is happening because those aren't shown - just a blank screen is displayed - but I like to hide those.

 

 

[gespy]

10 hours ago, fdr4prez said:

Unfortunately the spoken audio is quite soft to hear, so you increase the volume and then get blasted by the loud music 

 

That is indeed a problem. I recorded the spoken audio with my phone. In the video editing software the spoken audio is set to 100%. I need a better microphone and better video editing software. Thank you for your comments.

[gespy]

10 hours ago, fdr4prez said:

You can add some configuration changes to hide that rainbow splash screen, and to hide the emulationStation splash screen.

 

It makes the boot up be more clean.

 

The boot process will give the impression that nothing is happening because those aren't shown - just a blank screen is displayed - but I like to hide those.

 

 

I already had made sure that the linux bootlog was no longer visible, but I had not yet found how to configure that the Emulationstation splashscreen is not shown.

[+fdr4prez]

8 hours ago, gespy said:

I already had made sure that the linux bootlog was no longer visible, but I had not yet found how to configure that the Emulationstation splashscreen is not shown.

 

Hide emulationstation splashscreen

To hide the emulationstation splashscreen, edit the /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh file and add

 --no-splash

to it, so it looks like emulationstation --no-splash #auto

exit/save

reboot

 

Hide rainbow splashscreen

To hide the rainbow splashscreen, edit the /boot/config.txt

disable_splash=1

exit/save

reboot

 

obviously you can make both changes at the same time and reboot once

[+fdr4prez]

Not sure if you've done this change or not:

 

Stop shutdown/reboot messages onscreen during shutdown

Edit the /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/emulationstation.sh

find “sudo reboot” and replace with “sudo reboot --no-wall”

find “sudo poweroff” and replace with “sudo poweroff --no-wall”

exit/save

reboot

[+fdr4prez]

I like this one, too:

 

Speed Boot Process by not waiting for network

If there is no network cable connection and no wifi connection, then this can delay to the booting process.  The “wait for network” can be turned off in RASPI-CONFIG to help speed up the booting process.

 

Retropie (gamelist) > RASPI-CONFIG > System Options > S6 Network at Boot

Select NO

 

Even with this option set to NO, the Wifi and/or network cable will still connect.  This setting simply prevents the timeout delay during booting when there is no connectivity available.

[gespy]

After all the questions about the build, I have made a part 2 video, with complete building details:
 

And thank you fdr4prez, for the information.

[Zonie]

Nice. If I only had the time. I have the hardware...

Just need the time to hack it together and load it.

Do you share your SD card image?

[+fdr4prez]

On 2/25/2023 at 6:28 AM, gespy said:

After all the questions about the build, I have made a part 2 video, with complete building details:
 

And thank you fdr4prez, for the information.

Very good video!

[SevenTari]

Beautiful!

[Spanner]

On 2/25/2023 at 2:28 PM, gespy said:

After all the questions about the build, I have made a part 2 video, with complete building details:
 

And thank you fdr4prez, for the information.

I did this with a RPI1 and put it inside a Mega Drive and Mega CD cases, I downloaded the version of Retropie with Attract Mode so I could change its GUI and add videos of the games, Mega CD games videos mainly and run them at full screen so it looked like it was running the game by itself, this was before the ATGames MD(2017) and MD Mini was invented.

Edited May 9 by Spanner