"2600 Plus" My modernized 2600 console project

[john_q_atari]

Earlier this year I took it upon myself to cross a long standing item off my bucket list: to finally get around to creating my own printed circuit board (PCB) and having it professionally manufactured. Choosing what sort of circuit to implement for my PCB was easy. The Atari 2600! At the end of last year I had assembled a 2600 on a breadboard. This ended up being ideal as it allowed me to easily experiment with many different video circuits and validate the final schematic design I chose to implement. The features I ended up implementing in the 2600 Plus were:

 

power selectable between DC power adapter (wall wart) or USB-C cable

push button power switch

integrated pause function

integrated composite/svideo output

stereo/mono selectable sound

and leaving enough space on the board to accommodate some 3M ZIF sockets I had acquired

 

The bare (unpopulated) PCB:

 

 

My completed board with ZIF sockets:

 

 

And the 2600 Plus playing my favorite Atari 2600 game from back in the day, Pitfall II!

 

 

I am really happy with how the video came out. I ended up adapting the video circuit from the 576NUC+ project to interface with the TIA chip as it gave the best video output of the various video circuits I had tried. All in all the 2600 Plus was a fun project to work on and now I have my new favorite version of the 2600!

 

[Astal4]

Cool project! I'd love to see a version of this compatible with the 2600 Jr case!

 

Reminds me of the Macintosh reloaded boards.

[+SvOlli]

Neat! Do you plan to open source your efforts? I've got also building my own slightly enhanced 2600 on my todo list, and would take any shortcut available. No need reinventing the wheel more than necessary.

[john_q_atari]

8 hours ago, SvOlli said:

Neat! Do you plan to open source your efforts? I've got also building my own slightly enhanced 2600 on my todo list, and would take any shortcut available. No need reinventing the wheel more than necessary.

Not at this time, but I'd be happy to answer any questions and perhaps provide schematics of various circuits. I started with the 2600 schematics here on atariage and modified and added to them for the 2600 Plus. Just PM me with any questions you have and I'm sure I can help you out with your design. 

[+Andrew Davie]

Nice. And now it needs to be pushed by modern homebrews/demos just to see if we can break it

 

[john_q_atari]

3 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

Nice. And now it needs to be pushed by modern homebrews/demos just to see if we can break it

 

Thanks! I have Super Cobra arcade, Thrust, Draconian, Wizard of Wor I can try on it later today. I have a harmony encore so if there is a particular homebrew/rom I should try if someone can point me to it I can give that a try as well. My expectation is that the 2600 Plus should be 100% compatible with the original 2600 as it pretty much is an original, with some mods, and of course the metal traces on the circuit board are different. I also have the pluscart so I suppose I can try some of those enabled games as well.

Edited October 13, 2022 by john_q_atari

[MrMaddog]

Thank You.....

 

I mean it, we do need a modern 2600 clone to play current homebrew and even Atari's own repro carts. 

 

I have two broken models and no means nor time to fix any of them.  And even if I can find one for sale at a used game store, selling for hundreds of $$, there's no guarantee it's been tested to work.

 

 

[Keatah]

To make a clone, another VCS has to give up its chipset.

[+x=usr(1536)]

1 minute ago, Keatah said:

To make a clone, another VCS has to give up its chipset.

True, but if the donor is one that is otherwise beyond realistic repair, it's a better use of the chipset than just chucking it.

[Keatah]

Agree. The only remaining parts of my VCS are the main chips. So this could be a good project. If I was making this, I might build in a Harmony/Melody subsystem, atarivox, and savekey. Selectable with a hard toggle switch, and not that softswitch crap so popular these-a days. Those are battle-tested add-ons that are useful. Just musing. Practical and useful or not? Idunno.

[john_q_atari]

57 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

True, but if the donor is one that is otherwise beyond realistic repair, it's a better use of the chipset than just chucking it.

There are some pretty nasty 2600's on Ebay from time to time. I have one arriving today that has broken off front toggle switches. Could it be repaired? Probably. But with millions of 2600s produced it's more attractive to me to just scavenge the useful bits from it for a new system.

Edited October 13, 2022 by john_q_atari
fixing grammar

[+x=usr(1536)]

33 minutes ago, john_q_atari said:

There are some pretty nasty 2600's on Ebay from time to time. I have one arriving today that has broken off front toggle switches. Could it be repaired? Probably. But with millions of 2600s produced it's more attractive to me to just scavenge the useful bits from it for a new system.

Same.  I've bought a number of machines listed as non-working with the expectation that they don't actually work and, worst case, provide a parts source to strip from.

 

What's surprising to me is how many machines that apparently don't work actually do.  My guess is that someone plugs the RF output into a composite jack, doesn't get a picture, and sends it to the nearest online auction as result.  Or they don't have a PSU for it, or any of another thousand small reasons.

[Keatah]

23 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

What's surprising to me is how many machines that apparently don't work actually do.

I'm still quite beside myself for having fixed a monitor on the fritz a few weeks ago. Same situation. Seller said monitor didn't turn on. And in older LCD monitors You've got 3 main modules, the LCD panel, the inverter/power board, and the controller board.

 

I needed the panel. And since the monitor didn't turn on I figured (correctly) the power board was bad. It just needed recapping. And a good thing too. This brand/model has known bad caps that fail right after the warranty expires - shutting down the whole shebang.

 

So this monitor died early, and thus had minimal use. Essentially got everything new and on the cheap! Essentially a new car not being used because the customer didn't know about putting air in the tires or charging the battery.

Edited October 13, 2022 by Keatah

[CapitanClassic]

41 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I'm still quite beside myself for having fixed a monitor on the fritz a few weeks ago. Same situation. Seller said monitor didn't turn on. And in older LCD monitors You've got 3 main modules, the LCD panel, the inverter/power board, and the controller board.

I have attempted to fix LCD tvs, but wouldn’t trust myself around one of the old CRTs. It makes me nervous knowing that you need to discharge the giant capacitor on those tvs. I had to correct an issue with a dish washer pump/filter, and the capacitor on that thing was massive (I was very careful when handling it).

 

It does feel great to fix your own stuff though. It’s too bad society has moved toward planed obsolescence.

[+Andrew Davie]

Me, if making "improvements" I'd make a hard-switchable toggle between NTSC/PAL/SECAM systems.  I guess that would be crystals and TIAs. Anything else?

One console to rule them all...

[+x=usr(1536)]

47 minutes ago, Andrew Davie said:

Me, if making "improvements" I'd make a hard-switchable toggle between NTSC/PAL/SECAM systems.  I guess that would be crystals and TIAs. Anything else?

RF modulators, some capacitors, some resistors, and more that others who have actually done scantype conversions (unlike me) can speak to

 

Honestly, this would be best handled by a compact circuit on its own board using modern analogue TV output ICs.  The amount of space needed otherwise for through-hole components would be not inconsiderable.

[WhyLee commotari.club]

12 hours ago, Keatah said:

To make a clone, another VCS has to give up its chipset.

i personally don't have a problem with that. but i would perfer it to fit in the original case. i would even vote for creating a sort of compatible new 6er case with the option to place the joystick ports in front. maybe kind of interchangeable bezel/cover on the lower front if there is a pcb with front joystick ports or not.
and the same thing in the back to have different connection options.
but making a new injection mould for a new case is really expensive.

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by WhyLee commotari.club

[+Atari_Warlord]

I noticed the desire for composite/S-Video in the first post.  Would HDMI also work with something like this, or is that just not feasible with the TIA chip involved?  It seems like that is the one piece missing for making a modern 2600 console that doesn't use emulation.

[Keatah]

59 minutes ago, Atari_Warlord said:

Would HDMI also work with something like this, or is that just not feasible with the TIA chip involved?

Should work just fine. Only issue is waiting for someone to take up the challenge.

[Matt300ZXT]

Oh that is awesome! I'd almost be tempted to buy one and build it to use as a test bench for chips when I get them in on Ataris that need some tlc.  Are you going to market the boards?

[TrekMD]

This is coolness at its best!

[M-S]

If you were going to sell this, what would be the price considering what you used?

I think it would be possible to use UMC 6502 chips to replace the CPU, but the TIA has no modern replacements other than FPGA.

4 hours ago, Atari_Warlord said:

I noticed the desire for composite/S-Video in the first post.  Would HDMI also work with something like this, or is that just not feasible with the TIA chip involved?  It seems like that is the one piece missing for making a modern 2600 console that doesn't use emulation.

I think HDMI would increase the cost quite a bit since the console would need an internal scaler, maybe a quality Composite/S-Video/RGB combined with an external scaler would be a better solution.

Edited October 18, 2022 by M-S

[WhyLee commotari.club]

12 hours ago, M-S said:

I think HDMI would increase the cost quite a bit since the console would need an internal scaler, maybe a quality Composite/S-Video/RGB combined with an external scaler would be a better solution.

Maybe the RGB2HTMI would be an interesting solution. The three Lumina bits are good to go into the Raspberry Zero but I think the demodulation of the phase shifts might be tricky. don't know if the RGB2HDMI project can handle a chroma signal.

[john_q_atari]

When I originally thought of the idea 3 or 4 years ago I considered adding HDMI into the mix. The more I thought about it I realized the end result would probably look like integrating in a retrotink or OSSC type circuit into the design with all the attendant complexities and costs.  I decided to drop the idea of HDMI awhile back to keep the potential project easier to implement. When I finally executed on designing the 2600 Plus earlier this year my main goals were to learn KiCAD and use it to design my own PCB, and to do that through a what I thought of as a cool project. HDMI had to go, at least for this project. I also considered supporting Tim Worthington's 2600RGB board and/or the UAV board. I decided I didn't want to up the cost of the design plus there is a certain satisfaction of implementing all parts of the design myself without using 3rd party add-on boards.

[hizzy]

Stunning! I will take three!!!! Wow!!