Playing games at lower voltage (safer way to fry?)

[ttony_at]

I have no douth that frying, rapidly turning on/off the game, can cause

permanent damage. Power spikes are created that can't be any good.

 

(Turning the game on/off normally also cause spikes. But I'm guessing

these spikes are not timed close together as when you're frying; and so

not as damaging).

 

I don't recomend anyone fry their games, but there will always be

someone who will try, so...I know of a way to cause the same effects as

frying that MAY be safer (correct me if I'm wrong).

 

Dropping the voltage slowly from 9V to 7.5V will often be enough to cause

the same odd effects and malfunctions as frying. As soon as something

odd occurs in the game, I raise it to 8volts so the game doesn't crash.

I find most games will play at 8 volts. Other games will crash at 7.5 if you

leave it to long. In Adventure, dropping the voltage causes the line wall to

move around in the kingdom so that you can take alternate routes.

I find some AC adaptors work better then others: some games play OK at

7.5V with one adaptor, but won't with another.

 

Of course the best advise is not to do it at all! But there will always be

someone out there trying to fry a rare game and I feel that my method

may be helpful.

And I'm assuming that rapidly turning on/off switch when the voltage is

already low, should create lower voltage spikes that are not as damaging.

 

BTW, would games last longer if played at the lowest possible Voltage?

Or could this create some damage?

[Mindfield]

In any isolated system, the degree of disorder can only increase.

 

In other words it really doesn't matter what you do, it will cause damage in the long run. Frying will inevitably hasten the inevitable end.

 

Of course, that could take months, weeks, years, whether you fry or not. Right now, at least, we're not dealing with rare artifacts that would be hard to replace if the process of frying did more than just scramble memory addresses. I wouldn't go doing it on a heavy sixer, but if you've got a spare Jr. or vader or something, I say have fun. :-)

 

I discovered it myself when I was a kid (though I didn't know there was a term for it, or really that anyone else knew about this peculiarity) and thought it was pretty cool. It could make boring games interesting and interesting games surreal. :-)

[moycon]

Weird I fried every game I could back in the day. It was like a part of my gameplay. Never had an issue. I had that first Atari on up to the day I sold it about 6/7 years ago. Wish I had known frying would ruin my Atari, I wouldn't have done it.

[hex65000]

Here's my take on this one:

 

Hark back to the hardware forum and how much voltage you have to have above your regulated voltage to have a generally good output. The answer was about 3V. If you drop below that threshold, your regulator will start to sag out pretty quick. The result is that now all of your 5V logic ICs are now running at a lower voltage and bits are going to get misinterpreted or other interesting issues. If this is hard on the ICs can probably be debated. If done in a fairly smooth manner, you can probably reduce any of the harsher transient spikes that will hurt your equipment. Also realize, you get a small transient whe your power up your console. Proper filtering of power is the key element there.

 

The next question is what is happening when you toggle the power on and off rather quickly? My guess would be that you are doing something similar to the above only now you're jiggling the voltage around an awful lot. When you do a quick toggle or two, you still have capacitors with a charge that are going to discharge as soon as power is removed.

So lets say you turn the power off, the caps start discharging and the system is in its dying process. Then you toggle the power back on and the caps are charged again and everything goes back to normal logic levels. The result is really similar, but now you are introducing a pretty harsh transient into the equasion -- that would be rough on the logic ICs.

 

Lastly, overheating -- make sure that your 5V regulator is secured to the heat plate on the board, or you could add an extra heat sink if your'e ambitious. It's pretty easy to do and will keep your reguator running much cooler.

 

Hex.

[ Karma is the lazy man's revenge... ]

[ttony_at]

Hark back to the hardware forum and how much voltage you have to have above your regulated voltage to have a generally good output. The answer was about 3V.

 

Not sure I understand what you mean. I don't think games will play lower than about 7.5V.

 

Lastly, overheating -- make sure that your 5V regulator is secured to the heat plate on the board, or you could add an extra heat sink if your'e ambitious. It's pretty easy to do and will keep your reguator running much cooler.

Hex.

 

Now I'm really lost with this responce. What heat plate? What were we talking about?

[ttony_at]

Hey, how come my quoted text don't show properly?

[keilbaca]

Hark back to the hardware forum and how much voltage you have to have above your regulated voltage to have a generally good output. The answer was about 3V.

 

Not sure I understand what you mean. I don't think games will play lower than about 7.5V.

 

Lastly, overheating -- make sure that your 5V regulator is secured to the heat plate on the board, or you could add an extra heat sink if your'e ambitious. It's pretty easy to do and will keep your reguator running much cooler.

Hex.

 

Now I'm really lost with this responce. What heat plate? What were we talking about?

 

The reason is that that's the lowest voltage that the regulator will be able to convert down to 5v. When he says cutting it down to 3v, he means bypassing the regulator all in itself and sending 3v through the system.

[hex65000]

I shouldn't type when I'm tired.

 

To get a 5V output on a 7805 voltage regulator, the general rule of thumb is to have at least 8V going into the regulator (a 3V difference). If you drop below 8V, the output will start to sag below 5V.

 

The heat plate is the big blob of circuit trace that is directly underneath the 7805 regulator. That was Atari's solution for a heat sink. A proper heat sink will keep the voltage regulator cooler when its running. This isn't needed, but I think it's wise especially if your'e not a 'purist' on the originality of your hardware.

 

Linky from the hardware forum...

http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=42451

 

Does that help?

 

Hex.

[ just keeps making it worse... ]