My Atari Flashback 2 mod

[Bikeage]

A work in progress, but its all wired up and works! Now I can play 2600 games in beautiful composite video, not to mention it takes up less space than my old six switch beast. I mostly followed this guide http://www.moeproduction.com/atari.html and the ones referred to within.

All I have left to do is cut up the case for the cartridge slot, mount it, and add a small hole for the DPDT switch used to toggle between the built in and cartridge games. I've seen a few other mods that go beyond that, but the entire process has taught me not to bite off more than I can chew... soldering the pcb was brutal. I did quite a bit of soldering 20 years ago, in high school, but my crash course in tinning wires and solder points was nerve wracking. But nothing bridged, and I opted to hot glue a few sketchy joints rather than push my luck and add more solder, so I think its solid enough to put back together.

The pics are one with the console powered on and displaying the menu screen and the other with the switch flipped and Enduro in the cart slot. I'll post more pics when it's all done.

[Wurp]

Very cool. I would like to see pics when you've put it back together.

[Hobie-wan]

Aww, you could have had s-video out of the sixer.

Looks good. I think it's pretty cool that you can hack a bunch of these TV games. There have been Genesis ones with ports added and I'm pretty sure I read about the Commodore 64 one having a keyboard hacked to it.

[Hatta]

Now you just need to mount a Harmony cart in there.

[CRTGAMER]

Aww, you could have had s-video out of the sixer.

Looks good. I think it's pretty cool that you can hack a bunch of these TV games. There have been Genesis ones with ports added and I'm pretty sure I read about the Commodore 64 one having a keyboard hacked to it.

Nice job! A more compact "Woody" 2600. Agree with Hobie, go for S-Video. For all to see how cool this is, grabbed a screenshot from that site:


I read about that Commodore stick too. The C64 stick has solder pads for PC PS2 connection keyboard and 1541 drive.

Found it, Bookmarked both.
Geeze there was a Hummer C64 TV game too.
http://galaxy22.dyndns.org/dtv/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV

[Bikeage]

.....And I fucked it up. Long story short, after testing it again, I did the case mod, and put it all together, which all took several hours, and all I got was screen garbage when I powered it on. The more I poked around the worse it went, and it got ugly. I accidentally loosened some connections, and in trying to fix them only made things worse. And when I decided to just scrap it and salvage the Flashback 2 at least, I could not do that either. for a while I was still getting lines and sound onscreen, but more fucking around resulted in nothing at all when I powered on, so i'm pretty sure I burned a trace up, theres some likely suspects on the board.

So i'm just gonna get another FB2 and try again. I'm kicking myself for passing one up on Ebay last month for dirt cheap, like less than $15 w/ shipping. This project is getting expensive, but educating. Hope the next one goes better.... but at least, for a while, it did work.

[bacteria]

FB2 is a NOAC, yes? (like other clones)

[Bikeage]

FB2 is a NOAC, yes? (like other clones)

Yes, I believe it is, and if anyone wants the Flashback 2 pcb I screwed up for parts PM me and its yours for only shipping.

I got another one off of Ebay and will give it another go soon, at least I already have the majority of it done. What screwed me the first attempt was really basic stuff that I should have gone over in soldering 101, so hopefully I learn from my mistakes.

[zxqdms]

Cool project. I've been thinking about trying to mod my flashback 2 as well. Where did you get the cart slot? From the site you linked to, it appears that he took it out of a 2600. Is that what you did, or can you buy slots somewhere?

[Bikeage]

I got the cart connector from a Sears 2600 clone advertised as non working as is from Ebay... I made a huge mistake when I had trouble trying to desolder the pins on the connector off the board and decided to cut it out. I did not have wire cutters that could reach such a small space, so I used the large cutter/stripper I had and ended up cutting them way too short, leaving a good inch or so of pins still on the board in a bunched up mess.

I should been patient and went out the next day and got a cheapie small one that would have reached in there better. The problem that came out of this was that I had to cut down the case covering connector quite a bit for the pins to be exposed and able to connect to the board I was transferring it to. This results in the cartridges not seating deep enough... enough to make a connection, but some pop back up or sit too loosely. So I may try lengthening the pins with wire and using spacers to raise it all a little, if I get it all working.

I do not have a cartidge guide that would go around the connector. I thought they were loose, and maybe they are in some models, but the one I got has it molded into the aluminum shielding sitting underneath the case. Something comparable going around the hole I cut in the case would be more cosmetically appealing, but for now i'm still trying to make it all work. Edging it off with and covering the exposed cartridge board with black tape will work, and I have an extra case to fuck around with in the future.

I got another FB2, this time a different board revision than the one in the guides I had been using. Not a big deal, the solder points are laid out better but adding a switch to toggle between built in and cart games is a slightly different process. I had to figure out that I needed a SPST switch instead of the DPDT switch that the guide called for, and it seems to work, as I can switch between the built in games and..... screen garbage, I can't get the cart slot to work.

I either have the order of the pins from the connector messed up, which is possible, but I did write down what was what after I got it wrong the first time, a wrong or bad connection on the FB2 pcb, or the connections on the cartridge board are shitty from soldering and desoldering too many times.

Checking the FB2 board for mistakes is going to take me awhile because everything is so jammed together and the last thing I want to do is loosen or lose a connection. I had much better results soldering everything this time, I used a thinner gauge of solder, but mostly because I tinned every point on the board and the wires first... not doing that was a newbie mistake I made on the first one I tried, and not only does it look much cleaner, if I do have to go back and correct something on there there's less chance of me doing permanent damage.

So at least the built in games still work, if nothing else I hope to at least salvage that. Here are some pics of the new FB2 board wired up, the cartridge connector, and the slot I cut open in the top of the case. Sorry for the poor quality, all I have at the moment is a laptop webcam.