Atari 2600

Nice wood boxes are available at places like JoAnn Fabrics and Michaels for about $5-$15. Easy to cut/work with. They look great painted or finished. Great, simple case for a first portable!

This method works nicely if you want a slightly inexpensive yet very professional looking case. The only thing that can get frustrating is the built-in walls on the inside of most tackle boxes. Pretty much the only way to get rid of these is to melt them off completely using a soldering iron, and fuse/screw on a new, flat plastic sheet to take its place.

This is a diagram of everything you need to get an atari to work. I drew it up to help all those out there who want to make an atari portable! Have Fun!

This is a picture and numbering of a Pal 2600. It isn't tested but should work.

When I built my 2600 SP, I had a lot of trouble with the paddles since there weren't any how-to's available. There were so many different things I tried, but none of them worked. If you decided that you want to make a VCSp, you're in luck, because you can use this how-to I made and get it done in less than 20 minutes (excluding time to get the soldering iron warmed up and stuff)

To start, desolder a .068 uF capacitor from what you left behind after cutting the board down to a 4x4" square. If you didn't do that yet, nor have any plans to, you may skip this step. If you threw that away and cant get it back, get a .022 and a .047 cap and wire them in a parallel connection. Wire one end to the ground, and the other to Stella pin X*

Next, get a 1 Mohm potentiometer. This can be from an old paddle set, but I would recomend getting a new potentiometer from radioshack so you can put your own knob on more easily. Connect 5 volts to one pin, and connect the middle pin to pin X* on the Stella.

* Stella pin X changes depending on which player you are using. Player 1 uses pin 40, player 2 uses pin 39, player 3 uses pin 38, and player 4 uses pin 37.

For this project you will need the following things:

1. a small, flathead screwdriver and a regular phillips screwdriver
2. a pack or 1kohm resistors (radioshack cat. 271-1118)
3. a pack of .1uF capacitors (radioshack cat. 272-1069)
4. wire, solder, and a soldering iron (duh)
5. (optional) perf board for mounting (radioshack cat. 276-148)

Open up the 2600 and take off the RF shielding. Using a small (non-magetic) screwdriver, pry out the stella chip. On the 4-switch versions (and I believe the 6-switch ones), the stella is not soldered in, only pressed into a socket type thing, which is soldered to the motherboard.

Find pins 12 and 13. Bend them outward so they do not go back into the socket. This separates the 2 audio channels.

Push the stella back in the socket, but make sure it isn't upside down.

Now that you have the stella in place, power pins 12 and 13 with 5 volts and 2kohms (2 1kohm resistors) in between. Attach a .1 uF capacitor to each pin, and your audio out wires to the capacitors. Now you have audio out.

My 2600 built into a dreamcast controller is finally done, started over a year ago (some of you (Hi Ben!) saw the rough version at CGE2k1). Screen provided by an RCA 2.5inch lcd tv, in fact it still works as a tv. Input/output jack so 2600 AV can be sent to an external tv or some other console can be displayed on the LCD. Power supplied directly from 2 6v RC Nimh batteries, maybe 3 hours of life between recharges. The standard 2600 3-chip schematic (minus regulator and modulator) is handwired onto a breadboard.

Complete schematics of the Atari 2600. Used with permission from AtariAge