Handheld Atari 2600 VCSp

Mzilikazi writes: "This enterprising chap, Benjamin J. Heckendorn, has taken the chips out of an Atari 2600 and hacked together his very own portable VCS! The site has a lot of detailed information and photographs detailing the construction of the unit. The screen came from an old Casio handheld television, and yes, it does feature an attractive woodgrain case. "

Comments

Hack suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

One suggested improvement for amazing project would be a little extra effort on the power supply. The suggestion is motivated by the need to extend battery life.

There are several approaches. They depend on what voltages are used by the Atari. As far as I know, most of the Atari actually runs off 5 volts, so it could be run directly off the 3 AA cells. Find the voltage regulator (probably a simple 3 lead TO220 device) and remove it. This linear regulator probably sucks up half the energy coming from the 9 volt battery. Feed the output point directly from the 3 AA cells (4.5 V). Now only part that requires thought is to figure out if the 9 volts are used for anything else. If not you could eliminate the 9 volt battery completely. There is one possible gotcha in that the polarity with respect to ground of the 3 AA cells might be wrong. Verify that the polarity is right. If it is not right, read on.

A good refinement of this hack would be to construct a simple switching regulator with one of those ICs that need only a couple external parts (usually miniature toroid and a capacitor). This would be a better way to feed the Atari because the voltage seen by the Atari circuitry would be independent of what state of charge the 3 AA cells were in. Also, if there were polarity considerations, an inverting regulator could be used. This technique could also be used if a voltage other than 5 volts were needed elsewhere.

Finally, by using a switching regulator, and finding room for an extra AA cell, you would really have even longer long battery life. Power the the screen from the current setup, but feed the switcher from the extra cell at the top of the stack. By the way, the switching regulator circuit would not take up more than a square inch of space.

Worth a new Casio TFT TV?

[zlite]

The intro says an old Casio, but it looks new to me. It appears that he actually bought one just for the screen, throwing out the rest. There's got to be a cheaper way to get small TFTs.

For the VCS fan

[10.0.0.1]

This movie clip is almost as cool as the toy.