Atari 2600 Video Mod
2013-07-16 09:46 - General
I found a video mod board for the Atari 2600 for sale online recently. I brought the Atari home from my Mom's last year around when I was assembling my video game console collection. But I never hooked it up; I can't do much with an RF modulator these days. Maybe the tuner part of the TV could handle it, but (very) brief attempts (with the probably-broken modulator boxes I have) proved fruitless. So when I found this, I thought I could hook it up easily!
I spent a few hours opening the thing up and soldering a bunch of connections. And a lot of work hacking the connectors into the back of the existing plastic console. I plugged it in and it ran the first time, both composite and S-Video worked great! But then I closed it up and it didn't work anymore. I just hot glued a few pieces into place to keep them from rattling, put the top on and screwed it in. I don't know what I could have broken. It was quite depressing to go so quickly from a worked-the-first-time modification to complete brokenness.
2013-07-16 19:34 - arantius
I've removed "failed" from the title of this post, because it's totally working! Turns out it was all user error. I had my inputs set wrong on the receiver, so it wasn't displaying the signal that the newly modded Atari was putting out. I opened the thing back up and checked every connection, and I couldn't find anything wrong. So I hooked it up again while it was still open, and that's when I realized what I had done wrong.
I also have now looked it up, and since this is a "heavy sixer" I know this particular console was from the first production year, and therefore older than I am!