Atari 2600 A/V/S-Video mod DONE!

...Seeing that the US is at the point of being quarantined for COVID-19, I figured that I should take some time to do some mods.

I failed the last time trying to make a decent A/V mod for my 2600 as I mentioned in my last blog. Well, I broke down and got an A/V mod board from eBay that's based off of The Longhorn Engineer's Mod.

I figured that I could use an S-Video "upgrade" for my 2600, so I bought it and was able to get to installing it today.

 I started by popping off the TIA from the mainboard, bending out the pins that needed to be bent, and replacing it. Behind the mainboard, I got the rest of the connections ready with wires soldered in. I used double sided foam tape to hold the mod board in place, then soldered all the mainboard connections to it. I used larger gauge wire for the power and ground connections.

Before finalizing the install, I tested it by connecting to loose connectors and tried it out on my monitor. Glad to say that all of it worked! The S-Video looked clean!

The kit came with some Cat5e cable. I drilled a hole in the side of the metal case and threaded the cable through it. I didn't have a grommet I could place in the hole to protect the wire, so I left the Cat5e cable intact so it would protect the wires inside. I forgot to knot the cable for stress relief, so I just used a couple of zip ties that I had.

 When it came time to drilling the holes for the 4 DIN connector for S-Video and the RCA jacks for audio and composite video, I had a mini-fail. The kit comes with really cheap RCA jacks, so when I tried tightening them up, I accidentally snapped one at the threads...which is par for course since I accidentally drilled one of the holes too close...it's been a minute since I've had to drill holes for connectors.

I had some spare RCA jacks that worked...ok...again, the holes were still close, but with the the way the jacks were made, I just drilled out the holes a bit more to space them out *kinda* evenly...I'm usually good at it, but since it's been a while, I didn't fare out so well. I did a nice job centering the S-Video jack, though, even if I do say so myself.

The S-Video jack came with a little PCB that snaps on and solders on to the back of the connector, making it easier to connect the Luma, Chroma, and Ground. Anyway, this is all the connectors wired up and done.

From initial testing, there were power problems. Turns out the flimsy ribbon cable was really bad. The plastic lamination was separating, causing the ribbon connections to fail. I ended up using some headers that I had from a previous project and some jumper wires that I got for the Atomiswave monitor.

I didn't get pics of the image. I got too excited when it worked, then had to take care of some business right after. But yeah, it is a mod worth doing, and I may be doing it to my Jr and also my Coleco Gemini. 

Stay tuned. More things (possibly) coming up!