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Games Entertainment

Handheld Atari 2600 VCSp 80

Posted by Hemos from the cool-hack dept.
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. "
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Handheld Atari 2600 VCSp More

Handheld Atari 2600 VCSp

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  • Cute...now if only I knew who it was in the picture.
  • It's just a virtual domain...it points straight down the hole (heh...sorry) of Goatsex.
  • They're Brazilian, and that's portugese. You can download the EP that the track comes from here:

    http://website.lineone.net/~london.burning/ep004.h tml [lineone.net]

  • Actually, the PSX does have a lightshow of some sort to go along when you're playing music CDs. You can even modify it a bit with the controller. But really, unless you're having a rave in your house, it gets kinda boring :)
  • Has there been any word from Atari yet? They're still out there aren't they? I remember something about a 64-bit system a while back.

    The Jaguar was, like most other of their later products, killed by stupid marketing, low volume, and not realizing software sells systems, not the other way around. I presume there was a limit to the number of times you could play Tempest 2000 until it got boring.

    However, they did have a portable system - the Lynx - which beat the Gameboy in every respect except the three that counted:

    1. Marketing (Nintendo, you know)
    2. Power consumption
    3. It didn't ship with Tetris
    The VCSp seems to comsume even more power than Sega's GameGear, so I doubt anyone would be interested in marketing such a thing. Even though I would definitely buy one, just to play Haunted House again...
  • Just thinking, how much of an ATARI VCS you could get on a modern FPGA... CPU+IO+Video+RAM on one chip and maybe an external DAC to make the video signal. Would be cool...
  • If you look in the back of Discover or Popular Science magazines, there is usually a couple ads for those sort of machines. I think you are still looking at $1k-$2k though.

    -james
  • THAT was awesome...... I just wish it were higher-res...but what am I saying..they were just pixels!

    Very cool though.

    -Julius X
  • My life is now complete, I can die a happy man.

    A new awards ceremony/show should be made, that clip wins every year until Sol collapses and we all die.

    Geoff
  • Atari probably wouldn't consider this violating any copy protection mechanism.
    The only thing they MIGHT do is copy the machine and say "It's ours so your portable is also ours" stuff all the software on one box (one rom) and sell it for like $50 as a handheld toy for geeks, yuppys and people who want 1980s memorabila. As well as kids and well.. teachers trying to teach history... (Oh gods. yeah 1980s is history now...)
  • Well... yes, "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In a Cave and Grooming with a Pict" rules. In fact, so does the enire album. But, you have to admit that Pink Floyd has been past their prime since "Dark Side of the Moon" and should have quit altogether when Roger left.
  • My God, I had to ... sheeesh, this was excellent! that movie gets burned to a CD and saved for all time

    ---
  • Now, if he started selling them, I would by a caseload :)

    -m

  • If I don't bork up the html, take a look at Jeff's page [magicnet.net]. There some screens of his latest stuff. It's not been updated too recently though...
  • Absolutely,

    I got so burned out on Floyd, and thought the pretty worthless, but that's because my high school friends only played Dark Side and later, and played, and played.

    Then I started getting live Floyd from 71 and 72, whoa. Set Your Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Fat Old Sun, trippier than 90% of the Dead's output.

    George

  • I think it's the ultimate '70s flashback!

    George
  • Jee
    Sus
    Kee
    Rist

    That was insanely funny. Don't bail before you see the Matrix bit, I damn near spit beer out my nose!


    Regards, your friendly neighbourhood cranq
  • My God! I now have religion! I now worship whoever made this video.
  • Wasn't Starcraft on the 2600?? ? . .I musta played the hell out of that game . .it was amazing.
  • I think a better question would be "Is Atari even a company anymore?". Even if they were, I bet they dont even have enough money for a cheap Vientnamese hooker; let alone fund legal prosecution of every person who decides to make their own portable atari.
  • Now I can play Haunted House while waiting for the bus!
  • Just make sure you don't bring one to next year's Republican National Convention.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • Look at these great badass Prev/Next buttons, it ought to be Whistler influence. I knew big folders were coming, but not that big..

  • Wow... Just, wow. This is, like, the coolest thing ever made by humans. Like, ever. I'm speechless.

    So when do the mass produced models come out? Although a better solution would probably be to shove an emulator on a gameboy advance or something, THAT'S NOT THE POINT!!!(*#@$(^

  • I hope iot plays all my old games.
    Now if I can just find that atari box in the attic.
  • "Sheesh, there always has to be one asshole in the group with some stupid criticism."

    I know the feeling...
  • No trouble navigating this site...

    Those are the largest "next" and "prev" buttons I've ever seen! =)
    Kinda like the giant number buttons on my nearly blind Grandfather's telephone.

    (..aww, come on... please don't troll me. It is funny, isn't it??)

  • but since they are gone, its dobtful you will ever hear anyone complaining about anything you do with Atari hardware.

    Yep. Plus, Hasbro released all rights to develop for the Jaguar. Damn Tramiels... If it weren't for them, Atari would probably still be alive today.
  • I've always avoided the Atari Lynx because of what I had read about the resolution on screen:

    Atari Lynx_____________: 160x102
    Game Boy/GB color______: 160x144
    Game Gear_____________: 160x144
    Game.Com_____________: 200x160, touchscreen (in 8x8 blocks)
    Neo Geo Pocket/NGP Color: 160x152

    (Color doesn't mean much to me)

    However, this Lynx FAQ [landfield.com] says that a "160 x 102 "triad" standard resolution (16,320 addressable pixels) (A triad is three LCD elements: red, green, and blue) [A] Capability of 480 x 102 artificially high resolution" is possible.

    Sounds squished. Can I flip it sideways and play shooter games that work better with a tall screen, like on the WonderSwan?
  • Maybe he found a way to write a TCP/IP stack and graphical web browser to fit into the 2600's memory. The big buttons are easier to see on the tiny display. ;)

    I remember back around `83 our whole class went on a field trip from upstate New York to Niagra Falls. One kid had a 2600 that his dad had stripped down and a "portable" (by early `80's standards) TV, along with a battery pack to run 'em. He played Atari games on the bus, and we were all envious as hell.

    I never thought I'd see something like this. Absolutely beautiful.

    -Cybrex
  • We all know he is a karma whore. Who cares? In case you are reading this Signal11, what are you up to? Have you made it to 1000 karma yet? You could be a record holder!

  • The 64-bit atari system was the Jaguar. It had only a few good games (Iron Soldier [only the first one],and Alien vs. Predator) and almost no third party support. THe controller was big and kinda bulky, with a 12-button keypad like a phones. It came out around 1994 (i think) and lasted for 2 or 3 years. Some older issues of EGM or Game Informer should have some reviews.
    Rock 'n Roll, Not Pop 'n Soul
  • That is definetly the coolest thing I've seen all week, but geez what kind of life does this guy lead?

    I'm thinking about grabbing the old intellivision or coleco adam out of the garage and sending it to this guy as a sort of demonic torture experiment.....

  • Yep, it came with a keypad, I've still got mine.
  • Don't you mean Star Raiders? I loved that game.
  • thanks for taking the bait, you simple motherfucker. i worded it that way to see who would be the first unoriginal bitch to reply with that lame comeback.

    Arch, you win the blue ribbon.

  • well, when you go ahead and build your own device, why don't you get a cheaper TFT, you fucking idiot.

    Sheesh, there always has to be one asshole in the group with some stupid criticism.

  • or even *gasp* spending time OFF of the computer for a while

    Okay, I'll admit it. I had to read that last bit twice before I realized that "OFF" wasn't some computer acronym that I didn't realize.

    "Oh-eff-eff? What the heck is an oh-eff-eff?"

    hymie3

  • Oh, Sears didn't clone anything. The Telegames was just a private label release of the 2600. Sears was so big that they could, in effect, commission Atari to customize the case, just as Black and Decker (among many others) have customized tools for them as Craftsman. Sears has never, to my knowledge, actually owned a factory, but instead carefully subbed it out. (They financed Schwinn Way Back When so as to have a reliable source of bicycles).

    OTOH, I'm sure Atari went through several iterations of the Stella, and one of the things that kept the VCS cheap was broad tolerances (and forgiving gamers).

    Remember, too, that home television has always driven color purists mad. NTSC, it has been said, stands for Never The Same Color, and that's about right. Walk into your local Sears (I used to work there) (well, probably not in yours) and go to the Wall of Eyes in 57 and watch the different renditions on each set. Twenty years ago it was worse, so the chip didn't have to be terribly consistent.

    In fact, when my game was tested for Europe, we just dropped the cart into a PAL 2600 plugged into a PAL set (special wiring for that, of course, 220 single phase and maybe 50 HZ, or it may have been a cleverly designed frequency-tolerant set), said, "Well, those are colors, anyway. Not the same colors, but... Hell with it - ship it!"

  • Well, the 64 was bankswitched more or less manually, in that the program had to reach out and change its own world. Wire it up like that and a 4004 could address megabytes.

    The 6510 did, however, have a serial port on board, although I don't recall it being used for much of anything in the 64. (Unless that was the bank switch...anybody remember?)

    Oh, and as long as we're going after nits , it was MOS Technology, not Mostek. Easily confused.

  • No they weren't. The 6507 and the RIOT, yeah, but not the Stella, and w/out the Stella you haven't got much of an Atari.
  • I wasn't completely sure until I looked it up, although I have a dim visual memory of the Programmer's Ref card on the 6510, and the MOS Tech logo was co-prominent w/ the Commodore logo.

    I'm not even sure that the on-chip serial port was used for much of anything. My feeling is that the 6510 was built to be a more comprehensive controller chip, and was used in the C64 mostly because why not? when you own the chip company, you might as well use the latest and greatest. That, or maybe as the later design it could be more cheaply manufactured. As I recall, that extra port took a lot of hand-holding, whereas a RIOT or something would do most of that for you (but it's been almost a Slashdot reader ago that I did this stuff).

    Yes, a converter to bump up to RS-232 rings a bell. Then again, you needed some sort of converter to plug almost anything into a Commie. I was sort of surprised they didn't make us wear special gloves to type on them.

  • perhaps the coolest thing ever done. ever. now if we could just hack the 2600 version of Pac Man so it's not a complete pile of !#@$%...
  • First some nitpicking:

    1) On page4.html he writes that the Commodore64 used the 6502 processor. I am pretty sure this is wrong. The C64 used a special variant of the 6502 known as the 6510. It was able to address about 128k by switching RAM/ROM banks 16k at a time.

    2) On page5.html he writes "lone gone" when I think he meant "long gone."

    I love this project! It is the absurd waste of time kind-of-thing that I wish I had the time and talent to do.

    PS - Page6.html mentions "the Computerized Router that I used to make the case." What the hell is that and where can I get one?
  • Very cool; but who are these http://www.goldenshower.gs [goldenshower.gs] people? The site seems to be in something like Spanish. Does anyone know what country ".gs" stands for?
  • Not to detract from the sheer awesomeness of the hack, but is it really "woodgrain' when he appears to have used actual wood? I mean, I thought woodgrain implied a certain level of cheezy 1970's fakeness.

    It does just make the thing look better (than a real 2600) of course, and he did do a really nice job on the shroud.
  • Actually.. look in the background of this video.. the man has a doily on the table. This proves he is really stuck in the 60s-70s and need to make a handheld trash-80 with an integrated walkman tape drive.

  • before he gets a cease and decist and has to take down his web page for infringing.

  • Wasn't that the game that had the extra controller with just buttons?

  • Too cool... I used to love that game. It was a nice precursor to games like Elite.

  • hey -- why doesn't he SELL the design to Atari?
  • Harkening back to my wood shop days of junior and senior high school, I recall that a 'router' of that variety was a wood moulding and shaping tool. The best ones were power tools. *Obligatory Tim Allen grunt* I would imagine that his 'Computerized Router' is along the same lines, only able to work with more materials than wood (namely, plastic) and somehow in a more robotic-style form so that he doesn't have to shout, "OH BLOODY HELL!," should he happen to get an itch on his nose and his hand slips while working with it manually. He can just blame the software instead.

    Sounds like fun. :)

  • Now, who whats to try out making a comidore pet laptop?
  • There's similar consumer version on the market called Master Boy [konsolen.de].

    Nonetheless, a cool project.
  • THAT VIDEO WAS KICK ASS!! I'm rolling on the floor.... :) >LM
  • Just make sure you don't bring it to the democractic convention... Algore will say that HE invented it!!!!!!!!!!! BAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!! >LM
  • Right. See, for instance, the description [webcom.com] of the Intellivision System Changer, which made it possible to play Atari 2600 games on an Intellivision II. The thing was actually a complete clone of an Atari 2600 that only used the Intellivision for its power supply and RF modulator. (Intellivision IIs had an external video input pin on their cartridge port; original Intellivisions could be retrofitted to have one as well.)

    Mattel was, it appears, the first company to do this; Atari threatened to sue them, but the 2600 contains no copyrightable software (as the Intellivision and Colecovision did) and all off-the-shelf hardware (basically, three chips), so they really had no grounds to sue. Afterwards, other manufacturers began making 2600 clones.

    The rest of that site [webcom.com] is also very good; it provides some interesting insights into, not only the Intellivision game system, but the people behind it and the dynamics of the early-80's video game market. Recommended.

    Eric
    --

  • Just do a quick web search on it (Casio EV-550). Maybe he got it used, but it's not like this is some ancient device that he pulled off the trash heap. He's even got the original box for it!
  • You realize this is a violation of the DMCA, don't you? By removing those chips and reconfiguring them, you are bypassing a copy protection mechanism - namely, by desoldering!

    Atari's gonna come after you and poke you many times with a soldering iron, da?

    --

  • Sega Saturn (as well as PSX) also has a lightshow built in.
  • Atari is now owned by Hasbro.

    Since he didn't actually copy any of their stuff, only modified it, they can't complain.

    Now if he started selling these things, they might take note.
  • Yes. The Commodore 64 was a Mostek 6510, a variation on the 6502.
    Almost identical.

    It was able to address any amount of memory through paging.
  • MOS Tech. Not Mostek. Argh. Silly me.

    It did have a serial port, and no, I don't hink it was the bank switch.

    It wasn't rs232.. I believe the signalling was intact, but it was at ttl (or cmos) levels instead of rs232 levels, so you needed a powered converter.

  • Actually, the other great game for the Jaguar was Tempest 2K.

    The system also had, near the end, a CD player [gamma.nic.fi] (which sat on top of the unit making it look a bit like a toliet). As far as I remember there were really no good CD games - however, it did have a Jeff Minter lightshow (think winamp visual plugin) built in for playing CD's! That's the only reason I still hook mine up at all. It was such a great idea, I can't believe that no system since has included a lightshow of some sort for CD's.
  • Haven't you ever heard of hobbies? Those are the sorts of things people do during their free time because they enjoy them. Some of us may enjoy reading slashdot over and over and over again. Or hacking the linux kernel, or coding a new GUI, or playing quake, or designing a new e-theme, or even *gasp* spending time OFF of the computer for a while.

    This guy decided to convert an old Atari system to a portable unit. Nothing he did by doing this caused me any direct or indirect grief, so I can't possibly think of any reason why he shouldn't do it.

    Others may say he's wasting his talent on a useless project. Certainly, the potential use for a portable game system that is 20 years old might be limited, but all effort put towards these types of projects is experience toward other types of projects. This is a person who thinks up neat things. The next neat thing he thinks up and builds might a revolutionary PDA which nobody will consider wasted talent.

    I'm sure he's quite content with his life the way it is. :)

    -Restil
  • Well, you could always build one...

    Nuts and Volts magazine ran a series of articles (later condensed into a small booklet for subscribers) a while back detailing how to do it (make the X/Y table, the Z head, adding a Dremel), but it could still set you back a grand...

    Here in Phoenix, I was milling (no pun intended) around a place downtown (behind BOB), called Equipment Exchange - pretty cool place. Lots of chip fab equipment, much of it in VERY used condition - but there were a few gems. My favorite devices were the industrial robots (they actually had a Unimate! The thing was HUGE!). But one thing I did find in the expansive warehouse (it has to be seen to be believed), was three or four assembling tables of some sort (I think they were for SMT work, but not sure - for like auto-gluing of chips, or something).

    Each table had a small X/Y board, with nice lead screws, and a small Z head. Each lead screw was powered by a stepper, with extremely smooth movement. The table even had a custom XT mounted on it.

    I didn't ask the price of anything I saw (for one, I didn't know who to ask, as I was the only person in the warehouse, and two, it seemed like most of the stuff was out-of-range pricewise for me, and I didn't really have much need for any of it - I was just checking the place out), so I don't know how much one cost - but I imagine they might let you have one for a few hundred (for all I know, maybe even less!)...

    Anyhow, that is what I found - so a homebrew job might be possible, if you know where to shop.

    BTW (and totally OT): All you Apple IIe nuts in Phoenix: there was a stash of HUNDREDS of Apple IIe floppies in the bottom of the warehouse - in a couple of cases, they were in fair condition - I would guess around 1000 floppies total. Many cool programs (I found several Eamon disks in the stack).

    I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
  • If you read the about the creator section of the web site it mentions that he has access to the design and milling equipment at work, not personally owned stuff.

    Though you might want to check educational electronics catalouges, I seem to remember playing with very basic CAM setup in a highschool technology class about 5-6 years ago, worked with an Apple ][ iirc, and could only mill plastic.

  • This device reminds me of the TV Boy:

    http://www.atari2600.com/catalog/Specials/GamTVB oy.html

    It's basicly just a 127-in-1 game rom, built-in controller and Atari compatable hardware in one small handheld unit. The big difference (and downside) is that you still have to hook it up to a TV. It allows standard joysticks to be pluged in, so it may be nice to put it in your backpack and carry it to your friend's house if he has a projection TV :)

    Another big problem is the price: $99.95

    That's way too much. You can get the real thing at a Goodwill with some games for well under $10, unless the guy who prices things is a total loon and thinks it could be valueable. Then the prices for a single cart could go up to $5 EACH. It's true, once I saw a copy of DOS on 5.25 disks for the low, low price of $20 (!?!?!?!).

    Even though a handheld VCS is cool, the cost of making one is too much (except as a hobby project), considering the VCS can be found at garage sales in the "Please help us get rid of this!" pile.

  • Has there been any word from Atari yet? They're still out there aren't they? I remember something about a 64-bit system a while back. Anyway, are they going to throw the typical "you're not using my product exactly the way I said you could so I'm going to sue you for more than you'll ever have" tantrum? My memories of my Atari 2600 are too fond to easily believe they'd take that route, but these days who knows? Speaking of which, I have GOT to GET me one of those! I'd take a 2600 over a PS2 or X-Box any day.

  • I don't use the word hero very often, but this guy is _the_greatest_hero_of_his_generation_.

    - L. Hutz
  • I'd enjoy it more if it was a PS2 or Dreamcast. At least the Dreamcast is small to begin with. Converting it can't be too hard.
  • Actually he didn't, the story submitter did. And this page [geocities.com] shows what appears to be the new box the Casio came in.
  • Actually, it makes more sense when you realize that he didn't want to mess too much with the original circuitry. Obviously the ideal situation would be to take the picture data straight from screen memory and run it through a LCD driver chip and then straight to the TFT. But if you're going to stick with the Atari's composite out, then you need analog video circuitry to get it back into digital. That, indeed, is the (non RF) core of a pocket TV, so it's not just the screen he's using..
  • I coded for the 2600, and it wasn't that hard (I know, 'cause I'm not that hot snot). Not much room to work, but that's why God made assemblers. Mostly it was counting cycles and counting bytes.

    I do remember chasing my tail for a day and a half after I changed something in the attract mode and the whole damned game fell apart. Turned out that the byte (honest to God, one stinking BYTE) had pushed a loop over a page boundry, causing the conditional branch to take that extra cycle (or maybe two -- it's been a long time), which blew the scan timing which blew the screen timing, which just plain blew...

    Stuff like that made it interesting, but not really hard.

  • Milling machines? (Score:3)

    by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @06:56PM (#760278) Homepage Journal
    The site doesn't discuss how the case was actually manufactured other than to say something about the "computerized router" that he used.

    Does anyone have any information on small computerized milling machines that are inexpensive enough to obtain for hobby use? The ability to work with plastic and aluminum would be a big plus... Something I could use to repackage things like my mouse or keyboard shell or create wild tape dispensers... etc.

    ~GoRK

  • Re:What's Atari have to say? (Score:3)

    by Rombuu ( 22914 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @07:36PM (#760279)
    Actually, Hasbro only owns the rights to the old Atari software and such... Midway (I think) owned the rights to their arcade stuff. I think the remains of the old Atari corp (the people who were making the Jaguar) still owned the old hardware rights, but since they are gone, its dobtful you will ever hear anyone complaining about anything you do with Atari hardware.

  • Finally! (Score:3)

    by soulsteal ( 104635 ) <soulsteal@@@3l337...org> on Friday September 22, 2000 @05:44PM (#760280) Homepage
    I still have my 7800 and it's just as portable. Comes with the lustrous duffel bag outboard paneling. And it also has 28 cartridges (27 if you don't count the mandatory second copy of Combat).

  • Hack suggestion (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22, 2000 @07:59PM (#760281)
    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? (Score:4)

    by zlite ( 199781 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @05:32PM (#760282)
    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 (Score:5)

    by 10.0.0.1 ( 153985 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @05:57PM (#760283) Homepage
    This [retrogames.com] movie clip is almost as cool as the toy.

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