Please help me troubleshoot Casio EV-680/Handheld Atari

[leahkim]

I just finished building the Handheld Atari exactly as described out of Ben's book. Well, it must not be exactly as described, because it DOESN'T WORK. At all. The problem is, I'm not really sure how to troubleshoot it since I am an electronics novice. I have a multimeter, but frankly I don't know where to put the leads to test if I even have power going to the Casio screen, what the voltage is, what it should be, etc.

Can someone walk me step by step through the process of figuring out whether I have power going to the screen and where to put the leads? Maybe you can tell me first how to check that I have power going to/from the power switch, etc. I'm also not sure what the 5 connected pins on the A/V jack do, or how to test if they are connected correctly.

In other words, I NEED MAJOR HELP! I have sunk over $300 into this project (including all my new electronics tools) and really want to make it work, thanks.

[G-force]

Well, you would first set your meter to read DC voltage. Then you would turn on the system, screen, etc. Then put the black probe on ground, the red on the screen/power source/atari and see if you get voltage. Then you can test video connections by setting the meter to test for resistance. Put one probe at the atari video source, and the other on the lead of the screen where the video connects. You should get 0.00 resistance. If not, then your connection is prolly not good.

Hope you get it figured out, good luck.

[leahkim]

Thanks for the help! I got the thing working tonight, doing just what you said. Turns out the A/V jack (which I messed up when I desoldered it) was getting power in, but not out. I just bypassed the jack since I will never use it anyway, and voila my screen lit up!

Now I just need to figure out where to connect the speaker, it wasn't covered in the book. Obviously it will be somewhere near the headphone jack, but I'm not positive and I don't want to screw it up. Can anyone help me with this? Thanks.

[A.J. Franzman]

Now I just need to figure out where to connect the speaker, it wasn't covered in the book. Obviously it will be somewhere near the headphone jack, but I'm not positive and I don't want to screw it up. Can anyone help me with this? Thanks.

Did you connect the Atari's audio to the screen's audio input? If so, then the speaker should be connected exactly as it was originally, just using longer wires if needed.

[leahkim]

OK, I was able to figure out where the speaker was originally hooked up, and put it back in place. It works great! Thank you!