Atari 7800

MM007 · Post by **MM007** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 2:46 pm

Has anyone ever tried an Atari 7800 portable? I would, but I am to chicken to rip apart my precious 7800, esp. after I just got 5 games for it yesterday!

Those games are Pole Position II, Ms. Pac-Man, Food Fight, Robotron 1984, and Xevious.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 7:11 pm

Ben's mentioned about making an Atari 7800 portable, but he said it's circuitry is too big and there are too few games for him to justify chopping it up.

One suggestion I can make is if you want to see if its possible just open the case and look at the board. You'll probibly never harm the system in the least so if you dont want to dive in you still can use it.

Good luck.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun May 02, 2004 9:00 am

http://mpc.fab.free.fr/atari/photoconso ... ocarte.jpg

What do you think? Any chance of making something like that smaller?

JackFrost22 · Post by **JackFrost22** » Sat Jun 05, 2004 8:09 pm

Now i'm just saying that it looks like everything beyond that metak strip are just switches, leds, and joystick ports. You could probably also cut off that big metal box if thats the rf modulator.

someone · Post by **someone** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 9:53 pm

yes... true.

Wong · Post by **Wong** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 9:52 pm

In correspondence to Ben, he said the 7800 has so much 2600 in with it that it would be tough to chop down to a usable size. He did have a point, it seems like it would be a lot of work for a marginal return. Still, I'd love to do some portablizing on it. I became even more discouraged after reading that in order to get VGA output from the 7800, you have to wire the 2600 video and the 7800 video out of different places and combine them. Possible, but a lot of work. One idea, which I have seen repeatedly shot down, would be to dump the majority of the motherboard into an old laptop case and wire it up to the screen and sound system. Re-wire the cartridge through a 3.5 floppy bay or something (just the bay, not the actually floppy drive), if it would be big enough to accomodate the atari carts. Then run the power/reset, ect.. into the laptop case, the joystick ports into the front of the case, like that. Then work up some sort of power system so that big screen would not slurp all the batteries it could eat. Old laptop batteries never seem to be able to hold a charge, but maybe one of them would work well to power the whole deal. Anybody know of any laptop type with the contoller that could run the signal from the 7800? Somebody on this forum mentioned the Toshiba 110CS, but I read it had a passive matrix screen. Anyway, not to beat a dead horse, but if anybody has a lead on this (I might even try the old toshiba, just to see if it would be possible), give me a reply.

JackFrost22 · Post by **JackFrost22** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 2:15 pm

Uh why did you bring up this old thread...

MM007 · Post by **MM007** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 5:57 pm

I have a Toshiba 100CS, but the screen has a good bit of blur...

Wong wrote:In correspondence to Ben, he said the 7800 has so much 2600 in with it that it would be tough to chop down to a usable size. He did have a point, it seems like it would be a lot of work for a marginal return. Still, I'd love to do some portablizing on it. I became even more discouraged after reading that in order to get VGA output from the 7800, you have to wire the 2600 video and the 7800 video out of different places and combine them. Possible, but a lot of work. One idea, which I have seen repeatedly shot down, would be to dump the majority of the motherboard into an old laptop case and wire it up to the screen and sound system. Re-wire the cartridge through a 3.5 floppy bay or something (just the bay, not the actually floppy drive), if it would be big enough to accomodate the atari carts. Then run the power/reset, ect.. into the laptop case, the joystick ports into the front of the case, like that. Then work up some sort of power system so that big screen would not slurp all the batteries it could eat. Old laptop batteries never seem to be able to hold a charge, but maybe one of them would work well to power the whole deal. Anybody know of any laptop type with the contoller that could run the signal from the 7800? Somebody on this forum mentioned the Toshiba 110CS, but I read it had a passive matrix screen. Anyway, not to beat a dead horse, but if anybody has a lead on this (I might even try the old toshiba, just to see if it would be possible), give me a reply.

wong · Post by **wong** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 9:33 pm

Yeah, well, I figured better to exume an old thread than populate a new one.

Does the Toshiba really have a seperate controller card for the video? But if the passive screen is that old and clunky, maybe a control card wouldn't be of any value. Oh well.

I won a 7800 off ebay some while back, but the "enlightened" seller failed to pack well and the power box shattered the top of the case. The unit doesn't power up. My daydream is to go through it part by part and see if I can find a fix, then strip it down and portablize that. Maybe after getting a bit more experience in this stuff...

JackFrost22 · Post by **JackFrost22** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 2:15 pm

well you didnt really say anything new

Post by **bicostp** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 5:16 pm

besides, aren't 7800's somewhat hard to find?

Wong · Post by **Wong** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 12:49 pm

Sorry about not having anything new to say, my hope was that somebody who frequented these forums would know more about how to do it, but apparently not. I apologize if you feel I've wasted your time, but you can ignore the subject.

As far as 7800's being rare, I dunno, but I have owned 5 in my lifetime. My first when I was a teenager (wish I still had it, the controlers were beat but the system was in great shape), a second off ebay that works pretty good, a third off ebay that was packed poorly and didn't power up (it had the expansion slot in the side, so was able to resell for fair price even not functional), a fourth that was also packed poorly (that case is sure brittle, it shattered big-time when the idiot shipper failed to pack the wall plug adaptor securely and the two bounced into each other all the way from Florida), and my last, which seems in pretty decent shape all in all. Guess that makes me a ollector of such things, and might explain my interest. But I gotta go with what Ben said (as previously noted), that it would probably be too big a thing to cut it down to a decent portable size. But hope springs eternal...

tootiecat · Post by **tootiecat** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 1:08 pm

I wet my pants!

I've owned 2 ataris.

#1) Aiari looked very good ,but didn't work that well so i threw it away.

#2) atari 2600 looks good and works very well!

Hasta luego!
see ya later!

Post by **Sparkfist** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 1:15 pm

The thing is that the 7800 is rather complex. Cutting it would be just a nightmare, and it would be hell trying to wire it to work.

If you want to play Atari games get a 2600 and use the book.

Also Gannon, Jack, Ben and whomever elts is designing a custom PCB for the atari chips see if you can make some prgress. After all its the closest thing we'll get to an AOAC for a while I bet.

tootiecat · Post by **tootiecat** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 1:41 pm

they wasted too much space on the atari 2600.

what about the game chips?

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