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Tron 2600

Believe it or not, this project is still going. I've made a lot of progress, but had some significant setbacks (because I'm dumb, dumb, DUMB).

Since last time, I've primarily been working on the electronics. I've managed to attach headers to most of the pieces of the atari motherboard so that the motherboard can be removed from the case without affecting the rest of the case. I've also built a nice little VU meter out of spare UV, blue, and white LEDs. It's a little strange how it looks with some of the old atari sounds, but it's cool in it's own right. I've sleeved a lot of the wires with white sleeving and attached the PC power supply to provide power to the atari and the VU meter.

The first problem was that, basically, I shorted 3.3V to ground and caused the atari MB to smoke and pop. Interesting - some of the circuit traces actually lifted off the MB completely.

And now, I just did the same thing again (in a different part of the mod). This time I actually saw flames shoot up from the power supply!

Anway, time for pics.

Progress so far:

tron51.jpg


Flames = not good (check the lower left corner):

tron52.jpg


I also finished painting the top cover. What a pain, painting the top beight and the inside black - while also using UV paint to create "tron"-like letters on the side of the case. The stupid UV paint flakes up, washes off with water, and is generally annoying to work with:

tron53.jpg
tron54.jpg
tron55.jpg
 
Well, I have bad news and good news.

The bad news is that the mod suffered antoher setback. All was going well, the only think left was to actually mod the FB2 to attach the cartidge ports and paint up a couple light cycles. In attaching a my third wire to one of the solder points, i accidentally lifted and broke off the solder pad.

[FYI, this does not mean I hadn't modded the FB2 before that. Even to get to this point, I had to attach another plate for mounting a slightly more distant screw hole to support the FB2 motherboard and also had to install headers to attach nearly all the switches and joystick ports. In other words, dozens of solder points even BEFORE attempting the cart port]

I went back to the walmart I originally got the FB2 at and got another - but it was a rev B. All my designs planned on a rev A (yes, those differences could be a pain, and the different size of the board actually matters as well).

[ rev A boards are a different physical size than rev B boards, but rev B boards fix some small emulation errors. It's impossible from the box to tell if you have a rev A or rev B board ]

The good news is that I've decided to redo the mod with a rev B board. Only one real pain I found so far - the difficulty switches use the GND connection from the video rather than a dedicated GND line. Kinda a pain, but I think I've worked around it. I've spent about 4 hours tonight bringing the rev B board to where I can mount it in the case and try it out (without the cart port). Basically, I'm at the point I was last night except I haven't tested it yet - I'll save that for tomorrow night.
 
The TRON mod is COMPLETE! :)

TRON 2600 - classic video game system mod
  • Atari 2600 in ENCOM "corporate" case
    • Custom paint inside and out
    • UltraViolet reactive detail painting and minature lightcycles
    • Sound reactive LED lighting
    • 40 built-in games plus cartridge port
    • Easy access front and rear mounted controls
  • Custom light-up joysticks
    • Red, Blue, and White colored joysticks
    • Red and Blue joysticks glow white from the inside
    • White joysticks cycles through red, green, blue and other colors
    • Original black joystick also available
  • Special light-up TRON 2600 game cartridges
  • Joystick and cartridge storage box glows in the dark (blue)

encom00.jpg
encom05.jpg

encom09.jpg
encom17.jpg


You can check out more pics at my website http://mods.xkill.net by clicking on "Mods" then "TRON 2600".

Questions/comments?
 
Very cool. Excellent work. I wish I had the skill to that kind of thing or at least a couple of those little light cycles to play with. :p
 
Thanks.

The light-cycles were actually resin models I picked up from a scale modeling site. I had to clean them up a bit then paint them - a bigger pain then you might realize. I wanted to use UV paint, but painting by hand it was too clumpy and didn't look even. I had to water it down then paint using an airbrush - but if I painted too much, the new paint would "melt" the old paint and cause it to run.

Probably the most difficult paint I've ever worked with.

tron25.jpg
tron64.jpg



encom13.jpg
 
COOOL! That is the coolest thing I've ever seen , I'm a huge tron fan.
That is one fantastic looking project. I love it!
 
I have to admit I was skeptical about the concept, but you are doing a great job of it. I love the little tron bikes under the window!
 
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