{"id":140,"date":"2012-03-16T22:16:37","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T22:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greg-kennedy.com\/?p=140"},"modified":"2018-01-19T14:16:59","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T20:16:59","slug":"atari-flashback-2-mod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greg-kennedy.com\/wordpress\/2012\/03\/16\/atari-flashback-2-mod\/","title":{"rendered":"Atari Flashback 2 Mod"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Atari Flashback 2 is a really neat plug-and-play TV game system. It looks like a tiny Atari 2600 and plays 20+ classics for the system. Most interesting to hackers, however, is that the board inside isn’t just a 2600 emulator or recreation – it’s actually a modern, miniaturized 2600-on-a-chip playing real ROM images. Additionally, there is a convenient silkscreened table on the board showing pinouts for adding a 2600 cartridge connector and playing real VCS game cartridges on the system. \u00a0Compatibility isn’t 100%, but it’s quite accurate, and the A\/V cable is a nice way to hook up to a modern TV (no more fiddling with RF adapters).<\/p>\n

Finding a NOS cart connector is tough, but there’s an alternative: source a floppy-to-IDE cable from an old PC – the board connector has the same pin spacing as a cart. \u00a0I stuffed cut-down popsicle sticks into the gaps on either side (the connector is wider than a real 2600 cart).<\/p>\n

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Soldering to the board can be a real pain in the butt, especially if (like me) you don’t have a solder station to do it and are using a blunted Rat Shack iron for the job. \u00a0Miraculously, it all worked when I screwed it back together. \u00a0Besides the cartridge slot itself I added a few details:<\/p>\n