Rackmount Atari

Once I heard about Paul Slocum's Synthcart I knew I had to have one. I also knew lugging around an Atari and all the associated crap sucks. So I decided to rackmount my orignal 6 switch 2600 (Don't worry folks, I still have a mint condition 4-switch which was a present from my grandmother to my parents for Christmas one year many moons ago). The rack came from a broken high voltage supply I bought surplus. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the results, though the front panel could use an Atari logo to spruce it up. I also performed a composite video mod on it, and man does it make a difference. The RF modulated picture quality looks like utter ass in comparison to it now.

Ever wonder what the guts of a 2600 look like? Wonder no more, there is the mobo. Fairly complicated in its day, it is a dual layer circuit board, that's built surprisingly well.
This is the internals. Inside the little aluminum box to the left is the mobo, the box itself is EMI shielding.

That little circuit board is the video mod. Several wires get soldered to the mobo and run out to that board. From there I can use the trim pots to fine tune the picture. The mod also provides composite video out, instead of the god awful RF switchbox.


And the finished product. The front panel is a sheet of plexi covered with cheap contact paper. I'll eventually add a nice Atari logo to it, and an LED or two. No project like this is ever finished, they just come to a state of rest, before more radical modifications need to be made.