Resurrected Entertainment

Archive for January, 2008

Atari 2600 4-port S-video and Composite Mod

January 22, 2008

I installed the above mod from 8bitdomain.com last night and everything went smoothly. The audio works, the composite video looks great, but the only problem I have is with the s-video output. It’s a mess, but the picture is still recognizable. There is a lot of vertical line distortion (highly animated). I triple checked my installation and everything seems fine, but of course, there is obviously something wrong.I did a little research and some people hinted at a problem when both the composite and s-video signals were used together. I don’t put a lot of stock in most of the comments on these message boards, but the problem they were describing loosely resembled the problem I am experiencing.

Originally, I put the shielding back on after the installation, but it was causing a lot of distortion and very bad feeback from the console switches when they were touched and even hovering my hand over the console. It seems the electrical fields were playing havoc with the TIA chip, which is now a lot closer to the shielding. The installation guide did not say to omit the shield (in fact it said to set it aside), but the pictures implied it, so I took it off and the composite signal was a lot better but still miserable for s-video.

Any ideas as to what the problem could be?