Atari 2600, meet HD tv.

Today, I am back to discuss the difficulties of hooking up an Atari 2600 to a modern TV.

There are half a dozen or so different ways this can be accomplished, ranging from beginner to expert, from cheap to expensive, and from likely to work to likely to destroy your Atari.

Proceed with caution.




I purchased my Atari's from a generous vendor on craigslist. I managed to score 3 units and a handful of games for roughly twenty dollars. The catch, however, was that there were no power cables or TV adapters mixed in with the deal. So I had to go on an adventure.

I picked up my atari, and headed around the world trying to find somwhere that sold replacement power cables. This proved to be not only fruitless, but also incredibly frustrating. No one would take me seriously, or even listen to me, after they saw the dinosaur that I was carrying.

So after an evening of fruitless searching, I turned to my old trusted friend, Google. It still took quite a bit of searching to discover the specifications:
Power Supply
Input:120VAC,60Hz
Output:9VDC,500mA
Polarity:Center+,Outer-

And in-spite of my substantial computer knowledge, I had only the faintest idea of what that meant, and the information I could find was contradictory.

So for the record, here is the necessary information:

• The input isn't important, as long as it will plug into a power-jack for your region.
  
• The output voltage cannot exceed 9v. On occasion, working with less will make your atari crash, but working with more can do permanent damage.
• The Current listed (500mA or .5 A) is the minimum I would recommend for an adapter, but using more will not hurt the machine in any way.
  
• The tip is the same shape as a standard headphone jack. It's an 'F' tip at RadioShack.
• The tip must be positive, This is backwards from most chargers.
  
• The people at RadioShack didn't know what current was.

If you live in the metro area, it might be easier to make the trek to acworth, where a small game shop called Gamer's Trade (Or is it Game Trader's?) supplies original and replacement power cords for ~15$, as apposed to the 19$ that this cost me.


Now, I assumed that connecting it to the television would be a relatively simple affair. I was wrong.

The plug coming out of the back of the atari looks like the A/V plugs that we use today, and I assumed thats what it was.
I was Wrong.

The plug is, in fact, little more than a Coaxial plug without the Coaxial part. (It's a regular cable, without the twisty bit.) Presumably this is because Coaxial had yet to become the standard at the time of release.




Unless you have a significant amount of technical experince, while at Radio Shack you will want to pick up a RF-to-coaxial adapter. You can try asking for this at the desk, as I did, though you will probably be told, as I was, that no such thing exists. In Radio Shack land, this adapter is referred to as a Phono>coaxial adapter. The little thing shouldn't run more than a few dollars, but it is essential to atari nirvana.

From there the process is simple: plug everything in, twist everything on, and hope that she still works.

For those with the technical skills, and foolhardiness, to try something a bit more adventurous, several different composite video mods exist, with varying degrees of difficulty (and varying degrees of success.) I don't have the time or the money to attempt one of these yet, but when I do, I'm going all out. (Ben Heck sells an amazing little book about doing various console mods. Maybe someone wants to buy it for me?)


All images in today's post belong to me. all original content available under the creative commons attribution share-alike license.