Yesterware

Introduction  After a multi-year wait, despite half of Australia (where it's creator lives) burning down and a global panic over COVID-19 dragging everything to a crawl the Satiator has finally made it to a retail release.  For the unfamiliar, the Satiator is an Optical Drive Emulator (ODE) for the Sega Saturn game console.  In a nutshell it lets you play Saturn games from solid-state storage (an SD card) rather than the Saturn's CD drive. The Competition When the Satiator was first announced there was only (technically) one competing product on the market; Deunan's Rhea/Phoebe ODE products.  During its 3-year long incubation, two other contenders have made it to market.  The first is the Fenrir by CED which is very similar in design to the Rhea/Phoebe and easily the least expensive option.  The second is the MODE by TerraOnion which costs considerably more than the other two but provides better options and presentation.  I don't own the other devices ...

Why Do We Need Another ColecoVision RGB Solution? After writing about my experience installing an RGB and Composite Mod in my ColecoVision , I received a couple of comments about how there were "issues" with the mod I had chosen.  Despite the fact that I was perfectly happy with it, I did wander over to AtariAge and looked through the years-long discussions taking place about problems with ALL of the existing RGB mods.  Most of it became so esoteric and nit-picky that it was difficult to really understand what the real problems were.  Then another user (Nicholas Piegdon) commented on my article and took the time to explain one or two of the issues evident in the images I had posted.  He also provided a link to a thread on Atari Age about an upcoming project for an RGB mod which addresses some issues which aren't addressed by any of the other mods currently available.  This seems to boil down to a couple of issues inherent to the TMS chip which is used by the Col...

Be nice - this is the first PCB I've ever designed and the first time I've ever used KiCad. After my previous article fiddling around with modding a cheap aftermarket NES Classic controller to work with the ColecoVision, I decided to take things a step further and make something people might actually want to use.  It turned out much better than I could ever have expected.  The upshot is that it also works perfectly for the Atari 2600 as the two systems share a common wiring scheme.  (The Sega Master System also has some wiring in common with the Atari and ColecoVision so the direction buttons and the #1 button work, but #2 button does not work on the SMS) Making this was also a great opportunity to learn how to use KiCad.  There's an amazingly helpful set of videos on YouTube from Contextual Electronics called "Getting to Blinky" that tells you almost everything you need to know. So what I came up with was a replacement PCB that could be used in a standa...

After fiddling with a broken ColecoVision "Hand Controller" I saw how simple the wiring was and decided to see if I could re-purpose a cheap aftermarket NES Classic controller to make a more comfortable control option for my ColecoVision.  It actually worked pretty easily so I decided to turn my scribbled diagrams into something that might be easier for others to use. Just a disclaimer, this diagram and instructions are provided freely and without warranty.  It's not my fault if you damage anything by following these diagrams/instructions. The original ColecoVision hand controller uses diodes between all of the connections to make it possible to register multiple button presses.  Because the direction buttons each have a dedicated address line this isn't so important for them, however without using diodes it will not be possible to register simultaneous presses of the other buttons.    I tried incorporating the same IN14148 diodes into my controller mod, but...

[Updated June 2020]  As with all hobbies these things can be learning processes. After initially completing this mod, I discovered some new things and made some changes.  Primarily, I've re-incorporated the RF box for actual composite video, figured out the black & white picture problem, added a buffering capacitor to the audio output and tapped the audio from a different location to maintain compatibility with the ColecoVision Expansion Module #1.  The Expansion module doesn't work with RGB out, but now it's at least usable with composite Genesis 2 cables.  Background ColecoVision wasn't something I had or even played growing up, but several years ago someone gave me one.  Since its only AV output is RF and that makes it hard to have multiple systems connected at once, it sat in a box for about 10 years until I stumbled across Ben Heck's tutorial on a very straightforward composite video mod. The Picture Quality Produced by the Ben Heck composite ...