Atari 7800 - Jamma Interface

1500points

New member
Joined
Sep 2, 2011
Messages
5,706
Reaction score
107
Location
Iowa
I have a 5 yr old nephew who loves Mario Bros. on the Atari 7800. He happens to be left handed. And I have a 12 yr old nephew who loves to build projects in the summer.

Atari joysticks don't have any circuitry so it's easy to interface them with arcade hardware. So I decided to build a little dedicated controller setup for the Atari 7800.
Works great with those 10 dollar zippyy controllers.

Then it occured to me that there was enough room in the box for a switcher and a 19-1 Jamma board. So I mocked up a little removable monitor/speaker frame.

Should be interesting this summer to see what the older nephew decides to design and have us build for the arcade cabinet. I'll suggest a miniature cabaret but he's quite creative, who knows what it'll turn into. I'm going to disassemble it down to the individual pieces so he can experience the process of figuring every aspect of it out.

The buttons are configured so it can do simultaneous atari mario bros. 2 player, 19-1 as 2 player side by side for Mario Bros. and Joust, and 3 button Defender.

IMG_20120429_174753.jpg

IMG_20120429_174918.jpg

IMG_20120429_172540.jpg
 
Long live Atari! Nice little project. I didn't have the 7800 when it came out but my 800 kept me pretty happy. I have all the Atari consoles now and they would be the last things to ever leave my collection.
 
Nice! I bet that works great for 7800 Robotron as well.

I built a couple of joysticks for the 7800 using some arcade parts and they are much nicer than the original stock controllers!!

By the way, did you know that there is a revision of the PAL 7800 that outputs RGB.

Mitch
 
Didn't know about the PAL 7800. thanks. learn something new every day around this site.

I does Robotron well, too. I played a game to wave 40/1 million and it "feels" like they must be porting off the real ROM code?

I was a 2600 fan and had never played a 7800. My lil bro had purchased this thing new in the box with 40 cartridges in the 90s and had it tucked away in a closet at our parents. It was a big hit when he pulled it out this fall as a surprise.

fun to see that the old classics still hold the interest of a new generation. Dig dug is a popular one with the lil nephew. think it is the cartoonishness and the sounds.
 
Back
Top Bottom