The "makes sense" mod.

ArcRevival

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After reading the sense mod thread I decided to take a page out of Gamefixer's playbook and try one on my Asteroids game. I saw Matt do his version to a game when I was at his house a long time ago. I took some before and after meter readings. I did this one kind of fast and will go back and clean it up now that I know it's worth it. For those who have no idea what this does, it's to prevent too much of a voltage drop through the harness on the +5 volts line. This keeps the edge of the board from burning up, the resistor on the AR-II board from burning up, and it's easy to remove and will leave no permanent damage if you want it out of there.

2 lines for +5 and one for ground. I stripped the wires and put them right through the existing holes, then soldered them on both sides :

P1040215.jpg

P1040212.jpg


I soldered them right to the pins of the connector, I will go back and clean it up a little more :
P1040227.jpg

Here you can see where I soldered them on the back side too then clipped them off.
P1040220.jpg


Now for the readings.

Without mod:

At AR-II board : 5.43 volts
At board : 5.09

With mod:

At the AR-II board : 5.21 volts
At board :5.09


Total cost : $1 for the plug and pins plus some scrap wire.

I will probably end up doing this to all of my Atari's and will take more pictures and put up a step by step for the electrically challenged and stick it on my blog. If anyone has any ideas to make it better, throw them out there.
 
I will probably end up doing this to all of my Atari's and will take more pictures and put up a step by step for the electrically challenged and stick it on my blog. If anyone has any ideas to make it better, throw them out there.

Thanks.

That's exactly what I was asking for.

The Atari games I have are Pole Position, Star Wars, Asteroids, and Millipede, and want to take whatever steps necessary to keep these games operational.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
 
I suggest you also change your edge connector and pins if you are capable or at least the pins for the +5 and ground if nothing else although this mod should get you going.
 
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