DIY Groove Coaster Controller (Part 1)

Background My friend Michael is a big fan of the arcade version of Groove Coaster. Whenever we go to the local Round 1, we spend a goodly amount of time in front of that machine. However, we don’t make it there more than maybe once a month, at best, and that just won’t do. Let’s bring it home! Home Versions We had researched previously what it would take to bring the arcade experience home. As far as the software goes, there is the Steam version and the Nintendo Switch version. There’s also running the arcade version from your PC, but then you’re also beholden to running it in a vertical monitor setup, and that doesn’t jive with my game room projector setup. ...

July 3, 2022 · 10 min · 2025 words · Bradon Kanyid (rattboi)

Atari 7800 UAV Installation

This is my most recently completed project. “Complete” is a fairly subjective word though, as the likelihood that I pop the top on my Atari 7800 again soon is fairly high. The point of this project was to install the Atari UAV board inside my 7800 in order to get a much better video signal out of it. The Atari 7800 only supported one type of video output signal, ye olde radio frequency modulator. You may remember the box doohickey you’d screw into your TV’s coaxial connector from the NES. The 7800 has the same thing, except the box is integrated into the console itself. This is, in fact, the worst consumer standard for video (and audio) output. It combines all the signals into a single crappy signal that is then adjusted (magically) to appear on channel 3 of your old-ass television. Needless to say, this doesn’t look great on a modern digital television. It really never looked good on older analog TVs either, but our expectations have changed since the 80s. ...

August 15, 2017 · 3 min · 615 words · Bradon Kanyid (rattboi)