ATARI Flashback with NO DISPLAY - Can I REPAIR it? 

I personally love that you're getting back to your roots with fixing game consoles... Keep em' coming 👍

Have no clue what your talking about. But absolutely fascinating watching how you get a dead piece of electronics back to life. Love it.

Keep smashing out the repair video's Vince! I thoroughly enjoy them! keep up the good work! 👍🏻

Great Video Vince, That blob chip you ground away looks like some kind of eprom or flash memory from the layout of the die. I wonder if it's possible to use one a smd one of the footprint. I also noticed on the one you were soldering in had a mark of WE which could be Write Enable and 8b and 16b which looked like a jumper for 8 or 16bit access. Keep up the great work 👍 Also it's called a trackball 😂😂

If you want to see actual bond wires take a classic UV EPROM chip and look closely through its windows. Bond wires are clearly visible there.

Hi Vince, just my 5 cents here - I suggest you get a proper 9V adapter there. The 7805 can handle the 35V input but it also needs a proper heatsink for that and here is none.

"I hate not having a positive outcome on a video if possible" What a legend we are watching folks!😍🥰 /L

Another excellent video, and always love seeing the games from my childhood. Would love to see some work on a C64 one day ;)

I love how Vince gets excited when things go to plan :)

The atari flashback 9 (and above) are great because they have an SD card slot and hdmi out. I've had success and failures in trying to fix a few of them, but I never investigated the blob chip.....

I'd still replace that lead with a proper 9V one. That 7805 is going to get really hot at 18V.

Hey Vince, fun fact: The original Atari Flashback is actually a Famiclone :) Companies in China and Taiwan have been making clone NES chips for so long that it was actually cheaper for them to reprogram all of the games to run on NES than it would have been to use a modern chip or try and clone the Atari hardware. I am assuming the hardware you have is the Famiclone version and not the later ones that do actually emulate/clone the Atari hardware, but that might be hasty. If I'm correct, the blobtop you have on that little carrier board is the ROM chip that stores all the built-in games. I actually have a cheap bootleg cart that uses the same mapper and ROM chip as well. Unfortunately there is no modern equivalent of the ROM that can be purchased that will drop right in :/ The closest one would have been a 27C320 but there are none available anywhere in the correct package. You would have to bodge in a pair of 27C160s with the right logic to switch between them. 27C322 wouldn't work as it doesn't support byte access.

Despite not having any knowledge of electronics, i really enjoy watching your fix it videos.

ATARI. Flashback. With no. Display can. l. REPAIR. It. ?

a product when the DC output is labelled as 9v and yet its outputting 18v I would fix it or throw it away

Don’t plug it in, first thing done. Let’s plug it in. 😂 good ol’ Vince. Triggers me so bad… 😅

33:56 I love success, have fun with NES on a chip Atari game clones NES games 😂

As soon as I saw this I thought "it'll be full of black blobs".

You looked up the maximum input voltage of the 7805 voltage regulator and concluded from that that the power supply providing double the stated input voltage would be safe to use. This is not a safe assumption to make. To drop the voltage a linear regulator like the 7805 disperses the excess power as heat and can get quite hot. Hot enough it can cook and destroy itself if the circuit draws sufficient current. In this example here the regulator was used without a heat sink, which strongly limits the amount of current the circuit can draw and by going from 9V to 18V input you effectively tripled the amount of power the regulator has to disperse as heat.

Atarti Flashback systems are absolute garbage.

You could also use soldering paste Vince 😊

You sound funny on 1.5x vince 🤣

Can you plug Sega controllers in it?

Haha. Nice to see the old mug! Collectors item now! Really interesting little console

Thats the Atari that i used to have. Would of been around 1986/7 I had mine

just wait till you work on an ATARI 5200........................those things sucked, controllers never worked.

What's up with the Rolls?

@22:00 I’m 90% sure the fault would have been the soldered bridges between the main to sub board, those are prone to cracking, especially as it got worse when you tried soldering them, I think if you had persevered with those connections you would have got it working.

The weird thing about this original Atari Flashback, is that it isn't actually an Atari in any way, shape or form. the company that was licensed by Atari to make it was led by Curt Vendel (who was an original Atari employee), and they were given a very short amount of time to produce the machine for the xmas market. so the simplest solution was to make a Nes-on-a_chip solution, port the games to it quickly, and bung it in a replica 7800 case. If you tried plugging the Flashback's controllers into a real Atari 7800 (cos they're quite a nice size and comfortable to hold), they won't work, as they're basically NES controllers with an Atari plug. However, the Flashback was quite a big seller for Atari, so they went ahead with the Flashback 2. This time, Curt Vendel made sure he was able to spend more time on it, and produced a replica 2600 that was actually an Atari 2600-on-a-chip. He also included instructions for adding a cartridge slot to add the ability to load real Atari 2600 cartridge games. You can also plug in paddle controllers, and unlock some paddle games. They followed this up with the Flashback 2+, which has some minor differences, but every Flashback since then has been produced by AT Games, and is some sort of Arm-based emulator. Atari have now produced the Atari 2600+, which is basically, a 7800 in a 2600 case, with HDMI output, and compatibility with both the 2600 and 7800.

Those darned chips!!! Nice work though Vince!

It says a lot about the QC and quality of a product when the DC output is labelled as 9v and yet its outputting 18v. Sure its fine for most modern stuff since they have regulation built in but if someone grabbed that to use on an old device thinking it was a 9v output it would almost certainly kill it.

This is the first version of the Atari 'Flashback', and there were some odd choices that happened. First of all, it's not emulating games or anything...the guts are basically a NES-on-a-chip/Famiclone (just like most of the other XXXX-in-1 cheapo systems where there are like 10 NES games with repeating 100 times throughout the menu), and the 'Atari' games are just re-creations made for the NES/Famicom hardware, and so the accuracy is all over the place vs. the original games. Second, they designed the shell after the Atari 7800, a system that wayyy less people would recognize at a glance, so that was cutting out even more potential based-on-nostalgia buyers. (Also, *ugh* at the flared-legs Atari logo from this era :P...but that's just me) Luckily it sold enough that the Flashback 2 happened, which _was_ styled after an Atari VCS/2600, and the guts were basically a modern 'Atari-2600-on-a-chip' that's runs the original game ROMs. The designer of both put _so_ much thoughtful work into making the 2's hardware faithful that the circuit board lists what you need to hook up in order to add an actual cartridge port to play physical games carts on it. RIP Curt Vendel

Ooh atari trying to fix

The Atari 7800 was 2600 compatible too. The Atari 5200 was not. They had weird multi-function joysticks. IMO 7805 with 18V is too much - the extra power is converted to heat. 8 or 9 V is more norm.

My ol' mum working at the Times had to review the Pong machine and then a weirdly branded Ingersoll Rand VCS in a plain brown cardboard package but inside was the original VCS sans any Atari logo'ing and the awesome Space Invader's cart and the excited Smartie joystick of course. Brother and I became gods with the VCS, suddenly we were uber popular until me dad threw his dummy out the pram and banned all our new mates leading to some proper bashings in the playground :( Only one shop in London sold the games in Holborn and the prices were absurdly high til me mum cultivated a couple of US contacts over at the embassy who managed to get us a couple more games.

We have the 2600 version Flashback Atari. We used to have a 7800 with games but we gave it to an upstairs neighbour girl since we weren't using it. Have a 2600 but no cartridges and a 5200 with a cartridge but we haven't been able to get it playing. Oh, well... Watching some of that gameplay and it looks-a lichen you got hosed with 2600 games in a 7800 form factor

If you're interested in fixing Atari hardware, pick up some Atari 5200 controllers, Vince. Those are notorious for breaking.

I don't think it's a good idea to measure continuity on a circuit with voltage. You can 't be sure of the validity, and there's a chance you damage the meter.

Hi Vince , have been an avid follower since the Bronze Age. A little known channel that I also have been following since inception, is Hasseb Electronics. This guy is the epitome of “the internet of everyday use cases… and I will fix it”. Would love for you to give him a plug? Like you, this guy is awesome.

Has anybody ever told you you kind of look like Robert Hays? It's not an uncanny resemblance, but I see it. I am serious, and don't call me Shirley...

Maybe that BlobChip is an EEPROM that you can copy to a standard DIP EEPROM... Maybe some one in the web has a dump from that chip

@29:54 - That blob chip you soldered on to the good machines is labeled 3.3V on the right side of that board in this shot.

We just picked up an atari flashback X. It doesn't appear to turn on. Do you have any interest in taking it, or should we trash it?

Yeah! Haha. Fantastic mend. To think how exciting it used to be to watch blocky graphics popping around on the TV. I remember typing in values to get characters to come up on the TV with our old spectrum. I think poking numbers into memory. The clever crowd could do it in machine code and ruled the programming scene and were often only teenagers.

What's the music during timelapse? Really nice song. Cheers for the great content. Always entertaining.

The machine to get is the Ryzen powered Atari, hybrid games player plus fairly decent PC all in a box.

A word about the controller, the originals were horrible right out of the box, so I'm not surprised that you find the Flashback ones annoying as well.

I'd try to apply some heat to the chip, using hot air station before completely destructing semi-working asic. Checking traces continuity around the problematic area also is not bad idea.

Vince the king of consoles, nice fix Vince, well spotted and thanks for the upload 😊

That PSU is either labelled wrong or faulty. There's no way that regulator will last very long without a heatsink. Get a 9v PSU or fix the broken one.

15:18 the pins are labeled 9n the Mainboard. 😂

Very cool! 🎉 great job Vince. Also cool to see inside a blob, many times I been tempted to crack one open.

18:30 Yeah, thought it'd turn out to be the ROM because of the spotty output. I'm not sure what the pinout is, or if its even possible on this model, but some of those flashback consoles could be modded so you could wire in an original atari cartridge slot, replacing the onboard games

Nothing like a good fix to actually make 40 year old games fun again.

I’m so happy to see more fix videos Vince. Interesting item, but those black blob chips look so tricky to work with.

what are you doing with most of the things you repair? I presume things like a vacuum or a macbook you keep and use, but all those toys and replica retro consoles I doud you have thenm all connected in you living room xD

I grimaced when you started to grind the resin away on the "Blob" chip... Knew it was going to end that way.. :( Heatgun and lift :(

There was another Atari console between the 2600 and 7800: the 5200. It only lasted 2 years and sold way less than the 2600. They don't look to be too expensive as parts, at least states side.

The very first console I ever touched. My cousin owned one and I could play for 20 minutes at a time in my local electronics store. It led to a life long obsession with computers that turned into a career. Love the channel sir 🥰😁🤩

Am a bit late but that blob on pcb is probably a rom chip holding the software and games and you moving it caused it to work and without pressure the dots appeared probably because the cpu/ppu had nothing to execute than random garbage in ram i wonder what those rom chips hold and if they have been dumped so maybe you can replsce it with a regular rom chip would be fun to see but you can also call it a day. Also the blob chips popping is a common issue i have probably because then air gets introduced or some pressure difference pops the epoxy, killed a few roms but replaced with regulsr roms

Nice fix Vince, how is the car coming along? Ready for the MOT?

22:17 why didn’t you re address the soldering you did before grinding the blob? Something changed and could be a stubborn solder joint between the 2 boards still?

Have you sold the Rolls Vince ????? Really missing the videos.

Sweet

I have one of these but the menu is different, its just got blue `buttons` for each game rather than the stacked game and console graphics on this one so maybe I have an earlier version. Its absolutely identical in all other aspects. It uses a nes on a chip and the games arnt emulated but recreated iirc.

Can you help , I've got some referee buzzer flags that's are broken , I have no idea who to go too to fix them Can you help me

What. A. ROLLERCOASTER! Good job there.

You’ve got one of those nice buttery voices. That’s why I like you.

In centipede why the speed is a bit slow? Is it because it's pal version, 50hz?

Vince the "scary bear curtain pattern" did anyone else see it? lol 7;39

I haven't watched it until the end yet, but at 20:25 at the first resolder you solded 2 pins together...

If the reg. is a 7805 be sure to jam in a TSR-1 2450.

So... you wacked the bal around. Not what i expected on a repair video, but here we are ;)

"Stupid game!".... Oops. wrong channel..

looks like something had burned through the black blobby blob blob which can be seen at roughly 20:36 in the bottom left of the blob

Atari 2600, Atari 5200 and Atari 7800 were the main gaming systems..then of course the Atari Jaguar later on and the current Atari VCS system.

River Ride was the coolest game on Atari ,but ROBBO was the best of the best, and it was Polish game. LK AVALON , Janusz Pelc .

I was on tenterhooks when you went to test and then the second time too. Good job it was only that you forgot to plug in the power adaptor! 😂

Hey Vince, what’s the name of the song and artist in the video, thanks.

I LOVE ATARI

I admire your dogged determination, well done Vince. 👌

You bridged the first one while trying to refresh solder on the blob so it stopped working😢

What a battle! Nicely done Vince 👍

you have great taste in music :) . I cant find this song though :(

I just saw one of these today at a Half-Price Books.

Love Centipede and I'm old and it's a " Blob chip " !!.....cheers RIP Calculon

I dont know if you still check these comments but I'd like to ask, what is the name of that blue electronic work matt you are using and where might i find one for myself? Looks like something i could use to keep my own repairs organized 😅 im working on an Atari flashback 3 myself and thats why i found your video. Very well put together video, so you got another sub and like 🎉 keep it up man 👍

Винс крутой) так ковырять эту атари) молодец 👍

Any more car videos? I love the car restoration vids.

Good old atari the nostalgia even though its on a classic & not the full fat atari

Enjoyed "ATTACK OF THE BLOB!!"

where you buying low melt solder? Thx

Nice fix :) Never got Atari consoles myself but have some old Atari games downloaded in my PS3 in the Atari Anniversary Edition Redux (PS1), which includes Centipede, Pong and for example Asteroids. The Mini C-64 is my only "modern retro" device, bought it in 2018, so far has been working fine. My original Commodore 64 C in the 80's blew it's power supply right after warranty expired :D

Hey Vince, you know that "blob" is potting compound right? Why do you keep calling it a blob chip? lol

Congratulations on the repair.. Proof that persistence really does pay off..Well that and buying another one to use for parts helps. Just something I remembered when playing Centipede.. the Spider will never double back on itself, so if you miss it, don't chase after it. It's best to let it go off the screen!

These L7805 voltage regulators are least efficient, nowadays you'll see less and less of them. Instead there are MOSFETs which are more efficient but you need a coil and a cap, and or you can use what's called a dc to dc buck converter which has all of it and is super cheap ;) if you'd buy up to 3A. I'm building now 400W one :D, but still not too dear ;). Will be videos about it for sure. Have my transformer already made.

Great videos this is rare flashback indeed

For a moment there I thought you were going to flash... back... an Atari.

that is the reason why I do not like blobbed chips. if there is to much stress on the pcb, bonds will break and there is almost no chance to repair them. Sound should apear if you start a game. There was no sound an an Atari an the "start screen".

Mr Blobby wants a go at fixing it 😂😂😂