The Ultimate Atari 2600 Micro SD Card Based Uno Cartridge: A Game Changer!

[@chrispamplin6197]

I worked in SMT for years. Doing all this by hand really takes me back.

[@Retro4u]

Yeah it’s great it’s crazy how small things are going 😮. Glad you enjoyed it

[@TrashfordKent]

I had a 2600 back in the day but my interest has been renewed with the 2600+ coming out. Looking forward to your Speccy clone build so subscribed.

[@Retro4u]

Thankyou yeah I’m looking forward to the speccy clone build myself :) thanks for the sub

[@1988alex1988ful]

It's fascinating to see how "older" technology is still advancing ❤

[@Retro4u]

Yeah crazy eh to think if we had this tech back on day we would Have been amazed

[@8bitsinthebasement]

That hot plate was a real eye opener for me. See, I thought that the plate was just used to preheat the board so as to avoid damaging the PCB from heat expansion when using the hot air gun to melt the solder. The fact that it did 80% of the soldering for you pushes it right up in my estimations. I may look into getting one for myself now. No need to enter me into the draw Neil, but good luck to everyone... thanks for sharing ;)

[@Retro4u]

Yeah especially with older eyes it helps alot with soldering. lol. They also great for desoldering parts as well. I’ll be using it to remove my Amiga parts on the build :). Thanks for the comment

[@8bitsinthebasement]

@@Retro4u That's a very good point I hadn't thought of it being used to remove components. A very handy machine indeed, still I suppose it should be used sparingly, heating chips to solder melting temps might not do them a lot of good in the long run.

[@Retro4u]

Yeah I get that. But probably safer than the heat gun. 😊. Well we will have to wait and see when I get round to the Amiga lol 😂 it will either work or go incredibly wrong either way I’ll get a video out of it 😂

[@CraigDaters1]

That hot plate is amazing! Love the video, and that UNO cart is awesome!

[@Retro4u]

Thankyou :)

[@YARC-1981]

Nice cart. I need to get a hot plate, but I'm putting it off. Keep up the good work, Neil.

[@CaptainCommodore]

I found the hot plate and stencil really nice, but if your doing a batch remember to clean the stencil after each one ( found that out the hard way ) nicely done

[@Retro4u]

Yeah good shout. Otherwise it dries inside lol . Thanks for the comment

[@AzerWal-n4r]

Thank u for the video

[@Retro4u]

No probs . Your welcome 🤗

[@8BitRetroReFix]

Great video, mate ... I love watching the heat plate and it soldering itself .. looks funny watching all the part move into place on their own ... Good luck to everyone on winning the uno cart .. 👍

[@Retro4u]

My favourite part as well

[@leepedrick7780]

Awesome with the hot plate, thanks so much for fixing my son's Atari 2600.

[@Retro4u]

Your welcome enjoy the Atari :) endless fun thanks for the comment

[@net_news]

AMAZING!! I want one please!! 🙏

[@Retro4u]

They are great :)

[@SudzBud]

Nice video and good project to showcase.

[@Retro4u]

Thankyou I actually enjoyed filming and making this.

[@HBDLxx]

incredible flash card for atari 2600

[@Retro4u]

Thankyou yeah 👍 it’s a great card so much potential home brews as well. :) thank you for the comment

[@taskanawa9604]

beautiful work

[@Retro4u]

Thankyou

[@glenwoolsey4698]

This is really neat.

[@Retro4u]

Thankyou I enjoyed making it tbh thanks for the comment t

[@g4z-kb7ct]

For the games that don't work open them up with a hex editor and you will see the first 128 bytes is a header that has been added after for use with emulators like Stella. If you remove the first 128 bytes and save it the file will be correctly sized as a power-of-2 binary and will play on a real 2600.

[@Retro4u]

Thankyou for that tip. I will use when I find ones that fail to load.

[@joannemckearney7281]

Oh man I would love, love to win this. This is amazing

[@MSBomberman94]

Love it - do you plan a fancy label for a cartridge housing?

[@Retro4u]

Good idea. Unfortunately I don’t have a colour printer here. But great shout :) good luck 🤞

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

Chip Glue will hold the chip till you solder it.

[@Retro4u]

Thanks for that I’ll bear that in mind. Taped it also as it had the stencil cut out on the cart pins don’t want to get paste on them

[@paulbunting4260]

Nice video on the Uno cart build neil. Not being piccy on your build, but why didn't you solder the stm32 chip on the hotplate when you was soldering the smd parts down. You might have had bridges but the soldrring iron would of fixed that by flux and drag soldering the excess solder away. Also have you seen the smd tweezers made by the same company as your hotplate? I will be honest with you there is lots of negative reviews on there soldering tweezers, but for me I've found them to be very good. There also very cheap and easy to use once set up. Also a bit of blu tac or sellotape could of been used to solder the jumpers. The squeegee you used looks overkill, you could of used an old credit card and got the same results. Please don't think I am being negative with you. I am just just trying to advise your viewers that this could have been done much easier.than your attempt. Well Done! Kind Regards Paul

[@Retro4u]

No problem 😉 I love comments. I used the squeegee as it was sent by pcbway yeah I get a credit card would be good. I have since done the stm32 chip and like you said cleaned of the bridges afterwards I so used to hand soldering them lol 😂. I look into the tweezers I take it they are heated. I do have the larger ones for removing ant caps the bigger can ones. Thankyou for your comment and suggestions after all everyone does do things different ways .

[@paulbunting4260]

@@Retro4u hi neil the tweezers have a thermostat control also, but are a little out on actual temp. Best to adjust in use. I have seen people using solder paste as a bead on the stm32 footprint and still managed to not get any bridges. That being said, I have never tried it . Reason being the cost of those chips are not cheap. Those stm32 chips sold on aliexpress are often parts that have been rejected by smd machines because of placement and bent legs. You will notice they are well packaged and appear to got damaged in the post. (obviously not) This advice may help you when ordering parts. I hope you find this info usefull. Kind Regards Paul

[@Retro4u]

@@paulbunting4260 great I think they similar to what I have but I don’t think mine would pick up the components. I know what ya mean about the bent chip pins I have a few need to get it under the scope to sort it. Thanks for advice I tend to use mouser at the moment but like you said expensive but nothing beats the feeling of making something yourself and it working lol 😂

[@paulbunting4260]

@@Retro4u my advice on straightening chip legs is to do it gradually under the scope with tweezers If you try to bend them back in one go, they ofen break. Paul

[@Retro4u]

Yeah 👍 I’ll give it a go usually I use the edge of a scarple knife 1 by 1 of course. Thanks for the comments

[@M1528A]

😂😂😂 great stuff

[@Retro4u]

Thankyou

[@alessandrobenedettini1064]

Very interesting video!

[@Retro4u]

Thankyou glad you enjoyed it

[@ConsoleCombat]

Hello. I bought a pre built version of the unocart 2.6k but I'm having trouble with the SD reader reading the SD card. Can you suggest some troubleshooting I could do? The seller has left me out to dry so I'm looking for anyone to help. Thanks for your time.

[@Retro4u]

Have you formatted it in fat32. Does it boot to the menu

[@ConsoleCombat]

@@Retro4u thank you so much for replying! Yes I have formatted it to fat32 (I've also tried Fat). It does boot to the menu. It seems like the reader might be faulty? I've tried 2GB sd card and a 16gb sd card. I can't get it to list the contents. I can't solder for my life so I'm hoping for a software solution.

[@ConsoleCombat]

@@Retro4u One other thing to note, when I try to see the contents of the SD in the Atari, it shows ".." as if it has an empty directory, but when I select the ".." to go back to the previous menu, a large font "SD" oscillates in the top left corner indefinitely.

[@Retro4u]

@ConsoleCombat are you in the UK. Also You could open up and try to flash it but you need the programmer to program it

[@ConsoleCombat]

@@Retro4u I am in Canada. I do not have a programmer for it as it was supposed be all set up when I bought it. However, I am amenable to shipping it to you, paying the associated fees to ship and return and pay you whatever fee to fix it. Perhaps you can make a video of the process. Please excuse me if this is too much of an ask.

[@AngeloCoelho]

project as been removed from pcbway, did you downloaded the original files and can share ?

[@Retro4u]

I may have them will have a look later after the football ⚽️ :)

[@Retro4u]

I have not found them yet. Looks like he has fetched another version out. I will have another look

[@ReidoMD86]

Ola amigão voce poderia tazer uma doação de um cartucho desse pra nós? Gostaria muito mais tá muito caro e queria demais um everdrive desses Deus abençoe muito todos nós ...

[@Retro4u]

Hi thanks for the comment unfortunately I don’t have any more of these and they have since ended the project :)

[@baddog1456]

How much to buy one from you??

[@Retro4u]

Drop me a email I have one left :) thanks for the comment

[@baddog1456]

@@Retro4u how do i find your email address?

[@Retro4u]

@baddog1456 retroconsoles4uk@gmail. Com It should be in the contact info :)

[@JonPowis]

Do you have a link for the hot plate

[@Retro4u]

This is the one I used Just found this amazing item on AliExpress. Check it out! ￡41.48 15％ Off | UYUE 946C Electronic Hot Plate Preheat Digital Preheating Station 200x200mm For PCB SMD Heating Led Lamp Desoldering 110V/220V a.aliexpress.com/_mK6nVpK comes in 2 sizes

[@JonPowis]

@@Retro4u Top man thank you !!

[@DonPapiGames]

Buen día! Hasta que capacidad de micro SD soporta este uno CART?

[@Retro4u]

Hi I used 8gb not sure 🤔 what size it supports but tbh 8gb was more than enough to hold all the Atari games lol 😂 I ever think a 2gb would do

[@DonPapiGames]

Es que deseo comprar el que venden en AliExpress, pero no se si tenga buena opinión de él, el de Aliexpress es color verde la PCB

[@PauloHenrique-hg7iw]

pode fornecer os arquivos da placa e o esquema ?

[@Retro4u]

www.pcbway.com/project/shareproject/UnoCart_2600.html

[@kieran0178]

I wanna win

[@Retro4u]

Good luck :)

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

I don't have a 2600 OK

[@Retro4u]

No problem 😉 but thanks for the comment :)