Live Robot Hack Session
DJ Sures
Synthiam

Raspberry Pi hacking Atari 2600

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A little different tonight, rather than hacking robots. I'm a retro gamer at heart, and have been on a mission adding raspberry pi emulation to my retro game consoles. So tonight, I will be program an arduino to emulate joystick & paddle input devices, program arduino to emulate the switches, and configuring retro pi to emulate the 2600.

This isn't the first time I've hacked a retro console. There's been a few others, including the Apple II hack. I added an arduino that created an HID USB keyboard and joystick device after reverse engineering the keyboard. I should update that video to show where it's at now. Here’s the Apple pi video link:  https://synthiam.com/Community/HackEvents/DJ-s-Apple-II-Pi-Hack-part-1-2-17886

Heres the code that emulates switches and joysticks: https://github.com/DJSures/Atari-2600-VCS-USB-Joystick-Console-Arduino

Here's the final outcome...


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Israel
#9   — Edited

Hello,

I have done the same process using your tutorial. fantastic project

I have some questions regarding the "Raspberry Pi hacking Atari 2600" :

  1. Did you make any manual changes in the Retropie config ? Can you share ?

  2. When I connect the Arduino to the Raspberi PI , it enables to setup only one joystick as an input. When I test it on Windows (Control panel) , Both joysticks are being discovered and works perfect. Any suggestion how to setup the two joysticks (which are connected to one arduino which is connected to one USB ) ?

  3. The Atari 2600 joystick has one red button. The Atari games uses the "B" button on Retropie as a fire command , while the "A" Retropie as for choosing a game in the game list. How do I setup the botton for both functionalities ?

Thanks Eran