29 replies to this topic

[skippy]

Hi. Im a starting collector of atari 2600, but also might be wanting to start with the lynx.I do have a question.
Is it possible to hook up a lynx to a tv with some kind of cable like you cannow days or is it impossible?

greetz vincent

[The_Laird]

There is a way of doing it but its very expensive!

[roland p]

In the forum's search function you can search 'titles only' for 'lynx tv'.

[skippy]

The_Laird, on Sun Aug 1, 2010 2:08 PM, said:

There is a way of doing it but its very expensive!

And what would that be, or does involve changing the lynx on the inside because thats not my thing. And what
is expensive?

[holygrailvideogames.com]

Wizztronics was supposed to release a devise to play the Lynx on the TV but it was never released. I don't know if a prototype was even made.

[roland p]

http://www.atariage....__fromsearch__1
http://www.atariage....__fromsearch__1
http://www.atariage....__fromsearch__1

[doctorclu]

holygrailvideogames.com, on Sun Aug 1, 2010 8:16 PM, said:

Wizztronics was supposed to release a devise to play the Lynx on the TV but it was never released. I don't know if a prototype was even made.

They had a prototype for sale for about $800. If that price was still the case, it would not be a bad price being it would be the only one.

[The_Laird]

Atari had tons of them back in the day they gave them to magazines and TV shows so they could capture the games, they called the black box.

Shame they have never showed up anywhere.

[Nimtene]

From what I've heard, back in the day, Atari paid $10k for 5 (10?) 'Black Boxes'
to be made that perform this Lynx to TV task -- As The_Laird said, they were
used for game demonstration and review purposes. And as I understand it,
Atari was very stingy about loaning them out, and were quick at requesting
them back if you fell into disfavor with Atari. I remember several magazines
refusing to do a proper review of lynx games, or bad-mouthing Atari, after
they had their 'Black Box' revoked. I bought one from B & C, back in 2003. At
the time, Bruce had sold at least one other one, and had another he said he
was keeping for himself; Not sure if he ended up selling it. No idea where the
other ones ended up going to. Incredible item, shame it wasn't commercialized.

Edited by Nimtene, Tue Aug 3, 2010 6:47 PM.

[roland p]

Nimtene, on Tue Aug 3, 2010 6:31 PM, said:

I bought one from B & C, back in 2003.

Cool!

do you have pictures of it?

[Nimtene]

roland p, on Wed Aug 4, 2010 1:52 PM, said:

Nimtene, on Tue Aug 3, 2010 6:31 PM, said:

I bought one from B & C, back in 2003.

Cool!

do you have pictures of it?

Absolutely, I'll try to post some this weekend.

[Nimtene]

A few pics, as promised. First one shows the black box, with cable that
connects to a modified Lynx system. Second one show Toki game on the
Lynx LCD. Third one shows what game looks like on my 42 inch HDTV.

[roland p]

That looks really amazing. What a cool piece of hardware. Have you ever checked the insides?

[panzer]

I wished someone would reverse engineer this Atari relic. It's a true solution to the Lynx's abysmal screen.

[Isgoed]

Very, very nice!

[Wookie]

This is a mystery I'd be interested in helping to solve. If you're brave enough to crack the lynx and black box open, just posting photos of the circuit boards would answer a lot of questions.

--Wookie

[Nuclear Pacman]

wow that thing is awesome.

[Shawn Jefferson]

There was a thread about this some time ago posted by Rygar...
http://www.atariage....d-you-be-ready/

[Bones Justice]

Sorry for bringing up an old thread but this was the newest one on the subject that I could find here.

Anyways, I remember not long after getting my first Lynx that they were working on a television adapter for the it. I waited for news for years and never saw or read anything else. I was hoping that this had been produced but every internet search appears to be a dead end. Were there ever any other than the demo units mentioned in this thread?

I did find the plans for (apparently) the demo unit in one of my internet searches. Has anyone ever tried building one?

I had thought back in the day that if a television adapter was available, the Lynx could have competed with the NES, TG-16, and Genesis for the home console market. Not only did it have comparable graphics capabilities but it also would have been the only console that was also portable.

[danny_galaga]

Bones Justice, on Mon Jun 20, 2011 7:50 PM, said:

I had thought back in the day that if a television adapter was available, the Lynx could have competed with the NES, TG-16, and Genesis for the home console market. Not only did it have comparable graphics capabilities but it also would have been the only console that was also portable.

Damn straight! I never knew there was any way at all to do TV. Looking at Nimtenes screenshot makes me cry a little for the possibilities...

But that is also why I like Lynx and Jaguar. They are flawed and unfinished (especially the Jag), much like myself

[108 Stars]

I love the Lynx, but a TV adaptor wouldnot have made it serious competition to the Genesis or TG-16 as a home console. As spectacular as Lynx games can look on the small screen, on TV it is very obvious that it can´t keep up with the other systems in some core aspects; one being the resolution, which is just very low on Lynx, even lower than the res of the original GameBoy. The other issue is that it only displays 16 colors on screen.

This would have looked very outdated by 1989, when Lynx, Genesis and TG-16 were released.

I do play Lynx on TV btw; thanks to the original Xbox. I have the mednafen Lynx-emulator for it and it lets me play most Lynx games on TV flawlessly.

[Bones Justice]

I don't know, the videos I have seen of the Lynx displayed with the demo adapter and it looks good. I would have thought it would look heavily pixelated but it doesn't. It looks good for games of that era in my opinion. But it doesn't really matter, the real problem was the business politics of getting third-party developers. That's why more games were made for Gameboy than for Lynx anyways.

If a program can be written to emulate the chips inside the Lynx, why couldn't a program be written to emulate the chips inside the demo adapter? You wouldn't need to build an expensive machine, just some kind of adapter to hook a Lynx up to a computer that runs the emulator program.

The plans for building the adapter look like they are beyond my skill level. I'll ask my Pop next holiday what he thinks, though.

[danny_galaga]

I'm guessing other reason they probably didn't bother with TV out was the extra cost it would have entailed. The Lynx was already very expensive...

[rdemming]

Bones Justice, on Tue Jun 21, 2011 7:37 PM, said:

If a program can be written to emulate the chips inside the Lynx, why couldn't a program be written to emulate the chips inside the demo adapter? You wouldn't need to build an expensive machine, just some kind of adapter to hook a Lynx up to a computer that runs the emulator program.

An adapter to convert the Lynx video signal to something that can be read by a PC (e.g. USB interface), is not a simple thing. If you want to make something like that, I think it is only a little step extra to make the adapter output a standard video signal instead of writing it to a PC.

Modern FGPA should be fast enough to sample the LCD signals and convert it to RGB or even HDMI.

Robert

[Bones Justice]

Well, I wasn't thinking of converting the signal to be read by a PC. I was thinking the PC would run software that emulates the hardware that Atari used to convert the signal to a television, bypassing the need to build the hardware. I apologize if I've oversimplified this but I've only known that software that emulates hardware even existed for about two seconds. And the plans I found on the internet for the hardware are more complicated than something that I could build.

If you're saying a FPGA could do the job, that's great! But I have no idea how to program one to do that. I'd even just be guessing where to connect it to the Lynx's circuit board. I'd love to learn, though.