Eran Feit Restores a Dead Atari 2600 Games Console with a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino Micro

Maker Eran Feit has brought a dead Atari 2600 console back to life, restoring its hardware with a Raspberry Pi single-board computer and an Arduino Micro as a joystick interface.

"This is a very nice outcome of transforming a non working Atari 2600 to a new Atari arcade console using Arduino and a Raspberry Pi running [an] Atari emulator," Feit explains of the project, which is based around the chassis and motherboard of a sadly deceased Atari 2600 eight-bit games console.

"It is based on learning and replacing the electric signal of the Atari 2600 buttons and joystick through the board to an Arduino Micro. Then the signals are activated by the Raspberry Pi and Atari emulator. I kept all the changes encapsulated in the original Atari 2600 in order to maintain the external functionality of the buttons and joysticks."

Originally released in 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (VCS), and later rebranded, the Atari 2600 is a fondly-remembered early entry in home video gaming — despite its low-resolution graphics and the famous flop of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a much-hyped and over-produced cartridge the majority of units of which ended up in landfill following the video game market crash of 1983.

Feit has published a video and a brief write-up of the project, but has not yet publicly released the source code or schematics.