Upgrading an ATARI 65XE – Sophia rev.C module

While looking for ways to display the picture from an ATARI on various devices (TVs, monitors and LCDs), I came across a post by Michal Polák in the Facebook group Amiga a ATARI ST CZ/SK. He had beautifully revived an ATARI 130XE. The sharp image and the fact that it worked on a high-resolution monitor immediately caught my attention. It was exactly what I had been looking for.

Following the recommendation, I opened the Sophia rev.C – DVI board discussion on Atariage.com and contacted the user Simius, who designed this upgrade. I have a habit of ordering everything twice just in case — you never know when a spare will come in handy, and it also saves on postage — so I ordered two rev.B (RGB) and two rev.C (DVI) boards. A single module works out at roughly CZK 1,500. I received a small discount for taking four at once. With the DVI version you have to specify the required resolution when ordering because it cannot be switched afterwards. I chose Full HD. The different versions are described in detail in the Atariki encyclopedia.

After 14 days a small parcel arrived containing two RGB and two DVI Sophia modules, packed extremely carefully, together with the small cables and output connectors needed to route the signal out of the computer. Naturally, that very evening I opened one of my ATARI 800XEs to try getting it running. My disappointment was considerable when I discovered that the GTIA — and in fact all the chips — were soldered directly to the motherboard rather than sitting in sockets that could simply be swapped. Well, it was the first ATARI I had ever opened.

Opening this ATARI not only taught me that the job would not be a simple plug-and-play affair; I also discovered that the computer had undergone an interesting RAM expansion. A machine that I had originally intended to sell suddenly became an interesting piece for my collection. I would like to devote a separate article in the future to the phenomenon of memory expansions in Atari computers.

Then the weekend arrived, which always means an opportunity for a meeting of our ATARI club with Kevin Emmet Brown in his Atari room. Kevin was just as excited as I was, so we immediately stripped down my ATARI 65XE and started soldering. Desoldering and removing the solder was definitely no fun and went very, very slowly. Above all, we did not want to overheat or damage anything. We will definitely need better tools for this kind of work. Eventually we managed to desolder the GTIA carefully. We cleaned everything thoroughly and Kevin soldered a socket into the vacant position, making it easy to remove the Sophia later if necessary. The ATARI can therefore be returned to its original state at any time.

We could hardly wait to see whether everything worked. I did not capture Kevin’s very first reaction, but the second one still conveys the atmosphere rather well 🙂

At first sight I was delighted. It was already well past midnight, so it was time to end the meeting of our ATARI club. We arranged an extra session for the following day because we still needed to make the appropriate opening in the rear of the ATARI for the DVI connector — and, of course, properly enjoy the new graphics experience.

Personally, my impressions are mixed. An LCD has such a high resolution that anything blocky — and there is plenty of that on an 8-bit machine — looks even more blocky. Brightness and contrast are beautiful. The colours in some games occasionally surprised me, but that is because the conventional TV I used as a child rendered colours differently. The image on an older CRT television definitely looks somehow less angular than it does on an LCD.

So what can I say in conclusion? I will definitely keep the DVI version, but I would also like to see games the way I remember them from childhood. I am in no hurry. For now I will concentrate on watching auctions for professional CRT video monitors, which are ideal for retro gaming. I would like something around 14 inches with a Trinitron tube.