Audio-Video Adapter PCB for Atari XE and XL

Product Description

An A/V adapter designed for 8-bit Atari home computers — XL and XE series. The project is fully open-source (author: Sven Petersen, GitHub), available under the GPL-3.0 license along with complete PCB documentation and a bill of materials (BOM).

The main purpose of the adapter is to enable the connection of a classic Atari to a modern TV or monitor in the S-Video standard, providing significantly sharper and cleaner image quality than the standard composite output originally built into these computers. The S-Video signal separates brightness (luma) and color (chroma) into separate lines, resulting in a less blurred image and eliminating typical composite color artifacts.

Compatibility

• Atari XE – S-Video support "out of the box" without additional computer modifications.
• Atari XL – Requires a prior hardware modification (commonly known as the "S-Video mod") within the computer, which outputs separate luma/chroma signals to the monitor port. Without this modification, the adapter will only transmit a composite signal on Atari XL.

Who is it for?

This solution is ideal for owners of Atari 130XE, 800XE, 65XE, 800XL, 130XL, and related models who want to connect their hardware to a modern display (TV with an S-Video input, video converter/scaler) and achieve significantly better image quality than the factory composite output, without modifying the original computer electronics (except for the optional S-Video mod for XL models).

Project:

https://github.com/svenpetersen1965/Atari-XL-XE-A-V-Adapter