Make your own ColecoVision at home, part 5

A push for reliability

Leako — the homebrew ColecoVision clone — has moved from proof‑of‑concept to practicality. The board has reached a point where the author wants it to be buildable by "normal" people, not just the person who dreamed it up at 2 a.m. So revision seven focuses on one thing above all: reliability. Will this be the charm? After months of testing, soldering, and a few facepalm moments, the answer is slowly ticking toward yes.

Power and the USB fix

The biggest change is how the thing gets power. Version six relied on a DC barrel jack and external regulation — a setup that invites polarity mistakes and dodgy adapters. The builder switched to a USB‑B jack, borrowing the trick used on a Sega SG‑1000 clone, the Soggy‑1000. It has been reported that some USB chargers are noisy or overvoltage-prone, so the author tested with a quality Anker wall wart rather than trusting every phone charger in the junk drawer. Practical, but not a silver bullet.

Mechanical headaches and controller ports

The board would bend under cartridge insertion — think diving board at the neighborhood pool. A standoff was added but not quite right; the controller ports were redesigned to clip in and reduce leverage, but when creating a custom footprint in KiCad the author allegedly forgot to include a ring of copper for soldering the springy strain‑relief pins. That bite him later, and the footprint was replaced with the manufacturer’s version — too late for v7, though. Small oversights, big consequences. Who among us hasn’t cursed a torn pad?

Shortages, swaps, and assembly niceties

Parts shortages nudged more changes. The design was tweaked to accept a different power‑switch FET and uses a Maxim ICL7660 for the −5V rail instead of the original TI part. It has been reported that TI was migrating 74‑series logic to a new fabrication process, which allegedly delayed the return of the 74LS541 and cost the project a month. To make life easier for builders, the board now carries silkscreened part values so assembly goes faster. The project still has a few bugs to iron out, but the tone here is gritty optimism — the kind that says “one more revision” with a weary grin.

Sources: leadedsolder.com, Lobsters