Inside the Magnavox Odyssey2

The Hardware

Looking inside the Odyssey², you will see that the motherboard is very small compared to the size of the console. See Figure 6.

Figure 6: Inside the Magnavox Odyssey²

The RF modulator, seen in Figure 7, is in charge of converting the composite video and analog audio signal into an RF signal, to be sent to the antenna connector of the TV. The black switch you see in Figure 7 is the one for selecting which channel the console will use, three or four. Since the Odyssey² in reality generates composite video and analog audio that is then converted to RF, you can easily modify your console for it to have “video out” and “audio out” outputs, creating a higher-quality connection between the console and your TV set, and allowing you to connect your console even to an old composite video monitor (either color or green phosphorous). This tutorial shows you how. 

Figure 7: The RF modulator

In Figure 8, we have an overall look at the motherboard of the Odyssey². In the upper right corner you can see the components of its linear power supply. (The external transformer was not a complete power supply.) On the next page, we will provide a more in-depth explanation about how the hardware of the Odyssey² worked.

Figure 8: The Odyssey² motherboard