I have no idea who this dude is. I just know that I must get drunk with him one day (Photo credit: JohnEdgarPark)

It's time for the the second installment in the thrilling Do It Your Own Fucking Self: Atari Punk Console. Today I'll give you a list of components (which you'll probably shoplift), show you a schematic (which you'll probably ignore) and supply a picture of how the components look when joined together on a breadboard. But first, because I want you all to stay pretty (or, at the very least, prettier than I am), I have to give you a safety lecture:

WARNING: Don't be an asshole! Fuckin' read this; OK?:  I have a degree in Electronics. Seriously, ask my wife. And while you don't need a degree to take on a project like this, you do need something that I picked up while earning my degree: A healthy respect/fear for/of soldering irons and electricity. Soldering irons are HOT (even after they've been unplugged). Every soldering iron was created with two goals in mind - to solder and to burn you. BE CAREFUL and NEVER use a soldering iron within a mile of pets or children (unless little Waldo has a hefty insurance policy). We'll be using an electrolytic capacitor in this build. I'll show which is the positive lead and which is the negative lead. I'm showing you this because, while getting my degree, I one saw a guy breadboard a capacitor with the leads reversed. When he hooked up the battery, the capacity shot off the breadboard and lodged in the ceiling. It was as scary as it was funny.

If you don't to reduce your risk of getting burned or shocked Jameco sells an Atari Punk Console kit

Now that I've scared the shit outta ya', let's build something! Here's a list of parts you'll need (OK, the switch and the light are optional, but they look cool and they're cheap; so get 'em anyway):

• 1 (one) 556 Dual timer IC (you might also want to pic up a 14 pin IC socket. Especially if your the type who tends to fry chips. Plus, you'll need it later when we solder the components to the board). And yes, they really do make a 666 IC.
  
• 1 (one) 1k resistor: Reading from left to right, the bands should be brown, black, and red with a gold one at the end (the gold band means 5% tolerance). Knowing how to read a resistor may save your life one day if neither Batman nor MacGyver is around to pull your sorry ass outta the fire.
  
• 1 (one) 330 Ohm resistor - this will keep your LED from frying.
  
• 2 (two) 1 meg potentiometers.
• 1 (one) 5k potentiometer (in a later version, we'll replace this with a voltage control)
  
• 1 (one) .01uf capacitor. I have a friend whose son once swallowed one of these, thinking it was a Chiclet (I guess the boy didn't notice the wires protruding from the "Chiclet". When i ask my friend what he did when he learned what his son had done, he said "What can I do? My kid's pretty fucking stupid."
• 1 (one) 0.1uf capacitor [see dumb-ass kid warning above]
• 1 (one) 10uf electrolytic capacitor. This does NOT look like a Chiclet. It should be shaped like a beer can and have a black stripe down one side. The lead below the black stripe is the negative lead.  Got that? Good!
• 1 (one) 1/4" stereo phone jack. You could test with a small 8 ohm speaker, but I like to hook my projects up to amps and see how many of my neighbors file noise complaints.
• 1 (one) SPST (Single Position [like Baptists!] Single Throw] Toggle switch. Trust me; you'll want to be able to shut this thing off just as much as you'll want to turn it on.
• 1 (one) Green LED assembly. Because a glowing green light looks like radiation. The longer lead is the positive one.
• 1 (one) Heavy duty 9 volt battery clip. I swear that you can get a pack of 5 for less than 3 bucks.
• 1 (one) 9 volt battery.
  

You've been very patient, so let's take a break and listen to some Caustic together.

Feelin' better? OK, here's the schematic based on Forrest Mim's (we talked about Forrest in the last installment, but I forgot to mention that chicks dug him) original only made to look cooler on a black background:

And here's what it looks like spread out all-the-fuck over a breadboard:

Yes, it's a mess. But the point was to be certain that it makes noise before we solder it to the board. And make noise it does!

Next time we'll be a (cool) housing for the unit (huh, huh) and maybe we'll get around to to soldering the components to board (which will mean we'll be finished!)

Special thanks to my buddies anMech of the Organization of Broken Toys for starting me off on this project and Zoog von Rock of Angespit for keeping me on it.