Unclear picture on my 2600

[Fitzy7]

Hi guys,

First post here, just registered cos I got a heavy sixer and a jr at the car boot sale on Sunday. Haven't attempted anything with the jr yet but had the heavy going last night playing defender II. Everything was fine, had a few games and loved it. Got home from work today itching to get on and the screen was like what I've attached.

Just thought I'd throw a post up to see if anyone on here could suggest anything from the picture alone before I go in depth.

Thanks in advance

[+SpiceWare]

Try cleaning the cartridges. The cartridge port might also be dirty. More info in this topic.

[Fitzy7]

Thanks Spiceware, I will give the carts a clean later with rubbing alcohol. I read on a forum that you could rub them with a very fine sand paper? also could you advise me on how I would clean the cart port? Id rather not open it up, but if I really had to I would.

[freewheel]

Just an observation, but why is it that 90% of "hey I just picked up this Atari and the picture is screwy" posts mention boot sales? Is there something unusually flaky with UK Ataris? Or is it possible that a lot of NTSC consoles/carts made their way over there somehow?

 

I didn't even realize the 2600 was all that common there (they certainly didn't seem common when I scrounged around 5 years ago, computers were far more common in the early 80s). I'm kinda surprised how many people seem to find them these days.

[Fitzy7]

Freeweed, I went to the boot sale to buy some old toys for my kid cos he jus breaks everything anyway. I found a 2600 and a amstrad gx4000 on the same day. the two people didnt no what they had. the 2600 was £3 with six games

U got any advice of the cleaning issue?

[freewheel]

Cleaning is simple - 99%, probably 99.9% of the time, it's the cartridge contacts. Take a cotton swab, soak it in rubbing alcohol (70% is fine but the stronger the better), and wipe the cartridge contacts on both sides. Then take a dry swab and really scrub. You should see the end get nice and black. If not, then they're not too dirty to begin with. If the carts have the edge protector/shutter, use a very thin screwdriver to push one of the sides open and you can slide the cover back and hold it while you clean - hard to describe but it's kind of obvious once you get it to work once.

 

Cleaning the cart port in the console itself is almost never needed. You could take a slightly damp (with alcohol) cart and insert/remove a few times. SOme people are going to disagree here but I've done it before. Isopropyl is pretty harmless on electronics of that era, just don't have it pouring out onto the mainboard. Sandpaper is only to be used as a last resort. I have never, with over 2000 carts for literally every system ever made, had to resort to that. If a cart still won't work after a lot of alcohol, usually the ROMs are fried or something.

 

If cleaning doesn't help, take a look at some other threads here. It could be anything from a bad video cable, to a broken switchbox (I can't remember if the UK even used these things), to a mangled RF modulator, to a dying/dead TIA chip, to bad caps... the list goes on and on. It's easier to figure it out if you have spare parts, a CRT set to test against, another 2600, more games, etc. Hard to guess what it could be with just "picture is fuzzy" because so much can cause this issue.

 

That's a hell of a steal for the unit, if you can get it working. Hell it's a good deal even if it's just the games and some parts from the console.

[Fitzy7]

Thanks free weed, appreciated