DavidMil Posted May 26, 2017 Share Posted May 26, 2017 I'm going to post this question on the 7800 forum, but this forum has such a wealth of diverse knowledge, that I wanted to ask it here too. Did Atari ever make a Field Repair Manual for the 7800? I can't find one anywhere. I did find schematics but no service manual. Thanks, DavidMil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted May 26, 2017 Share Posted May 26, 2017 I don't have any such thing, or a Sam's book either but that's not to say nothing exists. The problem with Atari technical documentation is that it started poorly, peaked around 1980 or so when they finally released the technical notes for the 8-bit computers then got worse by the time the XLs came around 1982-3. By the Tramiel era it was back to poor. Programming docs for the 7800 weren't too bad but it seemed like ST got all the attention though probably thanks to using largely 3rd party OS components. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted May 26, 2017 Share Posted May 26, 2017 I'm going to post this question on the 7800 forum, but this forum has such a wealth of diverse knowledge, that I wanted to ask it here too. Did Atari ever make a Field Repair Manual for the 7800? I can't find one anywhere. I did find schematics but no service manual. Thanks, DavidMil Do your schematics cover more than one version of the board? My two NTSC units have very different layouts in the support logic around the right side of the PCB. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted May 26, 2017 Share Posted May 26, 2017 There's the Jerzy Sobola schematics, looks like the PAL one just covers the differences. But yes, it would seem there's not coverage of all revisions. I've avoided modding my consoles somewhat due to lack of documentation, the differences in revisions seem especially so when it comes to the video generation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidMil Posted May 28, 2017 Author Share Posted May 28, 2017 Do your schematics cover more than one version of the board? My two NTSC units have very different layouts in the support logic around the right side of the PCB. Sadly yes, and it's very confusing and looks rather odd. David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+kheller2 Posted May 29, 2017 Share Posted May 29, 2017 Back when I did the Classic Atari Game Systems FAQ (cagsfaq) in the early 90's, I found no less than three different NTSC 7800 mother boards. As I recall Space Shuttle was a good testing game to figure out which board you had. As I recall there was no official 7800 service manual, but schematics and a wealth of official programming tutorials and notes were released with the Stella guides. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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