Hello all,
Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in! A big lot of Atari stuff on craigslist for $100, to be precise. 4 consoles came in the lot; 2 light sixers, 1 4-switch, and 1 heavy sixer. I plan on modding and selling the light consoles and keeping a heavy sixer, but when I got to the second light sixer today, I found something strange inside. As you probably guessed from the title, there were a heavy sixer's guts inside!
I initially suspected someone swapped the guts out as there were only 2 screws holding the (thick) bottom shielding plate on and they were in the wrong place (center holes). But having looked at the dates on the chips, I'm not so sure. The latest one dates to 27th week of 1978 (late august, early September). In fact only one date is 1977, the rest (both boards and chips) are all mid-1978. What's even stranger is that the motherboard has the earlier striped, soldered ribbon cable and white socket. The switch board even matches. Why would someone swap out both boards if it's likely only the motherboard was dead? There was even similar crud in both the case and inside the shielding box. Finally, the sticker on the bottom of the case says Sunnyvale. I thought only the heavy sixers were manufactured there?
What do you all think? Did it come from the factory like this or was it a later repair?