tryp

You know, I never even thought about the CD-spindle foam ring..it's not like I don't have tons of those lying around here great idea! and as far as fixing the buttons, I'm not sure.. maybe the spring's wore out? try replacing that. My RF adapter for my 7800 went kaput so all my atari stuff is in a box somewhere right now, if i want to play atari, i just play the atari games on my good old-school FAT PS2 from the hard drive. Gotta love emulation. And as far as the cigarette and dinner plate yeah.. i'd just eaten, i was smoking.. hell, had I not been out of marijuana at the time, you'd probably have seen a joint instead of a cig, since that's really the only time i smoke more than four cigs a day, when i'm out of pot.. ;P Jesus.. a foam ring.. you'd think they'd have learned the controller self-centering mechanism was more important than that after the 5200 controller fiasco never know.. one of these days I might decide to go try a full on mod and build my own custom self-centering mechanism for the pro-lines just for the hell of it. Probably not anytime soon though.

Unfortunately he's right, forgot to mention that earlier. However, like someone else said, most of the games you will own will only use one button If you're handy with a soldering iron you can easily make an adaptor. All it takes is two resistors, two transistors, male and female DB-9 connectors, a little wiring and a housing. All are obtainable at Radio Shack. For the housing I did a home-job. The schematics are on this site somewhere. Super easy. You'll have the B and C buttons at your disposal (or "A" and "Start" if you want to be different). A Sega arcade stick makes the set-up even sweeter. haha.. housing is easy.. use a power brick from an old laptop.. those work for housings for many different things..(like a Genesis pad->PC parallel port adapter ) or if you don't have one of those, i'm sure you can find something similar lying around... be creative!

You can use the Genesis pad on the 7800, but if I remember correctly, only one of the fire buttons will work (the B button, at least on the six button pad), so it's only recommended for 2600 games. I may be wrong here, as my whole Atari cartridge library is currently limited to 2600 games (I don't know what happened to the few 7800 carts I had, they disappeared years ago, so I can't test it right now...) But yeah, you can use the Genesis pad on the 7800, and even the 2600.

Has nobody heard of the Sega Nomad?

So yeah. I found these gamepads at a garage sale years ago, almost identical to the original US Sega Saturn controllers. They're labeled as THRUSTMASTER. I've never been able to find any drivers for it or make it work or anything. I really want to get this thing working. If anybody knows anything about this controller, please help! I've been googling for hours and everything I'm finding is Japanese. (at least I'm finding something this time though, had to take the damn thing apart and look at the board to find ANYTHING out..) Maybe a taiwanese bootleg controller or something? Although the sticker on the back says made in China... damn i'm confused.. http://vgram.blogspot.com/2008/08/so-calle...er-gamepad.html I've got pictures up there and more info.

OK. First off, on the Gen 2, the 2nd controller port CAN be used to communicate with the computer. I remember reading something on that years ago, you'd need a Sega CD attached, download the software, burn to CD. Now. You put the CD in the Sega CD, with a cable running from Port 2 to the serial port on your PC, and you're free to dump roms and who knows what else. I've never actually done it, but I'd read about it in a few places. Also, I'm pretty sure the EXT port on the Gen 1 can be used for the same thing, by the looks of it, although this is the first I've heard of that.

I would guess so. Is the C for "copyright"? It might just be the copyright date for the artwork on the newer box. Not sure about that, unless it was a different box than the two shown, I had the newer one (the top one) which I got christmas '87. (first game system I ever actually owned. Thought it was a NES before I opened it. Boy was I disappointed then, but now it's quite the opposite.) Unless of course, they updated the copyright on the box every year maybe? Or maybe just put '88 on that box because it was already almost '88.. who knows..I haven't seen that box in 20 years.. Looks like the bottom one was made back in '83 or '84 (considering the similarities to the 2600 and 5200 of the time), just maybe stocked in warehouses until the release or something. I originally got a 7800 in 87 also, but I don't remember what box it had. The console itself was one of the earlier versions. Whatever that mark on the box is, I doubt it has any strict connection to the console. I don't see much reason why they'd mark console production dates on the box. Best way to get a build date would be to find some date codes on parts inside the console. That's still not exact, but you can assume it wasn't assembled much later than the latest date code you can find. In case anybody doesn't know how to read them - a code like 8732 would mean 32nd week of 1987. If you don't want to take apart your console, look at the sticker on the bottom, in the box that says 'Serial Number' above it. For example, mine says 72R4BR A1 87 5406414 but the '7' in '87' is a slightly different color, like it was stamped on there. Since I got my 7800 in '87, I'm pretty positive that marking is to designate the year it was built. (and the only reason I remember what box it was is because I remember sneaking into the living room while my parents were asleep and making a small tear to see what was under that paper..yeah I was a sneaky little bastard when I was a kid, but then again, who wasn't?)

heh. that's not all that uncommon here in Houston... stupid meth junkies

I would guess so. Is the C for "copyright"? It might just be the copyright date for the artwork on the newer box. Not sure about that, unless it was a different box than the two shown, I had the newer one (the top one) which I got christmas '87. (first game system I ever actually owned. Thought it was a NES before I opened it. Boy was I disappointed then, but now it's quite the opposite.) Unless of course, they updated the copyright on the box every year maybe? Or maybe just put '88 on that box because it was already almost '88.. who knows..I haven't seen that box in 20 years.. Looks like the bottom one was made back in '83 or '84 (considering the similarities to the 2600 and 5200 of the time), just maybe stocked in warehouses until the release or something.

Jesus! I wish I had a collection like that.. my first collection of games (mostly 2600 though, only 7800 game I had was Pole Position II) was decent, but none in boxes.. that got lost in a move hell, ten years ago.. I'm just now starting to build it back up, and I don't have very many right now, and NO 7800 games I'm at maybe 20 now, but I just pulled my 7800 out of storage, refurbished my controllers, and I'm looking on ebay for lots of games now.. damn those boxes for being so hard to find

I just hooked up my 7800 for the first time in a couple years last night (lost the RF switchbox, made a cable to resolve that problem) and noticed that the joysticks were really loose. (due to the self-centering mechanism being nothing but a foam pad) Anyway, I pulled them apart to see if I could fix them, which I did, and it was actually about a hundred times easier than I thought it was going to be. I wrote a tutorial, with pictures, on this for anybody who might need help with this should they want to fix this problem. How to restore your Atari 7800 Pro-Line Joystick Hope this helps anybody who needs it!

Got mine Christmas '86...pretty sure it's the 3rd one.dammit now i've got to pull it apart to check just out of curiosity...actually wait, no '87, because the number on the bottom is A1 87 5406414...gah!! dead roaches inside the damn thing...then again, it hasn't been apart since the dog chewed the end off the power supply and I soldered the wires to the board probably 15 years ago.. yup.. version 3.. no sign of the expansion port..