Mef

Dome contacts on the pcb tend to get gunk and oxidation underneath, try removing them and giving a good rub with a q-tip immersed in isopropyl alcohol. Common ethanol will do too, but you guys don't seem to get 96+% as easily as we do here.

How's flipping all bits at the same time considered Gray code?

There must be some truth in this. My 40" LED hands down loses with the ~13-14" CRT Commodore 1084S monitor. It's a combination of post-processing delay and having to cover too big a chunk of your field-of-view to be comfortable. I remember struggling to get the badge-score of 40k in Seaquest on the LED and easily going above 100k on every single try after switching to CRT.

Check your previous thread, instead of posting a duplicate one. You already got some replies there.: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/241667-2600b-with-128-games-built-in/?do=findComment&comment=3300364 Does it actually say Atari anywhere on the unit itself? Other than "Atari compatible"?

To be honest, as far as power supplies go, anything with 8-12V output and some 500mA should be fine. 9V is recommended as anything above would be just burned away as excess heat on the voltage regulator. Going below 8V might cause problems if you don't replace the old 7805 with a modern LDO counterpart first. Other than that, the filtering capacitors should care of all the rippling and only the shittiest power adapters will have a drawback in the form of heavy RF interferences if your TV cable isn't shielded well enough. First thing I'd try to do, is check either another well tried VCS with those TVs, or your console on an old CRT TV. I'm affraid it's your receivers that are to blame here. Older TVs were more tolerant about not-up-to-specs signals, and many VCS games don't follow the proper NTSC line count, causing jitter, rolling screen and all kinds of wird stuff on modern setups. May be also that they can't cope with the flicker being half of the frame frequency, alternating between interlaced and non-interlaced picture? Did you try any flicker-free games like the most basic ones (say, any of the launch titles)?

2600B sounds a lot like the name of the bootleg systems. Actually, 3 of the clone systems I've owned said "TV GAME COMPATIBLE 2600B" on the bottom sticker. While real Atari systems with built-in games did exist in some markets (Australia comes to mind), they're so rare, it's far more likely you're speaking of a Chinese knockoff. Pics would definitely help.

It's worth exactly as much as the next buyer would be willing to pay. Try $10 and complain about how used and bare it is. Totally not a collectors' item!

Reminds me of something related. Check out these Atari artworks.

It might take some fiddling with the volume settings (usually setting it high), and disabling all kinds of post processing / equalizers on your device (if any), but ultimately anything that can play records or sound files will do with a proper connector. Just don't use heavily compressed formats as these will screw things up. WAVs are working fine, low bit rate mp3s - not so much.

They're not interchangeable at all, as they are based on completely distinct ideas of operation. Paddles are analogue proportional controlls, while Driving Controller uses regular discrete joystick-directions' signals to simply count the number of turns the knob made (actually it counts every 1/16th of the full circle). The only game that officially used Driving Controller during the day was Indy 500. Currently, there's a couple homebrews utilising it as an alternate controller, plus some 3 hacks of Indy 500 with different sets of tracks. Ironically, Indy 500 is a crazy good game on its own, with some incredibly playable game modes like tag and collect on top of the expected run-of-the-mill racing.

I'd say for me - the underloved gems would be: Dark Cavern/Night Stalker. Sure it's repetitive as hell, but the Screen is very well composed, with clean non-flickering graphics, fluid animations and very responsible, solid controlls & gameplay. Same description would perfectly apply to the other title - coincidentally in a very similar vein: Alien Again, the graphics are crisp and well animated, and the game surpasses any other attempt at VCS Pac-Man port in a way (proper Dots, no flicker AT ALL!). It's just not fitting well with the title, but remains a very polished, playable & cleverly programmed game nonetheless.

Oh, sorry, I got so involved in admiring the print and thinking of possible applications, that I've completely failed to give the original post a proper read to begin with. In such case, I'd feel obligated to at least take on the cost of sending it over, as well as the percentage of the printing cost proportional to "share" in decals. PM me the total for 3 pieces (if possible to get more than one or two) and I'll be returning with the mail address. Also, I've some experience with model kits and have stumbled upon "dry-rub" decals a couple times, so that's cool as any other.

Ha! Dobry wieczór. I have no idea how much the standard letter costs to ship as intl/air-mail from US. I would imagine it's not as cost-prohibitive as the courier services, tho! But anyway, I'll wait till I can get the total quote (incl. the stickers' price itself) and confirm for sure then.

Oh I'd love me some if the shipping price (Europe) isn't going to be thru the roof.

AFAIK these were pack-ins for Juniors and 7800 Hence the matching rainbow plate. Think these were also available separately as "Pro Line Joystick". Pretty shitty to be honest. The knob cuts into your fingers and it feels mushy, since inside these are just dome contact switches pushed by a soft plastic "cross". Pro, my ass. Look cool thanks to the decor tho.

I usually don't like to participate in treads about preferences, but couldn't resist sharing the attached image. My cat joins me in approving the Competition Pro.

PAL or NTSC is a matter of Software change which you can perform yourself once you got the cart, so no worries. Shipment is worldwide, all the details available on a dedicated site here. Worth also checking the Forums' board for Harmony, I gave $71.99 for mine so rouglhy £47, with economy intl shipping. And it was the best shipping service I got in ages, with proper tracking INSIDE the country of designation. I didn't want any of that to sound like obnoxious advertising, and I got no affiliations with Harmony/Encore team either, just spreading the word since the device is sooo worth it for a gamer. If you also want to have an option to play the few very-large homebrews (including possible future ones) and that one release from back in the day that Harmony doesn't (Megaboy edu-game rom), Harmony Encore is the newer version of Harmony which alleviates all previous limitations. Here's the tread about the differences between distinct versions of the hardware.

That! So true, mate. I was actually trying to get somewhere in that game, but it was just so broken by that defendelessness! As for "holy shit, this is terrible" kind of laug, I also enjoy Ski Hunt a lot. It's just so mind-boggling that the graphics are quite advanced but you're just slaloming down the slope, stopping for a random shooting rampage to kill off some wildlife! And all that accompanied yet again (as in with Clown Downtown) with a horrible repetitive tune that just changes pitch, sometimes mutating into some really crazy sounds. It's so bad it's actually crazy entertaining in its own way. Makes for a great party game, not because of the drunken competition tho, but because you just need some sort of intoxication to fully enjoy what the hell is going on. I myself really like to fire it up for the giggles when I'm stoned. Another one that keeps you amused in the tone of "whoa, that's fucking BAD" is Mr. Postman, or as I call it - Retard Bear.:

H.E.R.O. is one of the main reasons I opted for Harmony. I'm not a collector myself, just wanted to play the games! And after seeing the prices for this particular one, adding say Beamrider - those two alone would pay for Harmony. Not to mention Pitfall 2 which would add another half of Harmony's cost, and a handful other games which I always wanted to try out too. Then there's the pain of having to build your own carts if you want to check out the proper modern PAL port of Montezuma's Revege and some other games which only existed in NTSC version, or improved Battlezone and all the PAL 60 roms... Lastly, there are tons of homebrews, demos and the whole Supercharger business that Harmony/Encore conveniently puts at your fingertips. All that for the aforementioned cost of two uncommon cartridges on Ebay. Seriously, if you're not obsessed about having the physical cart on your shelf - do yourself a favor and just get Harmony instead. All the more cost-efficient in PAL land where the VCS foothold was never even remotely as strong as in the States.

Clown Downtown!!! Or as me and my friend use to call it: Bongo Fox, because, well the in-game protagonist looks like a cross between a fox and a giant bulgy bong. And that's the first thing you think of that goddamned character if you didn't yet learn the official name from the printed instructions' booklet or label. (Which is the case here, as it was on a pirate 128-in-one hacked ROMs compilation built into the "2600 Game Compatible" chinclone machine.) Now this is fucking dreadfull. Not only the weird but very technically advanced graphics that are mocked to death with such sick joke of a gameplay, but also the wacky jump animation that just blows your mind with utter stupidity... And ultimately, the mind-drilling chilly fucking screech of a repetitive noise, composed of primitive notes which make the brain bleed with aggressive kind of monotony. Phewe, it's just THAT bad.

That might be your TV and not the console. Mine and from what I've been discussing with some retro-gaming people around, others' modern LED TVs, especially Samsungs have this moronic "brightness/background light auto-adjust" thing you can't turn off. Even with "Game mode" applied, which should theoretically shut off all post-processing, it's still on. And it causes the screen to be much-much darker if there's less overall pixels to display. Causing games with predominantly black background and small bullets to be barely playable. I couldn't believe my eyes at first, but if I take say C64 and switch background to black and font to white, the letters will be grey if there's just a line of text or two. But if I display a listing of a program or otherwise fill the majority of the screen - it becomes scorching bright white. It's just the way this piece of shit works. And you can see this actually change the brightness gradually as the screen is being filled in! Same for NES games and everything else I tested. I'm pretty sure you're facing a similar issue.

It might be good idea not to leave it out if you're going to use this console with a modern LCD/LED TV set. I've seen people complaining about colors having crazy saturation on modern TVs when the signal impedance is too low.

Good call, voted. I picked both Indy 500 and Video Olympics - neither has a really good single-player variant, but let's pretend for a moment that Indy 500 counts as one. Starship and Air-Sea Battle would be close runner-ups, Combat just a notch behind. To be honest the choice is extremely hard for me as personally - I think of those five as the games that defined the system at the time and for like next 3-4 years. Simple but informative and clean graphics - almost like icons/tokens, multiple gameplay variations (to the point of being almost different games in one package), color-coded scores, rounds timed to hit the attention-span sweet spot, etc. And all of those are heavily two-player oriented unlike what I think of as Second Wave or Activision domination time.

Hi, I've got a clone built around pretty much the same components. The 6591 is a VCS-on-a-chip which outputs nice and clean S-video via 2 lines: Chroma and Luma only unlike original Atari design where Luma was being mixed from sub-signals/resistors' mix (Lum0 thru Lum3 it was?). Amplification is still required tho, but you can just use any of the video drivers described in Famicom AV modifications, etc. It plays all regular games and demos perfectly (no weird issues like certain TIA revisions) and cooperates with Harmony as expected from the original system. Only drawback is that it lacks analogue inputs, so no paddle games. Great for a portable Demo station tho, the motherboard should have a silkscreen print of the cartridge port placement, even if the cartridge port was missing. There's a nice clean schematic of similar clone on mr. Sobola's page.: http://www.dereatari.republika.pl/atarisch/ca160.zip It does have some errors with the pins' numbering tho! A bit dirtier schematic (MegaBoy, actually based on 6592 - same thing anyway), was published in an article about M&M' box tiny Atari.: http://hackaday.com/2012/04/07/the-teensiest-atari-2600-ever/ https://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/megaboylight.jpg Good if you just need something minimalistic. P.S. MC14024BCP is for counting the resets and incrementing the ROM bank number based on this. That's how the games are selected.

Thank you both. I'll try all of them next week, when I return from my vacations (forced to reply from mobile, I'm stuck in the wild, hehe). One thing I didn't try yet - have to check these new and the previous versions on my unmodified Junior via RF. The values of resistors on my S-video mod might make a little difference, but the color (as in Chroma) isn't being mixed from sub-signals like Luminance, so it should be all down to adjusting the saturation on the receiver end and wouldn't have much of an impact I believe.