Mef

Hi Thomas, sorry to burst your bubble, but on my set-up (S-video + CRT Commodore 1084S) all the gradients are looking great... save for the garrish red/brown tint on the "far grass". It looks just really out of place, check this out.: Impressive work either way, both of you. An arms race for the perfect PAL Battlezone.

It's horribly expensive where I live (Poland, Europe). First off, there was absolutely no market for Atari 2600 in here ever, only scarce chinese clones with built-in games, before Famiclones took over entirely (both have showed up in just about the same timeframe). No chance for a "garage sale finds", since there is no tradition for those really, and as above - no VCS/2600 market ever. Not to mention shitty wages way below EU standards... So the best deals one can find over here would be ~$15 bare Juniors with ~$5-10 for the cheapest most common game - usually untested and in varying condition (mostly coming imported from german flochmarkts, or attic/basement finds). Something like Vader or 4-Switch woody would be between $35 and $60 and some $60 for a bare 6-Switcher (no Heavies either) up to $120 for a small bundle (console, 3-8 games, a controller or 2). Uncommon games fetch prices arround $30 and peripherals (original joysticks, paddles and driving controllers) are all but nonexistent, save for like 1 appearance per quater, fetching easily $20-40 a piece. So yeah, tough luck. For better games you're looking at german/UK ebay, with shipping pretty much doubling the cost, and NTSC is usually too cost-prohibitive to import. Still, I'm a happy owner of a PAL light-Sixer which I bought for next-to-nothing for my neighbourhood's standards (~$20), because it was officially broken and I took the risk of bringing it back to life. Glad I'm not a collector type, so after getting that and less than two dozens "cheap" carts and some paddles/driving controllers, Harmony has fullfilled all my remaining VCS needs -really thankfull for that!

Since you've got a Sixer, my bet would be it's the hexbuffer chip only found in Sixers. Luckily It's a $1off-the-shelf component, shame they left this out in later re-designs as it tends to protect other ICs by failing first in case of short, static discharge, etc. Check out this thread. PS, it describes the same issue as the thread presented by BigO & zylon above, only in more detail.

Can we quickly make up for it with current feedback? Btw, love your conversion of Montezuma, my Harmony wouldn't be the same without it.

Sorry for the double post, but I can't seem to edit the previous one after certain time has passed. ROM attached. Battlezone__PAL_color_hack_.bin P.S. Unfortunately only the sky gradient seems to be fixed and the ground is still a bit bland.

I'm pretty sure I got a ROM modified by Thomas, where the palette is PAL-adjusted already. Can't be bothered searching the forums now, but will post it when I get home.

If cleaning made it worse, than it might just as well be a bad solder joint somewhere, which totally lost contact now. I'd try inspecting the connections and re-flowing anything suspicious.

Might as well be the voltage regulator. It automatically cuts off power when it gets too hot. Games which require more juice would put it under more strain, causing faster overheating. I had a very similar issue where Jungle Hunt would make one of my Jr.s die after a minute or so, while the games on different carts worked fine. Opening the unit revealed that the voltage regulator was soldered in a way that made it impossible to install the screw which normally holds it against the heat sink surface. Obviously, that made it reach critical temperature very fast. I'd say have a look at yours, might be a similar situation.

Sounds like a PAL cartridge.

Call her Vikki. Will remind of both VCS and Victoria - as in winning at games.

That looks like having the modulator out of tune. If the tv was wrongly tuned, you'd get more consistent snowing. I had the same with my C64 when I accidentally moved one of the modulator trimpots. Not the one for color adjustment, but the other, responsible for the frequency of the signal. It cracked just like yours every second or so. You'd have to open up the console and try to re-adjust it.

Sorry for double post, but I wanted to express extra respect for having Harmony work flawlessly on a chinese AoaC clone system too!

Sorry for bumping my own old thread, but I got it all confirmed thanks to Harmony cart. It's the Flash ROM used on the multicart. Same games and demos (using the very same binaries) work flawlessly on Harmony on all of my systems, including the clone one. I've tried swapping OE/CE and other funny stuff with that Flash-based multicart and the issue persisted. Guess it was all down to Flash acccess time not being up to specs.

Mine has finally arrived! Funny how it could traverse the States and Europe till Warsaw with no problems, but then got sent to the wrong address first, and later my postman "forgot" to leave a notice for me to pick it up on friday. But! The device itself is awesome. Got the firmware changed to PAL within minutes and it executed every game and demo I threw in, flawlessly. Thanks a lot to everyone involved in the development and manufacturing! Let the screenshot act as credits.

Hi, does anyone still have a copy of Doctor and Tricade by Trilobit? http://oldskool.wamma.fi/is down and Pouet doesn't seem to have other mirrors for those. EDIT: Odd, the attachment from Impaler_26's didn't work for me earlier, but now it does... So, it's only Tricade left to hunt down. EDIT2: This one crashes for me on Harmony, guess it's the "wrong" version in the end.

Those are very easy to take apart and repair on Vader or Junior. You just need to gently bend out the tabs that are holding the switches' metal body and take it apart for some cleaning, then tighten again with some pliers. They're built so simply there's nothing to get broken really (unless a solder joint at their base cracks), they simply get clogged with dust.

Out of 3 tabs, 2 are facing the same direction and one the other. Best way is to take a thin flatheaded screwdriver or butter-knife ,etc. and very gently release the odd tab first. The other 2 will then just slide out as you pull the case apart. I have to admitt they're really, really brittle and tend to break off easily. Polystyrene glue (like the one used for plastic model kits) works wonders tho, as it fuses the material back together!

For 7805 in TO-220 package (like the one used in VCS, Junior and countless other consoles) we use M3 screws here in Europe. It's a standard used throughout all heatsinks dedicated to TO-220 components. Attached pic of my spares. It doesn't show too well, but those are pan heads (slightly convex) like chas10e said above. P.S. Remember to throughly clean all the surfaces and apply some thermal paste between 7805 and the heatsink!

Yeah, you're right about the showing cost reduction... I love how compact it feels tho, quite heavy for the size too, it doesn't give this "empty shell" impression. And it's actually possible to change the trace ribbon (and foam "spring") to low profile microswitches. They'll fit provided you file/cut off the small extension "tubes" below the buttons. This will give you a nice clicky feel for 15 minutes job and there will be no flaws left. Plus, it's convenient to have the RF connector exposed so that you can easily change the cable for something better than the shitty stock one (I use a regular antenna cable with the Atari end converted to RCA jack). One thing Junior seems to excell at tho is the RF picture quality - both of mine (short and long rainbow) had a really good one, comparable to AV modded 4/6 switcher if you use a well-shielded cable. P.S. Just noticed mikey.shake's reply in the meantime, and he mentions good RF picture, so there must be something to it.

Sweet thread. And already one of my all-time favs in the very first post: ICE FUCKING BY ACTIVISION! Always makes me laugh. Next on my top list would be the hillarious "SOME GAME!?" (Star Wars The Arcade): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPMbYFThBxo Venture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iELqlgcHe3Q and "(...) going on a sunday drive - Oh no, you ain't. You're gonna play ... POLE POSITIOOON!!!": I love those ads where they tried to get your imagination going.

It's triggering a specific pattern of Composite artifacting, related to NTSC encoding (color clock). Or at least that's what your TV is seeing. Notice how these are not just some random colors, but green and magenta - something like Composite color artifacts on some early computers.

Sorry, I don't really, it's the only non-Junior system I have seen with my own eyes - tough luck for VCS enthusiast in my country. It's something you'd have to see yourself, unless you've got a really good RGB coverage on your monitor and proper pictures with known light/temperature (white balance) for reference. On the picture I've posted above, my repaint looks dim-yellow and doesn't differ much from the lettering, but in reality its a lot more vibrant and almost pure orange. From the remainders of the paint on my light sixer, it might have originally looked like some kind of slightly dirty orange/mustard mix, so that's a little off, but better that than nothing.

Cheers, being a pirate-ish edu software, I don't even consider this a proper game - so all good.

Thanks! And here's the part I always kept forgetting to post: the restored orange trim. I've used a paint marker and it was prety easy to apply. Unfortunately the surface is a bit coarse, with small dents here and there, and it shows - looks like the line is a bit uneven when seen up close.

That's to cut the traces going to the RF module and supposedly shut off the interference it might produce. Frankly, I haven't noticed any interference coming from the modulator and contaminating the Luma/Chroma signals, so I simply skipped that unnecesarily risky part. Retaining RF isn't too bad for me either, as I only have that one Commodore 1084S monitor capable of displaying separate Chroma/Luma or S-Video. So if I want to connect to a bigger screen = TV, it's via RF anyway (or composite, but with well shielded antenna cable there's almost no difference and my stupid piece of crap Samsung LED actually treats RF better than Composite, as in - less harsh artifacts/jagged lines). If you don't want RF, you could just as well cut the connections just before the modulator box instead. P.S. I never got to post the pic(s) after I've restored the decorative orange trim on my sixer. Maybe tomorrow.