tearex

Well... no concrete idea here, but basically... when repairing old electronics of any kind... (This might be old news to you) 1.) Try different PSUs, different outputs (i.e. another TV set). 2.) Replace the electrolytical caps. 3.) Refresh or Replace any EPROMs (doesn't apply in this case as there are none in the Atari). 4.) Check the solder joints. Do any of them look broken, split, or unusually non-metallic. Resolder those with some fresh solder. "Cold" solder joints are notorious for failing after the device gets warm. 5.) Replace the semiconductors. I hope your chips are socketed in both consoles, then those are easy. I sort of suspect the TIA if nothing else has helped so far. Also you can try ice spray - spray the semiconductors one by one. If that makes the problem go away for a while (after a short power cycle to ensure the stuff is reset), then you have found your culprit. Replace. Also you can check with your fingers if anything gets extremely hot. The CPU gets fairly hot even in normal operation though. 6.) If so far nothing has helped, you'll have to approach things with a schematic, a multimeter, some understanding, and possibly an oscilloscope. Or just get another console. Sorry if this is not terribly helpful... That's how I'd approach it, it's not a solution but a plan for finding one. I hope your Atari will get well soon.

Well, that's why there *are* different boards. If everybody posted their questions everywhere... then there wouldn't be a need for different boards at all.

The name could be derived from "Informatique" (Computer science) and "Programmes" (Programs). I think in French the pronounciation wouldn't change, no matter if there are 1 or 2 "m"s. It would be "ã-faw-GRAHM" more or less. (The final "es" is silent.)

Weren't they originally a French company? Maybe the name is some play on words in French? Or am I mixing things up with some other company?

Many systems from that time had color adjustment potentiometers. Maybe you'll find one if you open it up. I've never had a colecov. though so I'm not sure.

Looks like an acoustic coupler (AKA "data toilet") basically a primitive modem that works by putting the handset of your phone into the two rubber thingies. In the 80s many countries had restrictions on "real" modems, for example they were illegal (forbidden by the state-run telecommunications Monopolist) in Germany until 1989 I believe, unless you rented a non-standard Siemens monster that could only talk to others of the same species from said Monopolist. These couplers were a way to get around that restriction since with them technically only the phone (rented from said Monopolist...) was connected to the line. The disadvantage was, only 300 baud was normally possible, or sometimes 1200/75 which means 1200 baud in one direction but only 75 in the other. Thus it was usually 188 times slower than the 56K modems of today. You used it to a) acces BBSs, and b) increase your phone bill.

Yeah and the thread can't even be moved to "Hardware" since it's not *all* technical. Mwahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa! We did it!

It's normally not possible with an existing cart to burn a new content since most of them are not EPROMs, thus not re-programmable after manufacture. However, if the ROM that you want to burn is of one of the following types: 2K, 4K, F8, F6, or F4 (no superchip!) then you can buy one of the Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) from the AtariAge store and an EPROM of the right size, burn the game into the EPROM with an EPROM burner (ask an electronics savy friend, he might know where to buy or borrow one), plug the chip into the PCB, plug the PCB into the console, and lo and behold there is your game playing on the real thing. If the .bin file size is 4096 bytes (Type 4K)or 2048 bytes (Type 2K) then it will almost always work, for the larger sizes you have to check if it is a F8 or F6 cart without need for a superchip.

Maybe. Test the console with the other power supply too - maybe the PS capacitor is not in good shape. If the chips are socketed, you can exchange them between the two consoles and see what happens - but be careful to remember which way 'round they go in there, as sometimes the sockets are soldered in with the marking on the wrong end, so go only by the chips. Before you do the A/V out mod "for good" you can clip some wires to the right places and try if the picture does indeed get better.

Well thanks to everybody who replied, and yes I agree it would be nice to construct a poll for the front page from the answers already found within this thread. Who makes the polls?

Which means that it's almost certainly stored in an EPROM and thus bit rot might set in soon, if it hasn't already. If you know anybody who has it, better get it dumped before it's too late. And if the EPROM's socketed you can easily refresh it - just read it and then write it back with the "standard" or "slow" algorithm of your burner. (Fast algorithms skip bytes as soon as they have the right value, so they're not very good for refreshing old already-programmed chips.)

Well the 2600 did have the advantage of not having a drive mechanism or a fan. The only moving parts are the switches and the slot cover mechanism. While the switches look like they'll last for centuries (on the pre-Junior consoles at least), my slot cover mech doesn"t close very well any more, often I have to give it a knock, and it still doesn't go all the way down. Not that this matters in any way, I don't usually play Atari in the shower...

Is this a new type of Bankswitching? I might take a bit of time and add it to the Stella emulator as well, unless the Stella guys already did so. Is there a description available apart from the z26 source code?

One more thing, old electrolytic caps can contain Polychlorated Biphenyles (PCB), quite poisonous and enviromentally hazardous stuff even in small amounts, so they should not ever be burned, it's best to turn them in to the local recycling place.

Go ahead and replace the cap, and while you're at it you might want to replace all the electrolytic caps. There's liquid in them and it is not possible to seal them absolutely 100% airtight, so at some point in time they will necessarily dry out enough to stop them from working. But the ones that take most "beating" will go first, and in the Atari those are the main cap near the regulator and the one in the power supply. The others are less critical. You might want to use high temperature caps, especially for the one in the supply, those are built to withstand 105°C / 220°F for extended periods.

Somehow, someway, bending the capacitors in that part of the circuit back and forth a bit did it for me. Suddenly the noise disappeared. A hair-width tear in one of the capacitor's maybe? Well, whatever it was it has worked flawlessly for some days now, even some good knocks didn't start the problem again. I also fixated that darn coil with some glue once and for all after careful fine-tuning as the core was already getting quite loose from so much "tuning" attempts. And I also learned a new fact, the subcarrier is actually 5.5MHz here in continental Europe, not 6Mhz as it is in the UK. So... NTSC = Never Twice the Same Color, PAL = never twice the same norm, it seems.

Whaddaya think? Which game(s) are best for Atari couples (or Atari orgies for that matter )

Hmmm... maybe we could modify the game into ninepins so that the guys from Old Europe don't feel left out? They did make a soccer cartdrige after all.

".bin" stands for "binary" and all it means is that it is not text in there but some sort of code. cue/bin pairs are a common format for storing CD images, the .bin holds the data while the .cue describes the organization (tracks, etc.) of the CD. Since the Atari uses cartridges, not CDs like the newer consoles, Atari ".bin" files have nothing to do with cue/bin pairs. Well, they also contain data but that's about it. You *can* "burn" the Atari .bin files, not to a CD though but to an EPROM chip ("Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory") which you then plug into one of the Printed Circuit Boards sold in the AtariAge store, which you can then, in turn, plug into the Atari 2600 console in place of a cartridge. To do this you need an EPROM burner which is not exactly a common item in private households - ask your local electronics-savy person if he has one or knows somebody who has one. Depending on the size of the game different PCBs and different EPROMs are used, but you can probably run over 80% of the existing games with three PCBs (2 or 4K, 8K, 16K). The other option as mentioned above is to get a 2600 Emulator like Stella or Z26 for your computer and run the games there. No need to burn anything in that case.

Ok, I was thinking of the wrong thing, forgetting that in the Atari the "Reset switch" has nothing to do with the reset line, unlike reset switches in other systems. So disregard what I wrote above.

If it is what I think it is, basically it's the processor clock that you see. I can see it (lightly) on my unmodded 2600 and it is also a well known "feature" of Commodore 8-bit systems. My suggestion would be a bigger "main" electrolytic capacitor for the 5V line (the large one on the daughterboard with the switches) and then also adding some set of both larget and smaller caps (say 100 nF, 1 nF, and 15 pF, the latter should have a very high frequency rating) between +5V and GND next to each chip. This ought to stabilize the voltages a bit, based on my admittedly private experience. If you feel technical, adding a metal housing (with heat sink!) around the TIA chip might also help. Also if you want to sacrifice some sharpness you might low-pass-filter the Luma line, but that would sort of defeat the purpose of the A/V mod.

If you don't need to burn modern EPROM types, sometimes you can get one of many different Commodore 64 based EPROM burners really cheap on eBay. I got a "Dela II" there for less than $20 and it works like a charm. The advantage is that the C64 had enough lines on its ports so you'd need very little extra electronics, not even a power supply. Also all C64 are (almost) alike so the manufacturers didn't have to do expensive tests with the software on all kinds of PC hardware. Of course then you have the problem of getting the code to the Commodore, but there's lots of software for that from the Commodore emulation scene, like StarCommander. To get back on topic, maybe burners for the Atari 8-bitters exist too?

Swap out all electrolytic capacitors for new ones. Especially the one on the reset line (might be the only one on the motherboard, but there's more on the daughterboard and in the power supply). This is also a good general advice for old electronics (eventually they WILL fail), and I guess it is the most likely thing in this case. Use high temperature caps for the power supply. Next, check your board for broken traces and/or broken solder joints. If that doesn't cut it, replace all the semiconductors -- transistors, diodes and ICs. If THAT doesn't help --- get another console. Hope this helps,

Hi "techies", I have a problem with my six-switcher PAL 2600: The circuit that produces the 6 MHz sound subcarrier is constantly detuning itself. I already drilled a hole into the bottom of the case so that I can adjust the tunable inductivity (L2, I think, in the AtriAge provided schematic) with a match or so, without opening the case. However, it's getting worse and worse and sometimes I can't tune it at all. This means the "real sound" will be soft to nonexistent and there will be lots of humming and noise. If I let the console run for a few hours then I can normally tune it after that, but when it's still cold it is very problematic. Do you know of a fix for this problem? I can handle soldering and I can read schematics, but I'm not enough of a "buff" to know an answer myself. Thanks a lot in advance,