24Fanatic365

I noticed the ROM is available for download. Is it any good, or is this just another piece of shovelware?

I tried out the game mode last night, me it completely cured the lag issue, but the colors don't look nearly as good as they do on my CRT, and since "Game" mode won't let me tweak any of the settings like brightness, tint, etc, I can't get it dialed in to look as good as I would like, so it's back to the CRT. Well, at least I know it's possible to play on my Vizio. So the experiment was at least partially successful! Lol!

Thanks, skarro. My Vizio does have a game mode in the menu. I hadn't used that yesterday because I wanted to tweak the picture settings myself. I may give that a shot tonight, though and see what happens.

Yeah, freeweed, that's what I was thinking, as well. I figured the lag was due to some type of processing internal to the tv itself. Which is too bad, really, because the picture looks beautiful on my 42"! Lol!

The color is so good on my woody that I got it dialed in to look beautiful even on my 42" Vizio LCD, but Ms. PAC -MAN is WAY harder to play. I keep missing my turns and running into the ghosts. I can hardly break 10,000 points, while I regularly break 35-40 grand on my CRT TV. I guess this has something to do with how the HDTV scans the image, which creates a lag. Do the AV and other video out mods fix this? I'm not planning on getting my console modded, as I'm perfectly happy playing on the smaller screen. Just wondering.

And make sure you don't forget the essential double tap! I'm pretty sure this is the oldest thread resurrection I've seen on ANY forum. Good times...

So...an update is in order for my no color issue for the Vader console I had. I texted the guy I bought it from yesterday to let him know I had found a color CRT tv, hooked the console up to it and basically had black and white on many of the games I had. Told him what you guys had said about the TIA chip possibly being the problem, and asked him if it would be possible to bring it back in and test any of the other consoles he had in stock to see if they worked better, and if so, could we swap consoles? He texted back "Coolio" Now, my street slang may not exactly be up to par, being a kid pushing 40 who grew up in small town TX, but I translated Coolio to mean, "Sure! Bring it in and I'll make it right for you." So I show up today armed with forum opinion from guys who've been around these consoles for quite some time and my trusty 13" Magnavox CRT color tv. He started off hemming and hawing about how long it's been that I've had the console, and that he would've been more than happy to exchange it if I hadn't had it for 3 weeks. I countered with the fact that it's a 30+ year old piece of electronics, so what could 3 weeks worth of play really have done to it, and the fact that I'd chalked the subpar color performance up to 70's tech being less than fully compatible with my newfangled 42" HDTV. Then I'd tracked down a CRT in decent shape 4 days before I'd texted him to propose an exchange, and was underwhelmed with the console's performance on my "old-tech" tv. I then hauled my tv into his shop from the car, and hooked up the Vader console to demonstrate what I was talking about. Then I hooked up a woody console he had just pulled off the shelf and the beautifully colored world of Ms. PAC MAN sprang to life in all it's wonderful splendor. A few more minutes of convincing him it was the console and not my tv that was the problem with my original console, and he ended up putting the woody into the bag I had all my Atari stuff in and told me we were cool. So I now have a properly functioning 4 switch woody console, with a Harmony Cartridge on the way from AA! Needless to say, I'm super stoked about how this situation turned out! Sorry for the long post, but just wanted you guys to know how the story turned out, since y'all were so helpful and informative in this thread. I think your explanations about what may be causing the issues with the Vader were extremely helpful arguments in pleading my case to the shop owner why he should let me exchange consoles. Thanks, guys!!

Nice!

No Harmony cart as of yet, but I definitely plan on picking one up. Apparently I should categorize myself as more of an Atari player than a collector. I'll be perfectly happy to play ROMS through the Harmony cart rather than have butt tons of separate carts piling up. I mean, if I could have every game in the vast library for the 2600 for around 65 bones, then why not, right? I'm gonna try to go the swapping consoles route, but if it comes down to it, I'll probably end up buying a new chip from Best and asking my Father-in-Law walk me through replacing it. He's handy like that and he's taught me how to do tons of stuff i didn't think I could pull off in the last few years. If I do swap, I might go with a 2600 Jr. instead of another Vader or a woody. My thinking is that it'll be a newer unit, although only slightly, and I seem to recall reading somewhere here on AA that the outputs may be at least slightly better than the older consoles. Or did I imagine that?? Any feedback on my line of thinking would be greatly appreciated. You guys have been great thus far in this thread!

I found the NTSC TIA "Custom Chip" at Best Electronics for $11.50. No idea how much shipping would be, though. Before going that route, I may drive back over to where I bought the console armed with my 13" tv and see if the guy will swap for another one of the consoles he has on hand. Assuming he has one that gives good color on my tv, that is. Then if that's unsuccessful, I'll keep the Vader I already have (since I know everything else works besides the jacked up color issue) and try my hand at electronics surgery! It's 30+ year old tech, so how hard could it possibly be, right?? That's what I tell myself, anyway...

Thanks for the answer. So I'm guessing another TIA isn't available from another source other than Frankensteining another console?

I did that, but it didn't do anything at all. Any other suggestions?

I bought a 2600 Vader console a few weeks ago, and have been playing it on my Vizio LCD flatscreen. The colors for most of my games have been way off, which I chalked up to the fact that I was playing on an HDTV. I picked up a 13" Magnavox CRT tv yesterday, and the colors are just as jacked up, some of them almost completely black & white with 1 single color in the mix. For example, Ms. PAC-MAN is all b&w with the exception of the extra men at the bottom of the screen, which are a actually yellow. Pitfall has colors, but they are muted, and the forest background is black instead of pale green like it should be. I cracked the console open and turned the white disk below the On/off switch and the color/b&w switch with the single straight slot in the middle, which I thought was the color POT (someone correct me if I'm wrong) to zero effect. Any suggestions on how to fix this issue? I'm still running the stock Atari output through a direct coax adapter into the cable input on the back of my tv to bypass the rf slider that came with the console. And as a side note, I have zero experience in electronics repair or soldering.

I just got 391,790 on game 9. Not sure if the A-B switch makes any difference, but I looked after I died and it was set to "A". Surprised I survived that long, since my joystick is kinda crack headed. Let's just say the fire button is less than dependable! Lol! I also learned the game quits giving you free men when you reach 9. Too bad the score starts over every 99,999 points, too... Here's a pic if you're the doubtin' kind: http://bit.ly/1k3VwjB

Well, I already made my goal of breaking 40 grand on Asteroids. What to do with the rest of my day? Guess I'll go and actually watch Jeff Gordon win at Daytona this evening!

For some reason I just want to bust 40,000 points on Asteroid! Been playing Ms. PAC Man, Pitfall, Joust, Frogger, and Grand Prix a bit, too. Of course, I just got my 2600 yesterday! Lol!

Thanks, CPU. Already tried that, since I actually do still have one of those around. Like many of the guys around here, I actually predate VHS, but since I don't have the remote for said prehistoric device, I couldn't change the channel to 2 or 3, so no dice there. I'm cool with not having color for now. The games are still super high on the fun factor scale!

If the potentiometer is the little white disk with the slot in the top below and to the left of the cartridge slot when you take the console apart, I tried that and it didn't make any difference. I did try cleaning the cartridges with some qtips and alcohol(an old NES trick), and it helped somewhat on Frogger and a little on Joust, but the others were unchanged. That's ok, though. I'm having a blast, especially on Asteroids!

Yeah. Sorry about that, guys. Tapatalk kept giving me an error, and it didn't look like the thread was ever started. The console works, but most games are mostly black and white on my 42" Vizio LCD TV. I got an adapter from Radio Shack this morning to bypass the junky RF switch that came with it, but colors are still not there. Pitfall is the best one. All the colors are there, but are very faded from what I remember from my youth. Grand Prix has some color. At least the grass and bushes are green. Ms. PAC Man is all black and white except for the extra lives at the bottom of the screen, which appear faded yellow. Anything I can do about these color issues, or is it more of a "Hey! I've got an Atari! The games are awesome, but I gotta suck it up and just deal with the color(or complete lack thereof)."?

Found a 2600 console on Craigslist last night and went to pick it up today. Traded an N64 that I hadn't played in probably 5 years, 2 fairly awful aftermarket 64 controllers, a Wheel of Fortune cartridge, and $25, and this is what I got: the joystick is ugly and slightly unresponsive, which makes Frogger WAY more difficult than I remember as a kid! Lol! Guess a couple of Slik Stiks are in my future! I thought the Raiders cart was jacked up until I looked on Google and figured out you needed 2 controllers to play it. Didn't remember that at all from 30 years ago when I used to have this game. I see many wasted hours in my near future. And to think I stumbled on this site by researching a multiconsole for NES/SNES/Genesis games. Thanks for convincing me to return to my roots!

LOL! Cuz it's so dark, he's gotta be underground?! Love it. Funny how the OP has magically disappeared, isn't it?