R.Cade

Because nobody bought them. This is IBM- they were probably trying to sell them for $3000 more than street price for an equivalent computer at the time.

I got a lot of cards from Japan once and I really had to go at them with a pink eraser from every angle on the contacts. I could not tell I was making a difference, though. They looked clean to the naked eye. They eventually started working, though. It could be the plating has just worn or is scratched off on yours, and they won't make contact anymore, or they are just burned out or corroded inside.

None of the Infocom games have any disk copy protection at all (at least the text-only ones). I guess they were not worried about their target audience copying them too much. Some games did depend on the included items to complete, so maybe you could consider that copy protection.

Huge Internet outage this morning. It seems cleared now, but was sketchy from 7-11AM or so EST. Downdetector.com

They are really scarce. Probably best to just find another entire 800.

Yeah sorry about that then. I couldn't do it that cheap with the work and parts gone into it already...

I bent the metal doing mine and so I just bought a new replacement. They are so thin and glued down so well I didn't see how it was possible not to warp it.

I have one with a brand new keyboard and metal cover/plate, composite mod, a wafer drive, several games and books, and even one of the SD card solutions. I can dig it out and PM you if you are interested in a full setup like this.

It's not really damaged, just very very sloppy. Get a better soldering iron, solder, and flux. Practice on some old board. Redo this when you do. I don't know why you have jumper wires, the tracks look fine to me.

Some games and not others? That is quite bizarre, but some cartridges use different pins for ground, etc. than others. You didn't happen to test it fully with the same games before the composite mod?

I wasn't suggesting it was the mod board- I don't know what it is. I was only saying to look at other options closely before getting a new power supply. My comments probably came off as attacking someone and that is my fault - I am sorry. Watching the voltages while it's happening is a great thing to check. It seems like that board would only put a tiny load on the power supply. I have seen something similiar once when I modded a Coleco, but the circumstances were very different. It was a simple transistor mod and I think I used the 12v line instead of 5v, so it would very quickly overheat. That's not the case here, I doubt. It certainly wouldn't explain the RF out variable. As I mentioned, the only thing that should change when you plug RF in is the grounding and impedance. Someone else mentioned physical stresss and that's also possible. Just for kicks, have you tried another television?

So what's wrong with it? You really think 11.6v is not enough? You are going to have him buy a new power supply for a CV that works fine without the mod, but also works fine with the RF connected?

That mod looks like an SMT version of this (http://www.retrofixes.com/2015/06/colecovision-svideo-or-composite.html). However, it uses a different ground point. I would give it a try.

I don't know. If it works with RF connected, maybe it's an impedance or a grounding problem. Both of these will change with something connected to RF vs. unconnected. Also, what kind of output connector is that?

Seems OK at first glance. You didn't show the ribbon to socket connection though. However it should be keyed and obvious how it goes.