eizner23

The retired, 75 yr old guy ran it out of his radio repair shop. I asked him what the most common repairs were back in the day, he said controller ports and regulators. Back in his hayday, He made a device to process and display morse code over a phone line onto his Atari screen. I told him about the 1Mb ram, drive emulators and Fujinet, he was surprised to hear about it. I gave him $100, the salt diag cart is worth something. Also gave me 4 boxes of sealed 5 1/4 floppies.

I finally got a decent Atari haul, yay! I responded to an ad for 400/800 atari service manuals. I came home with many free original binders of schematics and manuals of all their stuff alongside the remnants of an authorized Atari service center parts inventory. I guess im in business now 😄 No Pokey chips but many ram cpu and couple video chips. Anything else interesting?

There is a third party library I develop some scraper apps with, HtmlAgility, and they replaced some of their docs with a box to ask GPT to get answers using their code.Ding! It gave me the correct answer, or line of code. I was a little worried about trying to explain my question since I was a little rusty. Good potential.

This very fortunate and honest guy who landed on a goddamn Atariage gold mine auto-declined my offer.

Do you need two of these to play two player?

My wife said no

Maybe you played this as youth in the late 80's after playing Atari. The stuffed potato played a tune after being triggered by a squeeze, you passed it around. When tune randomly stops you pick a card. I want to pass along my hot potato to a nephew but it needs service. The coin battery was corroded. It had no markings on it. I tested it with a LR44 1.5v alkaline, it worked but the output was about 1/3 of what is should be. I tried a new 27mm coin piezo with same results. Hail mary with 3v battery thinking maybe it was a custom battery, but it played really slow. Its fascinating this little epoxy glob can store a melody, a timer of sorts and the means to amplify playback. Did it loose some of its amplification magic over the decades, or battery issue? Its just not loud enough. A disk cap, pressure pad-type switch, and the tiny IC that is it.

If above doesnt fruit results check output opamp for energy. Check base of Q100 for energy both during playback. Check cable for continuity. I dont see any caps in signal path. Taken from http://www.atarimania.com/documents/Atari_410_Program_Cassette_Recorder_Field_Service_Manual.pdf

Amazing score. I would’ve bought $100 worth of fireworks right away and light them all off at the same time in excitement. Sellers email or phone must have blown up! “Stanley dear we have 120 missed calls what should we do?” Im keepin my eye on those retired boomers wanting to lighten their load. I’m asking every old person I see from now on.

Thank you for the reminder. I do not feel lower noise opamp would make any difference. My unit will save and load basic programs from tape but not prerecorded games or games recorded onto fresh tape. Tried playing with tape leader. Can here the sounds but end up with load error. Had idea of using cassette adapter feeding signal from .wav on laptop to eliminate 410 as fault. Does the Atari 400 process BASIC signal differently than cassette games?

I actually replaced all resistors on a 410 with 1% metal film hoping it was noise in signal causing loading errors but it didn’t fix the issue. Dont recall if there is a opamp in the signal path, that was my next suspect.

Nope he wants USD. I asked him in one email if he meant $200, he replied, and I quote "no. it's worth that much and it's an original. barely ever used. nothing is wrong with it. "

I changed my mind. Didnt send it yet if anyone has anything else to add.

Well he accepted my offer of $1700, guess he is serious about this rare Atari 2600. Should I meet up with him and whack him with a stick?

He isnt responding to my correspondences. Trying to get it for $1700.

Whose got an extra 2 grand to waste? https://madison.craigslist.org/ele/d/westfield-atari-2600/7206923909.html

The blurring was also present on the original AV mod i tried, just not as bad- so I dont think its the cause of blurring. I am reading about the UAV and it has circuitry to align the 4 luminescence signals into a perfect pixel edge, perhaps that is what I am lacking on this VCS model. At this point I may chalk this up as a learning experience and integrate the UAV into the unit. It was a fun experiment anyways.

Thank you for the kind help Voxel during this saga. I analyzed video output on my scope of video out rca and before it enters the amplifier I assembled (pin 4). Waveforms look the same on the scope. I'm curious if we can see any anomalies here. Its Barnstormer on the intro screen when you first turn the game on, no motion. I may see what the output looks like on another unit out of curiosity. This is the blurring I'm seeing, notice the yellow fence posts spilling over. Not much solder was done to the board to cause any blobbing really. I've been reading the video troubleshooting in atari field service guide for clues I will post if I find anything out.

Thank you for the further advice. I got rid of the wiring I had in exchange for shielded cabling for a cnc machine. I followed your instructions by soldering the shield (bare wire) to ground on both ends. Unfortunately I am confronted with the same video issue.

There is no wiring for video between the VCS and av board, I'm using header pins soldered to the two. Not sure where I can salvage shielded cable but I'll look around. Could I temporarily tack the video rca using a tiny bit of wire right next to the av board to determine if this is the cause?

I am receiving the same results on a different LCD TV and with different cables and power strip. Even tried a 75ohm cable. There isn't really anything else plugged in the room the atari is residing to cause interference. Looking at schematic I'm curious if c215 is still neccessary?

I found an old heavy 9v 1A linksys wall adapter that is working fine, the power issue is sorted out thanks everyone for the help. Now I am sorting out this blur on right side of graphics. I read maybe due to over driving video signal. Adjusting the gain pot on the video amplifier board doesnt help any. The problem got worse going from one transistor to two transistor composite board. Is it true these light 4 switchers are finicky with composite mods?

I had an identical issue with vertically scrolling fuzziness on my light 4 switch. I was using a $10 Retro2600 switching power adapter. Problem surfaced after AV mod. After reading this helpful thread I tried an old heavy Linksys wall-wart rated at 9v 1A, under no load it measured 16VDC. The new 7805 regulator with 35v max input handled power adapter fine while staying under 110F. Problem solved. The Retro2600 does seem to be OK on other unmodified 2600 units.

And thank you for posting useful info! Must appreciated. I will set my quest to find an optimal power adapter, and ordered 3.5mm male mono Jack's just in case. I'll hold off until the power source is resolved.