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I figured I over paid last year spending $100 on 2600A last year. I think now it was a fair price, because it was in absolutely pristine condition. It was a craigslist purchase, so no shipping & handling. The owner said he used it 3 or 4 times total and sat in storage since the 1980's. It came with a pristine copy of Combat and Pac-Man with manuals. No box unfortunately. I asked. Everything is spotless: manuals, carts, console, controllers, and power supply. The paddles move as smooth as silk. There's not a single spot, scratch, or blemish on any of it. It looks brand new, so I keep it wrapped up in plastic. I also have the original purchase receipt. It's my favorite. I won't ever sell it.

The difficulty and black & white switches could be used for 3 bits of memory storage input by the player.

The gap down the playfield is wider between some cubes. I'm wondering why couldn't it have been perfectly symmetrical? The gap is marked in the screenshot:

I had weird spray on stuff like that on my Sega Genesis. It was like black textured paint. I still don't really know what it was, but it completely covered the top half of the plastic shell. It was either a bad attempt to "mod" the console or an accident. On a whim, I soaked it in vinegar for several days. The stuff came off pretty easily on the tub. The rest came off with a tooth brush. I used Heinz cleaning vinegar, which is stronger than normal. How it looks now. Came across it cheap so figured I'd try to salvage it.

The owner's manual for the console? I have a white manual for a 4 switch 2600A.

Thanks for the link. However, I ended up turning the color adjustment dial inside and the color looks great now. Resoldering the power jack and adjusting the dial made the video look like new.

I bought a joystick from the Goodwill. The joystick wasn't working right, so I opened it up and found a broken tab on the stick's grommet. It looks very different from my other joysticks, so I'm wondering which model this is. There are no part numbers anywhere. https://imgur.com/a/9bMtJ Notes: Atari branded joystick and D plug. Grid contacts on the PCB. No branding or part numbers on the PCB. Rubber springs for joystick and button. Solid plastic stick. Sold plastic grommet screws on to the stick. Is it worth the effort fixing this? I could use the cable for another joystick though. My other joystick's wire has rip in the rubber cladding.

I'm wondering if the 2600 Jrs are 100% compatible for swapping motherboards between short and long rainbow versions.

I cleaned out the solder and hand placed the power jack into the motherboard today (unsoldered, just loose held in by friction.) I connected the power for a test. The audio seemed fine this time. The video was a little washed out, but it's a lot improved. I think it may have just been a bad solder connection, so it was either a bad grounding or short. I'll try the color adjustment to see if it improves it even more. As for the desaturation, I've gotten a second 2600A console (rev 14). It was a mint condition console with barely used joysticks and never been used paddles, so I had to have it. I compared the video to the first 2600A and they seemed just about the same. I realized I was originally comparing the video between my 2600Jr and 2600A. I guess they just have different video characteristics. The Jr has considerably stronger color saturation and cleaner picture. The colors in Pitfall are a bit too green though, but looks fine. Btw, those new paddles are smooth as silk. Incredible. I am probably going to store them to avoid wearing them out. If I get this old 2600A fixed up, it'll be my daily machine. The mint condition machine is going in storage.

This is what happened. My Atari 2600A (rev 9) was working fine until the power cord got tripped over and yanked out while the case top was off. When the cord yanked out, it broke the J201 power jack. The machine still worked fine by plugging in the power and holding it in. There was clear video and clear audio. I got a replacement power jack (a switchcraft), soldered it in, and tested that there was video and audio. The video is clear, but it's partially desaturated: meaning the colors are no where near as vivid as they once were. It's not displaying in black and white. There is color, but it's at about 50% saturation. The colors on my 2600 Jr are very vivid in comparison. It was working fine after the power jack broke and before I soldered in the new one. The audio sounds close, but it's off. There's a small amount of audio distortion. I'm not sure what's going on here. Anyone have any suggestions? I compared the video/audio between the 2600A and the 2600Jr using the same cartridge, same power adapter, and same RF cable. Incorrect soldering? Damage due to static electricity? A short somewhere?

Got this CH PC joystick for $4.99. Has 3 buttons. 15 pin D connector. Joystick feels good. The little sliders won't move, but the dials turn. Worth it? https://i.imgur.com/iyCBCc2.jpg Looks like it's a Mach 3.

I'll look into this ed64 cart. Anyone know if there are 3rd party N64 controllers that are any good? Any brands to look for? It's probably odd that I'm asking on an Atari site, but oh well. I'm going to be patient on finding the console since I want that RAM expansion pack. I'm mostly collecting for the 2600 and Commodore 64 at the moment. I'm rebuilding the 2600 system I had as a kid and putting together a C64 system I wanted as a kid but never got.

I remember playing on my 2600 in the 1980's with a crappy TV, crappy switchbox, crappy wires, and I still got a fairly good video quality. I don't recall people complaining about Atari video quality back then like they do today. The system just worked. It wasn't perfect, but it was clear for a CRT and there little to no snow, static, or wavey radio noise. However, this past week, after setting up my 2600 and 2600Jr, I was getting terrible video quality. That was until I tried using a higher quality RadioShack audio cable. The noisy video was irritating me so bad, but I first thought it was in the switchbox, so I made an RCA to F connector cable. That helped, but I still had a lot of video interference. I tried using a different RCA cable, but still had a lot of noise. Then finally, I put in the higher quality audio cable in the RF port and now I have good video like I remember in the 80's. It's not crystal clear, but it's exactly like I remember how it should be on a CRT. I presume the audio cable is shielded, so it's blocking much of the radio noise. We didn't have Wi-Fi in the 80's. There also wasn't wireless handset phones and cellular phones (not including car phones, which were exceedingly rare.) There is a lot more radio noise today than back then, so has anyone given this much thought as to a big source of video quality problems with old consoles and RF connections?

So, I ran into a handful of N64 games when met up with a seller who was selling a 4-button Atari 2600 (with controllers, some manuals, and 22 carts.) The seller asked me if I knew anyone into Nintendo 64 games and then pulled out seven N64 carts (and 1 gameboy cart). I barely contained my excitement when he asked me if $10 was a good price. I expected to pay more since I paid a lot more for the Atari, which he claimed wasn't working, but it turned out it worked fine. He didn't have a switchbox so he probably plugged the RF cable into a composite jack and concluded it was busted. So, anyway, back to the N64 carts. I have these carts, so I'm thinking I may as well get a N64 console now. This has led me to check up on prices, and I keep finding sellers on Craigslist and other classified sites are asking a lot more for N64 consoles than they go for on Ebay (including S/H!!) Anyone else noticed this weirdness? Craigslist is usually a lot cheaper for Atari/Sega/Commodore/etc stuff than Ebay, but this time it's reversed. I wonder if these Nintendo sellers too emotionally attached to their systems, so they're inflating the prices. If you're wondering, the Nintendo carts are: Super Mario 64 Mario Kart 64 Mario Party (version one I think) Zelda and the Ocarina of Time Star Wars Shadows of the Empire Star Wars Battle for Naboo Star Wars Rogue Squadron Super Mario Land 2 (for gameboy) I still have no system to play them on. Still searching for the perfect console lot. The Nintendo collecting scene seems crazy to me compared to Atari/Sega/Commodore/Coleco/Intellivision/etc.

That's the one. The writing on the box suggests to me it was sold in Italy, so that might be why I had a hard time finding it on English websites. There's a version I found with a DB9 connector. Ebay1. Ebay2. Mine is missing the little turbo switch though, so maybe I can scavenge the parts to replace the thumb microswitch in my Quickshot II Turbo. It's been sticking open. The internals look just like inside the Quickshot II Turbo, so I wonder if it's just rebranded with a slightly different form factor. Or, I'll mod it to be a 9 pin. Not sure what to do with it yet. It was a $5 gamble.

I can't find info about this joystick. https://imgur.com/a/DAq0S I thought I had seen it on a listing, but I can't find it now. It feels like a Spectravision Quickshot joystick. It has microswitches and the parts inside the handle look like a Quickshot. It has TURBO on the side, but no other brand markings. It also has a 15 pin connector. I picked it up at Goodwill assuming it was an Atari style 9 pin joystick. When I got home, I noticed it was 15 pin. Searching the internet for "TURBO joystick" lists every joystick but this one. Anyone know what it is and if I can mod it to 9pin or use an adapter?

I was looking into this other day, because my RF cable isn't in very good shape either. I found some options on Amazon I was considering to try. I'm not sure how long the original RF cable is, but it looked about 10 feet. I was eyeballing this 15 foot long cable and a few others. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D5H8GYG/ If you look at the post of that cable, it's split down the middle. It doesn't look like it has an internal wire soldered to the tip. I was thinking of grinding it down, but there is a new problem. The length of the handle will not fit inside the space of my Atari. It's a 2600A. There are more cable brands with split posts, but they have long handles too. The cable handle not fitting inside the case seems to be a worse problem than the length of the post, so I got to thinking about elbow adapters and connecting the wire sideways. I was trying to find an elbow connector that has a similar split post, so I could grind that down, but I haven't found one yet. Elbow connectors: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y5VH2R3/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OYD2MOG/ I have to take some measurements to see if they would fit within the space between the motherboard and top of the case though. Still looking around for other options.

I didn't realize the television's RCA port was composite. I don't have a plan to mod the 2600 (yet). If I modded it, I'd prefer to support both RF and composite if possible. Otherwise, I will probably leave it as it is. I have the barrel adapter coming in the mail. I'm not that choosy about video quality. I'd rather run on a CRT anyway. The switchbox I have is ancient and awful, and it's causing static in the video. For the TV, it's a 20" Samsung TXN2020 I got for $15. Photos: https://imgur.com/a/Cofty

My CRT TV has a coax and RCA RF game inputs. It'd be nice to plug the Atari's RF plug right into the game plug since they're both RCA, but it doesn't work. Does anyone know the technical reason why this doesn't work?