A.J. Franzman

P.S. if you don't want that Atari Jr., I'll take it off your hands.

Possibly, I've posted at ASAP on the Ghostbusters and Star Trek forums. I'm also a moderator of THE nixie tube forum, NEONIXIE-L at Yahoo Groups. You might also find my name on Bulbcollector.com, Usenet and various other fora.

Open the case and see if the cart port is broken. Best electronics has replacements if you need one.

Well, why not just unsolder the switch, disassemble and rebuild it? I've done that a few times with ordinary slide switches to fix things like bent sliding contacts, or dried grease inside. Sometimes all you need to do is re-crimp the metal tabs that hold it together, and spray it with contact cleaner. If you do take it apart, just be careful not to lose the tiny sliding contacts or the springs that push against them (if yours use separate springs).

Is that artwork colored pencil, or crayon??? LOL I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have bought a cart in a box that looked like that!

Google is your friend! There is at least one walkthrough online. Ditto C=64 version for me. My Atari was collecting dust by that time (soon to be disposed of).

It doesn't look like the camera is too bad, looks more like it moved while taking the shot. You can get a cheap tabletop mini tripod from places like Best Buy or Staples for under $10. It's well worth it for macro work like this. Interesting cart.

It's misleading (especially to all the electronics novices around here) to say that a linear regulator does not increase current draw (in fact it does, slightly) when what it really wastes is POWER. For a testable, common example, let's use your normal Adventure. If you're powering the system from a 5V source, the power drain is 5 volts X 0.272 amps = 1.36 watts. Now using your 9 volt source, and assuming that the current really is the same, 9 volts x 0.272 amps = 2.448 watts input, an 80% increase. Or to put it another way, runtime would be 1.8 times as much if the regulator didn't waste all that power. There is no perfect solution to this problem, but switching regulators are much better than linear regulators. Most are in the 80-85% efficiency range, with some approaching 95%. Here's an example calculation using a 9 volt battery with an 80% efficient switching regulator: Take the desired output (5 volts X 0.272 amps = 1.36 watts) and divide by the efficiency, 1.36 watts / 0.8 = 1.7 watts input to get 1.36 watts out. Comparing this to the linear regulator, runtime will be 44% longer. Using a more efficient regulator circuit can increase this significantly. This does not even take into account the ~2 volt "dropout" of the linear regulator. Using a "low dropout" linear regulator will increase runtime a bit, but a low dropout switching regulator will improve on that even more.