Divarin

one new and one old from another spare parts machine. the spare machine had good picture quality but strange joystick behavior.

hmm interesting. Well I've had this hooked up in two places. my home office to a CRT TV and my workshop in the basement to an LCD tv (where I took the video from), the behavior was the same in both places. The power supply is brand new which I ordered from china: https://www.ebay.com/itm/AC-Power-Supply-DC-9V-Adaptor-Plug-Pack-for-ATARI-2600-Console-Charger-US-Plug/192439401874?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 I've purchased these twice times in the past and haven't had any issues but to rule that out as the issue I do have another Atari in my living room which I use all the time (I'm fixing this one up to sell) so I guess I can try hooking this up there and see how that goes. The solder connection on the caps you mentioned seem good with good continuity but one thing I noticed: Before soldering them on I tested running the board with and without the caps (after having pulled c241 I powered up the system, then held the replacement cap to the pads on the board to examine the change, not sure this was safe or not but was curious and willing to risk it) it was definitely fuzzier without the cap in place but it didn't seem to matter if I held on the old cap or the replacement both cleaned up the video a little (back to how it has been) So then I soldered in the replacement c241 and did the same thing with c242 (which was located near the power plug for some reason and was a tiny cap looking a bit more like a resister) When I did that there was no noticeable change in picture quality, the cap seemed to have no effect there so I'm thinking maybe a trace to this cap got damaged I'll look into that today. I'll also look into measuring the voltage but I'm currently waiting for replacement multimeter probes to get shipped as I broke off one of mine and have been so far getting by by using the bare wire sticking out of the probe

No it was fuzzy before. The first replacement I made was the riot chip, before that it was non-functional. After replacing the riot it worked but was fuzzy.

Well, replaced those as well as c204 (since I had a spare for that thought I might as well even if it's not related) unfortunately it didn't seem to change anything. Could be this will end up being a parts 2600

Great I'll give that a try thanks!

I have a vader model, I've replaced the RIOT chip, the 4.7uf caps, the 2200uf cap, and the voltage regulator. Once I got it running again I noticed the video was fuzzy. I decided to do an A/V mod and picked up this kit: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Atari-2600-7800-Composite-Video-Mod-Upgrade-Kit-DIY/303092047733?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 Side note: as others have mentioned in other forums about the a/v mod the video was dark, after removing one of the resistors from the mod circuit that solved that issue. The picture, however, is still fuzzy. I've uploaded a video showing what I mean: https://youtu.be/UXzVRivc258 Not sure where to look next, any suggestions? I have tried multiple composite cables and televisions as well so I'm pretty sure it's an issue on the board itself.

Thanks. I was able to find an .ST 2 player hockey game (Face Off). I'm glad I did because I found out the joystick port was bad. After some dis-assembly I found two pins on the back side of the keyboard where the solder had broken loose. A quick re-solder and the mouse is working. Thanks for the links.

Thanks, those also seems to be STX. I understand that STX is for copy protected disks and from what I am learning it's not possible to copy those onto floppies. Are STX files only useable in emulators or is there any way to get them up and running on a real ST?

Ok so I picked up a 1040 ST and I'm in the process of testing it all out. The mouse it came with seems to be bad, it doesn't move in the vertical direction and its movement horizontally is weird (sometimes backwards). I have been able to use a dos-box computer to write some 720kb disks with a few games (and a word processor) to test that otherwise the computer seems to be fine. I have another mouse on order from ebay but I'd like to be able to test that port to make sure it's not an issue there. I've been looking around for a game that uses two joysticks (or one that definitely uses port 0, the mouse port). What I'm finding is that the vast majority of disk images out there are .STX files which I can't write to floppy. I've only found a handful of .ST and .MSA files and none of these use two joysticks. What would be a good resource to go to for .ST or .MSA and are there any recommendations of a two player game which would take advantage of the joystick port which the mouse also uses?

Update: Okay I did get this to work eventually. I found a phono-plug adapter which let me plug the audio cable into my phone and I was just barely able to hear the audio come out of the TV so I cranked up the audio on the phone to max and even though the audio was very low coming over the TV the TI kept reading it and eventually loaded successfully.

Hi all. So I have a TI-99/4A and a Tunnels of Doom cart. I no longer have the tape but have downloaded the .wav file. I picked up a new old-stock (unopened) audio cable and have a tape recorder (TI "data recorder") coming in the mail in a few days. Meanwhile it occurred to me that I should be able to just play the audio out of another computer, my cellphone, an MP3 player, or something like that and it should work. My first attempt was to simply plug the cable into my Galaxy S9 but strangely it didn't fit. Next I connected my phone to a bluetooth speaker with a line out jack and plugged the TI's audio cable into that but it wouldn't load. Next I plugged the TI's audio cable into a notebook computer and played the .WAV from there with the same result (the Tunnels of Doom game said "error - no data found" after about 30 seconds of waiting) The only things that come to mind are: 1) the audio cable is clearly mono so maybe these stereo jacks aren't going to work correctly with a mono plug 2) maybe the "tone" adjustment on the "data recorder" is more important than I thought and playing out of a cell phone or computer with nothing but a volume control isn't going to work 3) maybe my .wav file is bad (though it sounds good to my ear) It seems to me that it shouldn't be too picky on the audio quality, after-all the audio quality of a cassette tape can vary greatly depending on the tape, the player, and the age of both. Also (and I'm really dusting off old brain cells here) but I seem to remember when the tape was playing I could hear it. Was it that the tape recorder's speaker would work even while the line-out jack was plugged in or was it that the TI would pipe the audio out to the TV? Today I am not able to hear it so if the TI is supposed to pipe the audio out to the TV then maybe my new old-stock cable is bad. Any thoughts?