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6 Switcher left player always firing.


potatohead

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Being mine is the right player firing, does anyone know which pins correspond? Thanks

 

Right player is pins 6 and 7.

 

-Ian

 

Thanks Ian. Not to sound stupid, but basically if I cut off pin 6 and 7 from the ic chip itself, remove them from the socket, and then solder the gap underneath (other side) the board between pin 6 and 7,it should correct the issue?

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That is exactly what I ended up doing.

 

Just double, triple check you've identified the right pins. A small set of wire cutters works nicely. I ended up cutting as attempting to pry up the pins cracked the chip packaging. Not enough to kill the rest of it, but enough to cause me to consider just cutting.

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Yeah, the thing that seems to be happening is that the chip develops some kind of internal resistance and causes the line to get stuck on. You want to take it out of the circuit. Cutting the legs works well - or if you're good with a soldering iron, you can actually unsolder them, and pull them up and out of the board. But cutting is far easier and you're much less likely to damage the board. And, if you do end up destroying the chip entirely, it's not a big deal, the 4050 is like a forty cent part.

 

But yes. Disconnect those pins from the board, and connect the places on the board where the pins used to connect to.

 

-Ian

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Yeah, the 4050 is a standard part - but you probably won't find it at Radio Shack, unless you can find a Delorean and enough road to get up to 88mph - because you could have gotten it there 20 years ago.

 

Any real electronics store will have it, it's a CD4050 cmos buffer chip. I've heard that Fry's Electronics would carry things like this - but we don't have one around here. Also, any online electronics distributor would have them - Jameco, Digikey, Mouser, Futurlec, etc.

 

But, for now, you can just clip those two pins, solder the pads on the board together, and it'll work - then when you find the part, you can replace it. It's not entirely necessary - Atari left it out in later models anyway.

 

-Ian

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  • 1 year later...

Just came upon this old post and this is an issue that one of my other Ataris has. It keeps firing on the left player. I read thru this post and cut the 9 and 10 pin as one of the postings said, and also bridged 9 and 10 on the board itself, but it did not correct the issue, it is still firing. Any other ideas? Thanks.

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Yep, I had already tried swapping the chips Zylon, but nope, it must be that 4050, but I cut the leads and it still did not stop the firing.

If you've swapped TIA chips with a known-good one, and cut the correct pins on the 4050 buffer chip but still have constant firing, there are a few other possibilities. First and most obvious would be a physical short somewhere on the board, such as if one of the port's pins or lead wires is bent/broken and touching another pin or wire. There could also be a solder bridge or loose ball of solder/bit of metal shorting between pads/pins/tracks/etc. somewhere. Another possibility (though IMO this is so rare as to not be worth considering) is an internal short in the noise filter capacitor right next to the port for that pin. Finally, if your board is one of the very few six-switchers that have had the static protection zener diodes added, that could be either shorted or installed backwards.

 

Whenever I get a console in that has this problem, my first steps to fix it are visual inspection, removing the CD4050, installing a socket, and putting in a known-good 4050. So far I have never had to go further, but if I did, my next step would be to remove the now-socketed 4050, and test the input pin to ground with my multimeter's continuity/diode check function and perhaps the resistance function. This would reveal if the signal line is grounded, and whether it's a direct short, reversed diode, or something else.

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  • 1 year later...

Sup AtariAge!,

I don't mean to revive a year old thread but it seams like the Sears Telegames Video Arcade Heavy Sixer Atari 2600 clone I acquired yesterday at a garage sale seems to have the same problems described in this thread.I'm playing Centipede and even with no joysticks plugged in it,it's firing by itself and when I play Donkey Kong or Pitfall I can't jump either.But what I did noticed is that when I plug in my Sega Genesis/Megadrive controller in,these games play with no flaws and aside from this problem the health of this console seems to be good.My question is if my Sega Genesis Controller works perfectly fine but the Joysticks don't is it still the same problem or is this something completely different?

 

I didn't solder anything yet although I opened and cleaned the console on the insides and beforehand the joysticks were a little stiff so I cleaned them on the insides and the joysticks work alot smoother so I know it's not the joysticks.

 

I just wanted to know if I do have to go into the soldering work to fix this problem.

 

Thank You.

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Probably yes. If you read through the thread, there is a buffer chip between the TIA and the game controller. On mine, I ended up cutting away the pins on the chip with a small wire cutter. (really small) Then I bridged them on the circuit board with a small blob of solder.

 

Originally, I was going to replace the chip with a socket, but I did not have a temp controlled soldering iron. The traces peel up really easy on these old boards. After experiencing a little of that, I chose to just bypass the chip.

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Uhg, looks like I have this problem now with a Sears H6r I was about to try to sell. I bought it a couple of years ago in a lot, and never thoroughly tested it until tonight. It's happening on Player2 only, which means if I was a total scumbag, I might try to sell it as is hoping the buyer wouldn't notice until they tried a 2 player game. Obviously I'm NOT a scumbag, so it will have to go back into storage until I have time to fix it.

 

At least there is this thread to help me along! Thank god for AA!

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  • 3 years later...

Necrobumping, but this is the first thread that came up when I was desperately asking Google for constant fire on 2nd joy port.

:)

 

Thanks AA for this topic, just got my first Sixer, which happened to have this fault (after some work to get it running in the first place, but oh well) and the solution worked perfectly.

Whew, already thought I'd have to ripp a TIA from one of my Juniors, and all it took was a tiny piece of wire!

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  • 9 months later...
  • 7 months later...

I just wanted to say thank you to whoever posted this as it fixed my continual fire issue on the right. I had to lift pin 6 and 7 out (a real pain to do btw) and bridge the pads with some solder. It now fires only when the joystick button is pressed.

 

Muchas Gracias!

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One of these days, it would nice to see a community "troubleshooting tree" type document to pull all of this valuable information into one place.

Of course, there's no guarantee that the person in need would be able to find that single location but still, it would be nice to have a standard place to point people to.

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I actually have this same problem with a light sixer I have hooked up. When I get time, maybe I'll try to do the fix also. Was going to sell this thing. Unless anyone wants to buy it as is and fix it themselves. Need money real bad and want to start moving things. Have a ton of controllers, so if someone wants it complete with 2 joysticks and paddles (have to test things), let me know and maybe we can come up with a deal. Always looking for boxed games for trade too, though cash is a bit more important at this time.

 

Phil

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  • 3 years later...
On 2/14/2009 at 9:00 PM, Ian Primus said:

 

Pull out the TIA (C010444) and bend pin 36 out just enough so it won't go into the socket, then put the chip back. If it still fires constantly, then you've got a bad TIA.

My 6 Switcher has the same problem with constantly firing, but bending pin 36 solved the problem (except now it cannot fire at all). Is the fault in the TIA chip itself? Will replacing it solve the problem?

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Whoops, my apologies. I completely missed part of this thread. Well I replaced the TIA in my light Sixer with one out of a broken 2600 Jr. I had (used a heat gun to melt the solder and pulled it out) and it still constantly fired. So next I tried soldering Pin 9 and 10 on the 4050 together but it still kept firing. After that, I tried desoldering the pins but they were so stubborn I accidentally ripped the traces around the pins off the board while trying to pry the pins up. However, it STILL constantly fires, so at this point I'm thinking I may as well just replace the entire board, especially with how Frankentstiened this one looks now.

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  • 6 months later...

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