7800 HELP

[atariedsel]

I just recently purchased a 7800 prosystem and i cant get it to work. Pop a game in and i'll get colord lines on the screen, blank screen with noise, wavey colored lines with noise. Ive taken it apart clean it best i could and still nothing. Ive tried it with 2600 games too and same thing. Any hints or tricks to get this sucker goin?? Or is there anyone that repairs these old systems that i can send to??

[4Ks]

Welcome to AtariAge! It sounds like your cartridge slot might be dirty. Have you tried cleaning that?

[+Sauron]

It definitely does sound like the cart slot. Try cleaning it with a soft lint-free cloth while wedging it in with the edge of a credit card. May want to use rubbing alcohol or contact lense solution with it applied very conservatively to the cloth. You may also want to clean the contacts on your carts as well.

[+Mitch]

Does it show the Atari logo screen before it goes to garbage?

 

Mitch

[atariedsel]

I have just spent over an hour on this machine and still same thing. The answer your question Mitch, the logo does not appear when i turn the power on. When i hit the power button its just a scrambled mess, colored lines, blank screen, and noise. i have three 2600 systems and never had a major problem with them. Of course something like this would happen, I finally got a 7800 and I cant get the damn thing to work.

[+Mitch]

If it isn't getting to the Atari logo screen on the 7800 games then most likely it's not the cart slot. If you have a volt meter you may want to open up the 7800 and see if it's getting +5V to the chips.

 

Mitch

[Rik]

This sucks!IME,9 out of 10 times,when a problem like yours occurs i clean the game cart contacts a couple times more and voila,the game works.Or if that doesn't work,clean the contacts on the console game port.This happened to me tonight,as i thought the CV Omega Race cart i bought at the thrift store was a dud.I just cleaned the game contacts again...nothing, then again,and voila,game works like new.I have found %99 of the time things can be fixed with a good cleaning.Its a good idea to clean the console game port on any used console before plugging a game in,never know how much crud is packed in there.This goes for all my other consoles as well.This might not be your case,i guess i've been lucky on this subject,anyways i wish you good luck!

Edited September 11, 2009 by Rik

[SnapCraft]

I just recently purchased a 7800 prosystem and i cant get it to work. Pop a game in and i'll get colord lines on the screen, blank screen with noise, wavey colored lines with noise. Ive taken it apart clean it best i could and still nothing. Ive tried it with 2600 games too and same thing. Any hints or tricks to get this sucker goin?? Or is there anyone that repairs these old systems that i can send to??

 

I also am getting this on my only 2 systems. I am not in a rush to get a working one, I just pick them up if they are cheap. But going 0-2 on an Atari product (let's forget about the 5200 cont) is unusual, right? I'll try cleaning the cart port.

 

Does the 7800 have a high failure rate, or is my luck with them terrible?

[AtariLeaf]

I just recently purchased a 7800 prosystem and i cant get it to work. Pop a game in and i'll get colord lines on the screen, blank screen with noise, wavey colored lines with noise. Ive taken it apart clean it best i could and still nothing. Ive tried it with 2600 games too and same thing. Any hints or tricks to get this sucker goin?? Or is there anyone that repairs these old systems that i can send to??

 

I also am getting this on my only 2 systems. I am not in a rush to get a working one, I just pick them up if they are cheap. But going 0-2 on an Atari product (let's forget about the 5200 cont) is unusual, right? I'll try cleaning the cart port.

 

Does the 7800 have a high failure rate, or is my luck with them terrible?

 

From my own experience I've owned about a dozen over the years and never had any major problems that a good cleaning didn't fix.