Vader screen issue or not?

[HatefulGravey]

My Atari 2600 is working just fine, but almost all games have soemthing "wrong" with the left side of the screen. When I'm playing Berzerk there are 4 or 5 lines running left to right on the screen, but they are only there on the very edge of the screen. I really didn't notice it untill my wife mentioned it.

 

Moon Patrol seems to be fine, but adjusted right, so instead of the image being centered its off to the rigt a little, leaving the left side of the screen blank. About 1/4 inch on the left.

 

None of this seems to effect the game at all, so I'm not super concerned about it, but I have to wonder are these kinds of things normal for the system? I was no where near gaming age when these systems were new, so I have no real idea having never seen one new. Emulators dont do this, but then again they are often better then the original system when dealing with these older systems....

 

Just wondering.

 

If this isn't clear enough I'll post pictures when I get home.

[fiddlepaddle]

Sounds normal. The 1/2 inch bar on the left of the screen of many games is merely an artifact of how the program draws the screen. By the way, other threads here address this same question, you may want to search for them.

[HatefulGravey]

Sounds normal. The 1/2 inch bar on the left of the screen of many games is merely an artifact of how the program draws the screen. By the way, other threads here address this same question, you may want to search for them.

 

Then I have been here for a few days and already made a jerk of myself. I searched, I'm a noob in the Atari world but not the forum world, but found nothing. Maybe I'm searching with the wrong terms. I'm sorry guys.

[fiddlepaddle]

Sounds normal. The 1/2 inch bar on the left of the screen of many games is merely an artifact of how the program draws the screen. By the way, other threads here address this same question, you may want to search for them.

 

Then I have been here for a few days and already made a jerk of myself. I searched, I'm a noob in the Atari world but not the forum world, but found nothing. Maybe I'm searching with the wrong terms. I'm sorry guys.

 

for example

[JingleJoe]

Yup, thats normal; loads of games have it, some have a black bar at the side to hide them

[SoulBlazer]

Yup, thats normal; loads of games have it, some have a black bar at the side to hide them

 

And Activision figured how to hide that 'comb bar' all together in their games.

[A.J. Franzman]

Many early games show the "comb" (a.k.a. HMOVE bars), which is an artifact of how the hardware works. Lots of later games hide the "comb" by making that entire edge of the screen solid black (which has the effect of making it seem like the image is shifted to the right). Some of the very last games for the system, and many recent homebrews, use advanced programming techniques to prevent the "comb" from appearing at all.