I have a question

[isatonmyhat]

Ok so my atari jr has gone weird. It's not working right and I'm not sure why so here is a link to a video I made to show you what it's doing. If anyone knows what's going on let me know.

 

Thanks Raia.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P92Q3l9mHoA

[raskar42]

have you been playing the Atari regularly and it started acting up, or have you had it in the closet and taken it out to try?

[phuzzed]

It's weird that you can get the one game to work but none of the others. Start with the obvious, clean the cartridges and cartridge slot really good. The fact that the one game starts up intermittently makes me suspect the power switch not making a good connection. I really think it's something a bit more than that though, like a bad processor, TIA chip, etc.

[A.J. Franzman]

My guess would be bad RIOT IC. If there's one or more particular RAM location(s) that most games use for kernel-critical data, that is/are bad in the RIOT, none of those games will work right. However, any game that doesn't use that RAM location, or uses it for something non-critical (and not glaringly obvious) may work correctly or may glitch in such a subtle way that you don't notice it.

Edited January 23, 2011 by A.J. Franzman

[isatonmyhat]

have you been playing the Atari regularly and it started acting up, or have you had it in the closet and taken it out to try?

 

It had not been used for a while. My brother did say something about it not working right the last time I saw him but he didn't go into detail so I desided to try and figure it out.

[raskar42]

 

It had not been used for a while. My brother did say something about it not working right the last time I saw him but he didn't go into detail so I desided to try and figure it out.

 

have you opened it to try to clean it, or checked for anything that looks loose or bad?

[isatonmyhat]

Thanks for taking a look at it. I cleaned the cartridges and now I can get plaque attack, asteroids, and frontline(a zellers version of combat) to work like empire strikes back. I might take it apart tomorow but I do think there is another issue besides needing a cleaning.. but hey this seems to be the month of weirdness as far as my old systems go so you never know it might just work.

 

[isatonmyhat]

 

It had not been used for a while. My brother did say something about it not working right the last time I saw him but he didn't go into detail so I desided to try and figure it out.

 

have you opened it to try to clean it, or checked for anything that looks loose or bad?

 

nothing seems to be loose, and that's why it seemed so strange to me, because from the outside it looks perfect

[isatonmyhat]

Just finished claening it and tested everything. It didn't actually look that dirty inside but I cleaned it anyway and now everything except crackpots works. Yay. I'm going to keep fiddleing with that game but for now I'm really happy. Thank you.