Got a strange problem with a 2600 vader

[chupathingy]

Recently I've been having a problem with my 2600. I fire it up with the Harmony and the text has kind of a weird blue color to it. If I leave the system on for a while, the text goes back to green. The games still work and play fine, except for Cosmic Ark. The star field starts glitching out, eventually settling into completely vertical parallel lines.

 

I've had my Vader for at least three years, given to me in person by Scott Williamson of Star Castle fame so I know it came from a good home. The PCB inside is spotless, no corrosion, although I'm going to swap out that big capacitor soon. It hasn't seen any hard usage, except when I did a concert last year and used Synthcart on it. But that wasn't really hard usage, just about 10 minutes.

 

Here's a short video highlighting the Cosmic Ark problem, I can't get a good picture of the harmony cart problem because the interference is too bad.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ATNRzLf7TM

 

Anyone got any ideas as to what the problem is?

[CatPix]

Since Cosmik Ark use a bug to display the starfield, I can only assume that your TIA chip is faulty. I might be wrong, but it does look like it.

[Sprybug]

Since Cosmik Ark use a bug to display the starfield, I can only assume that your TIA chip is faulty. I might be wrong, but it does look like it.

I'd agree with that. I once accidentally cut a trace between the TIA and CPU and it did some really weird sound and video stuff. Still played but did some wild crap until I found the trace that I cut and soldered a jumper wire to fix it.

[chupathingy]

Well, there's no cut traces on the board, everything looks flawless on it. So it sounds like I've got a faulty TIA. No big deal, I've got another Vader model, but I think I'll hold on to this one for sentimental reasons.

 

Thanks for the help guys.