Light Sixer With Late Heavy Sixer Guts?

[27ace27]

Hello all,

 

Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in! A big lot of Atari stuff on craigslist for $100, to be precise. 4 consoles came in the lot; 2 light sixers, 1 4-switch, and 1 heavy sixer. I plan on modding and selling the light consoles and keeping a heavy sixer, but when I got to the second light sixer today, I found something strange inside. As you probably guessed from the title, there were a heavy sixer's guts inside!

 

I initially suspected someone swapped the guts out as there were only 2 screws holding the (thick) bottom shielding plate on and they were in the wrong place (center holes). But having looked at the dates on the chips, I'm not so sure. The latest one dates to 27th week of 1978 (late august, early September). In fact only one date is 1977, the rest (both boards and chips) are all mid-1978. What's even stranger is that the motherboard has the earlier striped, soldered ribbon cable and white socket. The switch board even matches. Why would someone swap out both boards if it's likely only the motherboard was dead? There was even similar crud in both the case and inside the shielding box. Finally, the sticker on the bottom of the case says Sunnyvale. I thought only the heavy sixers were manufactured there?

 

What do you all think? Did it come from the factory like this or was it a later repair?

Edited September 2, 2016 by 27ace27

[27ace27]

One other thing I noticed about this Sunnyvale light sixer is the molding for the power jack is different from my other light sixer.

 

 

The earlier model has a keyhole shape whereas the later ones are more plain. Searching for Sunnyvale light Sixers on ebay turned up a third, inward-slanted variation as well. It seems that Atari had plenty of different tooling over the years!

[+sramirez2008]

That keyhole power jack opening is cool. Haven't seen that before.

 

Here's the what my Sunnyvale Light Sixer power jack looks like.

 

[zylon]

One other thing I noticed about this Sunnyvale light sixer is the molding for the power jack is different from my other light sixer.

 

IMG_17881.JPG

 

The earlier model has a keyhole shape whereas the later ones are more plain. Searching for Sunnyvale light Sixers on ebay turned up a third, inward-slanted variation as well. It seems that Atari had plenty of different tooling over the years!

 

look closely. that keyhole loop at the top has the look of being done with a hand drill. The round top is not quite round. This might be a refurb unit. A lot of the Sears refurbs had the same thing done to them. The right one looks like a foreign produced version.

Edited September 3, 2016 by zylon