Atari 2600 repair help

[INTVCruise]

Hello everyone, trying to help a friend get their Atari working again. Their Atari seems to work very intermittently. Powering it on seems to work for a short period before the screen goes dark and no longer wants to play anymore. We've tried swapping all three chips to see if one of them may have been going bad, as well as change out the power regulator but nothing seems to be fixing it completely. If anybody has any suggestions to try I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you to everyone who reads and responds to this! 

[ApolloBoy]

Sounds like it might be a capacitor issue if it's slowly going out. I would recommend picking up one of these: https://console5.com/store/atari-2600-total-refresh-tune-up-cap-kit-new-capacitors-and-more.html

[AtariLeaf]

Do you have another power supply to test with?

[INTVCruise]

4 hours ago, ApolloBoy said:

Sounds like it might be a capacitor issue if it's slowly going out. I would recommend picking up one of these: https://console5.com/store/atari-2600-total-refresh-tune-up-cap-kit-new-capacitors-and-more.html

Hello, thank you very much for the reply! I do have a bunch of spare parts lying around that I can give my friend, just not sure exactly what capacitor it may be or how to test and he lives kind of far away to just do a bunch of part swapping. Do you know what the mulitmeter should be set to to test for capacitance, I'm pretty sure he has one lf those but I've never used one for that. Thanks again. 

[INTVCruise]

4 hours ago, AtariLeaf said:

Do you have another power supply to test with?

Hi, i dont think he does but he mentioned that at first he was able to play just fine then the picture gave out all of a sudden and just got weaker amd weaker until nothong but static displayed. Hope thks may help. 

[ApolloBoy]

1 hour ago, INTVCruise said:

Hello, thank you very much for the reply! I do have a bunch of spare parts lying around that I can give my friend, just not sure exactly what capacitor it may be or how to test and he lives kind of far away to just do a bunch of part swapping. Do you know what the mulitmeter should be set to to test for capacitance, I'm pretty sure he has one lf those but I've never used one for that. Thanks again. 

Honestly there are so few caps in the 2600 that you might as well take the shotgun approach and replace them all, especially the large 2200 uF filter cap and the green 0.22 uF chiclet caps near the 7805.

[+Stephen Moss]

If you have access to a multi-meter it would be worth checking the output voltage of the regulator when it fails because if there is a problem that is drawing to much current the regulator will go into thermal shutdown and only output 1 or 2 volts.

 

If it is going into thermal shut down then something is probably getting rather warm, freezer spray would be a good way of checking that otherwise smell or the what is hot finger test could be used. 

I am sure a copy of the service manual or a link to it was posted somewhere on here a while back, if you can find it it may be worth check to see it that mentions any black screen faults that might narrow down you search for the problem.