On the hunt for a decently priced quality 7800 :(

[+TwentySixHundred]

Well i have been looking for the past few months to acquire a decent 7800. The prices on ebay here in Australia are a complete joke... Fair enough they're fairly rare however listings like this bring a tear to the eye ;(

 

Really have no idea how they're expecting $280 for the system when it looks like it's been submerged in a lake for the past 30 years lol. Starting to think im better off buying something decent from the states and paying the shipping fees. Although that wont be cheap. Atleast it will be NTSC rather then PAL which id prefer

[mimo]

That's crazy.
I'm in the UK and have PAL and NTSC consoles , 10-15 years ago this was OK but now with a poor exchange rate and the massive increases in postage I can no longer warrant buying new games for the system. So if you are importing from the USA try and get a lot with a load of games

[+slx]

Living in Europe I have bought a couple of PAL 7800s for 50€ or below quite recently. Even with shipping to Australia that should be well less than 280 bucks. I even got French units with RGB output for below 100$. If you can live with an NTSC TV the US is probably the cheapest source. Best Electronics as a new multi-voltage PSU that will only require a plug adapter but not a step-up transformer for US use. If you use a forwarding service you can consolidate various shipments with games, maybe an Edladdin Seagull, etc. without incurring full postage for each item.

 

Except for the rusty screws I'd say the system you linked to looks rather average. It's not easy to find a 7800 without scratches on that huge aluminum front plate.

[+TwentySixHundred]

2 hours ago, mimo said:

That's crazy.
I'm in the UK and have PAL and NTSC consoles , 10-15 years ago this was OK but now with a poor exchange rate and the massive increases in postage I can no longer warrant buying new games for the system. So if you are importing from the USA try and get a lot with a load of games

Yeah i was interested in PAL but at the same time would rather NTSC mainly for the reason i code my programs predominantly for NTSC. So when the 7800 SD flash carts hit the market i could test my NTSC ROMs on real hardware. As for 2600 titles id just buy a Harmony cart to test and load with NTSC originals.

28 minutes ago, slx said:

Living in Europe I have bought a couple of PAL 7800s for 50€ or below quite recently. Even with shipping to Australia that should be well less than 280 bucks. I even got French units with RGB output for below 100$. If you can live with an NTSC TV the US is probably the cheapest source. Best Electronics as a new multi-voltage PSU that will only require a plug adapter but not a step-up transformer for US use. If you use a forwarding service you can consolidate various shipments with games, maybe an Edladdin Seagull, etc. without incurring full postage for each item.

 

Except for the rusty screws I'd say the system you linked to looks rather average. It's not easy to find a 7800 without scratches on that huge aluminum front plate.

Yeah as i mentioned above to mimo NTSC is my preferred choice mainly for homebrew testing. The refresh rate isn't much of an issue as i have an LED TV that supports 60Hz and has component-in. Also as you said there is adapters to step-up 50-60Hz for the PSU and i had read somewhere even a 50Hz PSU is fine as long as the output voltage is correct.

 

I thought the rusty screws was the worst part of the console in that listing. However looking at the RF connector shows more of the true condition of the console. They said it was tested but you can see the oxidation had never been touched (AFAICS). There should be atleast some flaking if tested from the cable and im not even sure a signal would even make it through all that oxidation.

 

I agree the Alloy face plate would be hard to find without scratches, as with the 2600jrs but $280 for a console in that state seems a bit steep IMO. Would hate to see what the mainboard PCB looked like. Either way it looks rough

 

[mimo]

No worries, I wish I hadn't had to sell all three of my cuttle cart II's, so I can't wait for a cart loader of some sort to become available again.
So I guess ebay.com or the marketplace here would be the best places to look. Happy hunting 

[+slx]

Not wanting to cause envy (you prefer NTSC anyway ), but just unpacked a French 7800 with RGB output that was listed as "Asteroids working but does not read cartridges" and sold for 55 EUR (including postage to another EU country and complete with PSU, SCART lead and a joypad), blew compressed air into the cart slot, hooked it up to a CRT and had no problem with half a dozen 7800 and 2600 carts I tried. Wonder what the seller (who stated he had not attempted to have tried any repairs because of lack of Atari knowledge) had tried before listing it. Maybe inserted the carts wrong way round... 

[+TwentySixHundred]

Great stuff! I guess sometimes it pays off to take a chance, as it could always be a simple fix. Happy to hear you got it working and saved yourself some euros. It shows the solid build quality of Atari products, they just keep going flawlessly. I have been given a connection to what seems like a reputable source so once i get a chance i will try making contact with them

 

No envy on my part just glad to hear you landed a great deal ?

[+Muddyfunster]

Must admit I've been thinking about trying to snag a french RBG Scart 7800 but what I'd really like is an NTSC one as that's what I'm primarily developing on for the 7800.

 

Guess I need to see what's on fleabay.

[mimo]

10 hours ago, Muddyfunster said:

Must admit I've been thinking about trying to snag a french RBG Scart 7800 but what I'd really like is an NTSC one as that's what I'm primarily developing on for the 7800.

 

Guess I need to see what's on fleabay.

To be honest the RGB isn't that great, UAV looks better imo 

[+slx]

22 hours ago, mimo said:

To be honest the RGB isn't that great, UAV looks better imo 

The RGB comes from a piggy-back board that generates it from a composite or chroma-luma-signal AFAIK. (At first I thought it might be some kind of Atari "standard solution" for SECAM-land as some boards also came up for sale as an add-on for 400/800s in the past (and I remember an RGB "upgrade" being available for 400/800s when they were sold here in the early 80s) but it looks different. It's hard to take good pictures of the piggy-back board as it is soldered to the mainboard with multiple connections and therefore hard to remove.

 

I think the French units may be more attractive in SCART-using countries and for CRTs where you get a plug-and-play solution or if you want to use it with OSSC which AFAIK does not support composite or chroma-luma. And you get to keep the original case without any need to mod it with connectors or have a cable dangling out through a slot. 

Not sure if snapping them up on French Ebay and waiting for customers would be a viable business model, though

 

Can't compare with UAV as I haven't tried a 7800 install yet.