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Arcadia 2001 Fan Appreciation Thread


sixersfan105

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I bought some Arcadia-2001 games from toymailman's sale thread (Space Vultures, Missile War, Soccer, Brain Quiz, Space Attack, Space Raiders, Cat Trax, American Football, and Baseball to be exact) and I realized I am missing some important information when identifying the completeness of my games.  How many overlays came with each game?  In my original Arcadia-2001 purchase, all the games (Tanks a Lot, Star Chess, Escape, Jungler, and Ocean Battle) came with two overlays.  I had thought that all Arcadia-2001 games came with two overlays, but after messaging with James about his games I realized that is not the case.

 

So does anybody know the exact number of overlays that came with each game or know somewhere where that information can be found?  I also wish I would have claimed Space Mission too, but I was too late with that one.

 

Edited by jeremiahjt
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26 minutes ago, stupus said:

The emerson versions of Space attack, alien invaders and breakaway came with no overlays.

Space mission and missle war only came with the left overlay.

The rest all came with 2.

What about Brain Quiz? James told me that one had four.

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3 hours ago, jeremiahjt said:

I bought some Arcadia-2001 games from toymailman's sale thread (Space Vultures, Missile War, Soccer, Brain Quiz, Space Attack, Space Raiders, Cat Trax, American Football, and Baseball to be exact) and I realized I am missing some important information when identifying the completeness of my games.  How many overlays came with each game?  In my original Arcadia-2001 purchase, all the games (Tanks a Lot, Star Chess, Escape, Jungler, and Ocean Battle) came with two overlays.  I had thought that all Arcadia-2001 games came with two overlays, but after messaging with James about his games I realized that is not the case.

 

So does anybody know the exact number of overlays that came with each game or know somewhere where that information can be found?  I also wish I would have claimed Space Mission too, but I was too late with that one.

 

Yeah, space mission is a tough one.  Took me forever to find that one.  

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Are Arcadia cartridges known to have a higher failure rate than most of its peers? I ask because I have come across four or five non-working cartridges at this point out of a relatively small sample size that I have tested. I know all about how to clean game cartridges, so I'm not looking for advice on how to clean the pins. Just wondering if others have experienced this, too. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Thats too bad. I assume you tried a few different carts all cleaned good?

They definitely dont seem like the most hefty machines. The main problem i see go on them is they lose color output. Sometimes completely and sometimes the colors get very faint.

Not sure if anybody works on them at all?

 

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On 6/10/2021 at 2:41 PM, stupus said:

Thats too bad. I assume you tried a few different carts all cleaned good?

They definitely dont seem like the most hefty machines. The main problem i see go on them is they lose color output. Sometimes completely and sometimes the colors get very faint.

Not sure if anybody works on them at all?

 

I tried 3 different carts with the same result.  I see power to the led but gives no video output.  I have to assume something wrong there.   I would have tried a different video cord, except that the Arcadia one is dedicated.   I wonder if I could open the unit up and maybe the cord simply unplugs inside?

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...

>I'm not going to dive into a history lesson here, but the Arcadia 2001 was developed by Universal Appliances Limited (UAL) out of Hong Kong and released under license in the US market by Emerson in May 1982 (more details on this here). It was only produced for about 1.5 years in the US. There are 22 confirmed US releases but due to UAL having issued many licenses for related systems (more than 30!) around the world, that number increases to around 50 or so.

 

Actually, I'm not sure if there was any licencing required, as far as the hardware is concerned. There is no BIOS, and the chips are standard off-the-shelf components available for any company to purchase directly from Signetics, and the motherboard is basically the Signetics reference design. This may in part explain why there was such a proliferation of these machines from such a variety of manufacturers. The software is a different matter of course.

 

>What has always befuddled me is why every sound that comes out of the system brings to mind the sounds of an animal in its death throes. I mean, the sound chip clearly had as much range as the primitive chips on my Odyssey 2 and Apple II, but while the sounds on the former were boring and the latter a bit scratchy, nothing this side of Tom Waits sounds as bad as an Arcadia 2001. Was there a technical reason for that?

 

It's just an ordinary square wave generator, but there are restrictions in the choice of frequency, especially for higher notes. So music will sound out of tune.

Specifically, only pitches that are divisors of 7874 Hz can be produced. The emulator has an option to force tones to the nearest equivalent on the even-tempered musical scale, which makes music sound better.

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  • 1 month later...

My Emerson Arcadia 2001 starts up normally with normal color output. However, after about a minute, the screen flickers and the console outputs wirh a strong green tint. After a minute passes, the console fixes itself temporarily and goes back to normal color output. Do you know what could be causing this? It's not game cartridge or the AC adapter so it is something to do with the console itself. Any help is appreciated. 

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Something to do with the trimpot I think. I've never opened a system like this before and it has wires everywhere. I tried desoldering the upper rf shield and found that the wires can't be unplugged and they get in the way for me to actually see the motherboard. 

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Now the audio out isn't working and only causes a static sound. Could capacitors fail so quickly that it causes the system to not only lose color but also sound? Usually capacitors fail slowly and they show telltale signs. The fact the system was working with color and sound two days ago means that something more problematic is the issue. Perhaps the video encoder chip and audio chip is going bad?

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Yeah I'm positive now it's just bad caps, at least for the audio out. The system had working audio after I left the console on for an hour. Do you think bad caps can affect the picture and make the green tint as well? I thought the RF modulator box or the trimpot was going bad but caps might be the underlying issue.

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1 hour ago, Sonaru said:

Yeah I'm positive now it's just bad caps, at least for the audio out. The system had working audio after I left the console on for an hour. Do you think bad caps can affect the picture and make the green tint as well? I thought the RF modulator box or the trimpot was going bad but caps might be the underlying issue.

Yeah I think failing capacitors can impact picture, but you're right that RF box could also be at play if a recap doesn't fix things. 

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18 hours ago, sixersfan105 said:

Yeah I think failing capacitors can impact picture, but you're right that RF box could also be at play if a recap doesn't fix things. 

Would a composite video/audio mod bypass a failing RF box? If I understand correctly, the RF modulator combines both the video and audio out before generating the RF frequency for the TV? So I thought maybe a composite mod could fix the tint issue. If I'm wrong, please let me know. Then again, the trim pot could also be failing.

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