Star Raiders Incompatibility?

[candiru]

I recently rescued a lonely 4-switch woody from a thrift store and it has me a little puzzled. While testing it out I happened to put in my Star Raiders cart. For some reason, it will only view the map mode, and the touch-pad is unresponsive. This console and both its joystick ports work flawlessly with every other game I tried. The cart and touchpad worked fine on the other 2600s I tested them with.

 

Not that I'm all that worried about not being able to play Star Raiders on one unit, but it got me curious.

 

Anybody else have similar experiences with carts/units? Any of the resident programming/hardware experts have any theories about why it happens? Anybody want to purchase this one of a kind unit? I'd consider offers as low as $500.

 

Thanks

[bjk7382]

I have had a "Heavy Sixer" that the first player joystick button was reading as held down even with no joystick plugged in. I looked into it and found out it was one of the 3 chips on the mainboard. So I bought another six switch (not a heavy sixer) and traded out the main boards. Now I have a perfectly working Heavy sixer for 20 dollars.

 

I think your problem might be with one of the joystick ports reading as held down and that wouldn't let you push any of the buttons on that star raiders controller while still having the joystick work in that port. Because each of the pins in the port are used for different things on different controllers.

 

I am going to have to say it is the main chips on the mainboard.

 

-Brad Karston