MoparManiac

Very cool, thanks for the pic!

I heard it's supposed to come with a retro style poster too, did you find that?

Yep, it was the chips. I replaced them both at the same time so I can't confirm which one, but it works so I'm leaving it at that . Thanks again.

Well, after much effort and assistance from metarog and others and sending of parts across the country, I have news... Thanks so much for the assistance! Another O2 lives again!

Replied to your message, sorry I was out of state at a conference and wasn't checking sites much.

Sorry for the delay, I cleaned with the credit card method but it's still acting the same. If you'd like to send me the chips that would be great, I'm not sure what else to do at this point to get it going.

I'll give the cleaning method you suggested a go tonight and see how that works, the credit card method is a good idea I hadn't thought about. I've attempted rocking the cartridges and it doesn't seem to make a difference either way whether I'm wiggling them or holding them back or forward to try to make more contact. I'll update again this evening. I'm curious, have you worked anymore on your unit that was showing the same symptoms? Interestingly, ONE time I fired up the unit with no cartridge in it (since replacing the pin) and I got the messed up blocky screen you referenced getting on your working unit. Alas, I put a cartridge in and still just got the grey/black/colored screens. I do get the squares occasionally with a cartridge in, but this was more of an uneven grid pattern and looked different then what I get with a cartridge in.

Here's a great site for the box art. They provide both retail and custom covers. http://www.thecoverproject.net/

Well, good news and bad news. Bad news first, the replacement pin did not make a difference. The console is behaving exactly the same as before . The good news was that I was able able to replace the pin with spares from the connector metarog sent me and it is showing good continuity on the new pin as well as all the rest. Some are slightly deformed, but they appear to be good enough to be making a solid connection with the cart. After moving the pins out in the center it goes in much more snugly. I'm going to spend some more time getting them as perfect as possible, but they are somewhat fragile and I'm leery about messing with them too much. I reseated the chips one more time to be sure. I'm also going to give it one more cleaning, but I'm starting to suspect a problem with one of the soldered chips. So frustrating since the unit turns on and seems to be trying to do something with the changing colors/squares. Might be time to give up on this unit, but I really would like to get it going. Any additional advice would be greatly appreciated, if anyone has more ideas I'm more than happy to continue tinkering to keep one more O2 alive and well.

Alright, I'll give that a go first then. I agree it sounds like a much less complicated and difficult method then replacing the whole connector. Looking forward to getting this thing up and running, I will definitely post pics of it in operation if the repair is successful!

Metarog is sending me his extra cartridge connector so I'm going to give that a go and see what happens. Hopefully it works after that! Thanks everyone for the help so far.

Unfortunately I discovered the problem, or at least a part of the problem. There was a loose pin on the cartridge connector that proceeded to fall out when I tried to look at it closer. I had noticed it was slightly looser than the rest when I was cleaning, but I think taking carts in and out working on the machine finished it off. It fell out when I was trying to see if it was still connected to the main board. When looking at the Odyssey from the front, it's the pin all the way at the end on the right side, back row. I think this unit might be done unless I can replace the pin or get a new cartridge connector out of another bad O2. It still responds exactly the same way, colors, squares occasionally, etc.

After taking it apart this last time, I got the random squares for the first time. This is the first time it's not just been a solid color. I'm not sure if you'd call that progress but it's a change.

Also, is there any chance a bad RAM chip would cause a response like this?

Thanks for responding! I checked the voltage at the pins you mentioned and I seem to be getting about 4.8v. I have reinserted the chips that were socketed, but it didn't seem to make a difference. I seem to be getting voltage to at least some of the cartridge connectors and they appear to be clean but this also made no difference. From what I can see the solder joints appear to be alright as well. Anywhere to go from there? Should I try resoldering the cartridge connector?