Thanks for everyone's input. I might have had a cold solder joint that caused the bad picture. What I ended up doing was removing the components from Best Electronics kit and installed a Vintage Gaming and More circuit board. It required less modification to the motherboard and no components are left suspended in the air. The picture quality is now fine. I did keep the cable that came with the kit so I didn't have to drill into the side of the unit.
All, attached is the complete instructions for this composite mod. I'll have time this weekend to inspect for cold joints, solder bridges etc.
Atari 7800 Composite Mod.pdf
I purchased an NTSC 7800 recently and added a Best Electronics composite mod. When I plugged it in I was not happy with the picture quality. It had jail bars and a blurry output. I adjusted the red coil and that minimized the jail bars but the picture still has a grid pattern to it. Would old capacitors have something to do with it? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
_The Doctor_,
"inactive" was the wrong word to use. I can see the website just fine, the last post to it was 1/23/22, over a year ago. I'm curious as to why Dr. Moore is no longer adding content.
The Atari Projects web page (https://atariprojects.org/) is a resource for people to learn about Atari 8 bit computers, Written by Jason H. Moore, PH.D. The last post was on 1/23/22, does anyone know why the website has gone inactive?
kheller2, Sorry about creating 2 threads, I got distracted. Is there a way to delete one of them? BTW, thanks for the link, it should be helpful when I get back to this issue on the weekend.
The drive attempts to format about 12 times before giving error code 173. I'm going to clean the write protect LED, I recently cleaned the read/write head.
David, Lucas,
Early in this discussion string I suggested that a unit get sent to Steve from Wired Up Retro and the 5200 Podcast. He would do an excellent review of the controller!
I ran the 1050 diagnostic disk and passed all the tests but still can't format a floppy disk. Is there something wrong with the drive or is it because it is a 30 year old floppy disk? Can floppies lose their ability to be written to? The drive can read disks fine. I just don't know what to try next.
I ran the 1050 diagnostic disk and passed all the tests but still can't format a floppy disk. Is there something wrong with the drive or is it because it is a 30 year old floppy disk? Can floppies lose their ability to be written to? The drive can read disks fine. I just don't know what to try next.