7800 Picture Problems

[Chatty75]

Hi there, i'm hoping that one of you can give me some advice regarding my PAL Atari 7800 console. I recently decided to dig out the old 7800 that I have had in my cupboard for many years, I have been using a black Irish 2600jr for quite a long time now and it has served me well but has finally given up the ghost so the 7800 is my only alternative.

 

The reason it was in the cupboard is because I have not been able to get it to display a decent, or even acceptable picture for many years now, in fact it has been in storage for so long that I gave up on it before advice forums like this even existed (the 1980's!) but as there are experts on here who may be able to help me I felt it was worth one last go before throwing it away.

 

As it is a PAL console there appears to be only an RF socket on the machine so there is no scart/s-vid option available to me but when I try to hook it up to any of my TV's the colour is washed out and has lots of lines and distortion on the left-hand side of the screen, I realise that it is an old machine but the 2600jr is even older and the picture quality on that is pretty darn good when using the exact same leads that I have used to test the 7800.

 

If somebody could give me some helpful tips that will allow me to save my old faithful from the scrapyard I would be extremely grateful, I have had a look inside the console to see if anything is loose or can be adjusted but it appears to be a sealed unit so nothing is obvious to me.

 

Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

Andy

[GroovyBee]

Do these lines appear when you are playing 2600 games or 7800 games? Can you take a picture of the problem?

[Chatty75]

Do these lines appear when you are playing 2600 games or 7800 games? Can you take a picture of the problem?

 

Hi there, thanks for getting back to me so quickly, they do appear on both formats and I have included a picture in this post.

 

Andy

[GroovyBee]

Have you tried fine tuning channel 36? With my 7800's I'll fine tune them to 36 and leave them for 20 minutes or so and then fine tune it again for extended playing.

[Chatty75]

Have you tried fine tuning channel 36? With my 7800's I'll fine tune them to 36 and leave them for 20 minutes or so and then fine tune it again for extended playing.

 

Not sure how to fine tune, don't think there is an option on my TV other than to auto-search to channel 36, which is what it is on now. I have an old Panasonic TX28 100hz that I always use for my retro consoles as they don't look too good on my LCD unit (and the light guns don't work) but this one has me beat.

[GroovyBee]

Not sure how to fine tune, don't think there is an option on my TV other than to auto-search to channel 36, which is what it is on now. I have an old Panasonic TX28 100hz that I always use for my retro consoles as they don't look too good on my LCD unit (and the light guns don't work) but this one has me beat.

 

The TV must have a manual tune too. Failing that auto search when you power the console on and then again after 20 minutes. If that doesn't improve the situation you'll need to go down the AV mod route.

[PAC MAN FEVER]

could it be a bad t.v. game switch ?