Brought this home today!

[24Fanatic365]

Found a 2600 console on Craigslist last night and went to pick it up today. Traded an N64 that I hadn't played in probably 5 years, 2 fairly awful aftermarket 64 controllers, a Wheel of Fortune cartridge, and $25, and this is what I got: the joystick is ugly and slightly unresponsive, which makes Frogger WAY more difficult than I remember as a kid! Lol! Guess a couple of Slik Stiks are in my future! I thought the Raiders cart was jacked up until I looked on Google and figured out you needed 2 controllers to play it. Didn't remember that at all from 30 years ago when I used to have this game. I see many wasted hours in my near future. And to think I stumbled on this site by researching a multiconsole for NES/SNES/Genesis games. Thanks for convincing me to return to my roots!

[CPUWIZ]

Hint: Don't use Tapatalk and you won't be posting a dozen threads with the same title.

[Albert]

Hint: Don't use Tapatalk and you won't be posting a dozen threads with the same title.

I'll be disabling Tapatalk very shortly.

 

..Al

[Andre81]

I'll be disabling Tapatalk very shortly.

 

..Al

 

Nooooo. I'm using it on the iPhone and the old version works quite well. But I get a notification now that the hook and plugin version here on the forum doesn't match.

[Albert]

Nooooo. I'm using it on the iPhone and the old version works quite well. But I get a notification now that the hook and plugin version here on the forum doesn't match.

I'll investigate that, but I updated their forum software and hook at the same time, so may be an issue with Tapatalk. Which, at this point, would not surprise me. This multiple posting keeps happening, though, so I am going to have to disable Tapatalk until they fix the issue. If they fix it--they looked at it months ago when I told them about it, but never fixed it. And they have ignored subsequent emails about it.

 

..Al

[24Fanatic365]

Yeah. Sorry about that, guys. Tapatalk kept giving me an error, and it didn't look like the thread was ever started. The console works, but most games are mostly black and white on my 42" Vizio LCD TV. I got an adapter from Radio Shack this morning to bypass the junky RF switch that came with it, but colors are still not there. Pitfall is the best one. All the colors are there, but are very faded from what I remember from my youth. Grand Prix has some color. At least the grass and bushes are green. Ms. PAC Man is all black and white except for the extra lives at the bottom of the screen, which appear faded yellow. Anything I can do about these color issues, or is it more of a "Hey! I've got an Atari! The games are awesome, but I gotta suck it up and just deal with the color(or complete lack thereof)."?

[freewheel]

I'd first try it on another TV. Modern LCD screens are notorious for hating the video signals from Ataris.

Failing that, there's an adjustable potentiometer inside that can be tweaked to fix a lot of these problems.

[24Fanatic365]

If the potentiometer is the little white disk with the slot in the top below and to the left of the cartridge slot when you take the console apart, I tried that and it didn't make any difference.

 

I did try cleaning the cartridges with some qtips and alcohol(an old NES trick), and it helped somewhat on Frogger and a little on Joust, but the others were unchanged. That's ok, though. I'm having a blast, especially on Asteroids!

[CPUWIZ]

Try piping the signal through a VCR, if you still have one of those ancient devices around.

[24Fanatic365]

Thanks, CPU. Already tried that, since I actually do still have one of those around. Like many of the guys around here, I actually predate VHS, but since I don't have the remote for said prehistoric device, I couldn't change the channel to 2 or 3, so no dice there. I'm cool with not having color for now. The games are still super high on the fun factor scale!

[Trinity]

I had a failing 7805 voltage regulator that was giving my 2600 color problems before it died. Check for a good five volt output.