Colecovision with F18A pre-installed for sale

[+grips03]

I will be posting a Colecovision with:

 

F18A (VGA) pre-installed

and

Clear/White NKK power and reset button upgrade

 

later today in the market place. I know many people don't check there, so If your interested in such a system. Send me a PM.

 

Price is $375+ shipping.

 

Comes with console and power supply only. No controllers.

 

Here are notes from previous installs I've done. If you look at post #29 at the link below that will give you a good idea what you are buying.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/201837-notes-from-colecovison-vga-card-install/

[+grips03]

Can't sell.

 

For some reason Mecha 8 and 9 won't work using real cart or Colecovision SD cart.

 

I got Mecha 8 to work once with SGM removed. Mecha 9 just boots to black screen.

 

Gradius (SGM game) works perfect. SGM test rom works fine. Colecovision diag rom shows everything being ok. Strange issue. Any idea?

 

Most carts are fine, Donkey Kong, Pepper II, Sky Jaguar, PMC, Circus Charlie, Frogger, Knightmare.

 

 

***Issue found - v1.8 firmware*** use v1.4 or v1.5

[LoTonah]

Buggy f18a? Bad solder joint? Bad ribbon cable? Anything is possible. Do you have spare parts to swap out pieces?

 

I'm basing this off of the pics that Matthiew180 posted back in 2012. I've never seen one in person.

[+grips03]

Yeah, I have a spare console. Will swap out parts until I get root cause. My hope was that someone saw this before.

[+grips03]

Ok found issue.

 

F18a with:

v1.4 = works fine

v1.5 = works fine

v1.8 = black screen with Mecha 9

 

made new thread, so its not buried here

[phattyboombatty]

Can't sell.

 

For some reason Mecha 8 and 9 won't work using real cart or Colecovision SD cart.

 

I got Mecha 8 to work once with SGM removed. Mecha 9 just boots to black screen.

 

Gradius (SGM game) works perfect. SGM test rom works fine. Colecovision diag rom shows everything being ok. Strange issue. Any idea?

 

Most carts are fine, Donkey Kong, Pepper II, Sky Jaguar, PMC, Circus Charlie, Frogger, Knightmare.

 

 

***Issue found - v1.8 firmware*** use v1.4 or v1.5

 

 

I'm glad you noted this issue, grips. I came across this issue so many times over the past several years, and I never realized it was due to the F18A. Thank you for troubleshooting this.

 

I'm a huge advocate of the F18A. Never did it occur to me that my odd boot-ups with MECHA 8 and 9 were due to this strange conflict. That said, I wonder if Matthew or Óscar can chime in and help us see where the conflict lies.

 

In my testing (it's been a while), the same issues occurred with the ROM files of above games. Occasionally I would get the game to boot, but I'd have to go back and find out what the voodoo is.

[Tursi]

One thing to check is to hit reset after the system gets to the black screen and see if it starts. Unless you mod the Coleco's reset circuit, the Z80 starts up before the F18A is finished loading. Any VDP writes sent at this early point are lost, but reset doesn't force a reload of the F18A, so such early writes will work after a reset.

 

Worth a try if you haven't.

[+grips03]

One thing to check is to hit reset after the system gets to the black screen and see if it starts. Unless you mod the Coleco's reset circuit, the Z80 starts up before the F18A is finished loading. Any VDP writes sent at this early point are lost, but reset doesn't force a reload of the F18A, so such early writes will work after a reset.

 

Worth a try if you haven't.

Already tried that.