A few 5200 questions

[unixdude]

I recently received my AtariMax Ultimate SD cartridge, and I'm wondering if there's any way back to the game list without power cycling my 5200 or pulling and reinserting the cartridge.  Web and forum searches have failed me.  What do you guys do when you want to change games when using the Ultimate SD cartridge?

 

Also, I notice that my trackball sometimes will continue to send a left- or right-direction signal to my 5200, even when the ball is not being moved.  At least one of my joysticks also does this, but only in the right-hand direction.  So far, web and forum searches have failed me here too.  Any ideas on what I should look at to fix that?

 

Also, a newbie question on the trackball: When playing multi-player games like Missile Command, it appears that only the left-side button on the right side of the trackball controller does anything, even for player 2.  I would have thought player 1 used the left side of the controller, and player 2 used the right side, but I don't know, and I never had an Atari 5200 before recently.  Based on the 5200 FSM, it looks like the innermost fire buttons should both work to shoot missiles in Missile Command, and based on the Diagnostic cartridge, it looks like the keypads are identical (it's not independent switches for player 1/player 2 switches, it's just 2 sets of the same switches).  Is that correct?

 

Regarding the FSM, what is referred to by TP5, TP1, TP2, TP7, etc., on page 7-14?  I'd like to troubleshoot this issue, but I don't know what "TP#" is.  It looks like the A# references are chips in the controller, but I don't know what the TP# references are.

 

Thanks.

 

Edited to add: When there is no controller plugged into the 5200, should it detect any directional input?  Mine seems to detect downward input, or maybe it's down-and-to-the-right ... both of my 5200 units do this, so I suspect it's normal, but maybe both of my units are broken the same way.

Edited March 10, 2020 by unixdude
Edited to add final question

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Can't answer all of your questions right off hand without a little research on my part but before I do answer I want to commend you for already looking at the service manual ahead of time! 

 

Now..the AtariMax Ultimate SD. Nope...not that I've found. I too own one and have to power cycle the 5200 each time I want to get back to my games list. I want to say there is a silkscreen on the AtariMax PCB labeled as reset but it didn't seem to actually do anything when I looked into it years ago.

 

I do own several trackballs and can't recall the behavior your are talking about. If you have a controller that is drifting when it is centered, it could very well indicate that either the pokey trimmer needs adjusted on the 5200 itself, or the x-axis potentiometer on the controller (L/R) might need some adjustment or both.

 

The trackball buttons are wired the same so both sets of fire buttons should work regardless. The reason for the two sets was for right or left handed players back in the day. If you want two players on trakballs, you need to trakballs.

 

I have't look specifically at the pages you are talking about, the "TP" usually means... Test Point. Sometimes those test points are silkscreened on the boards with their numbers next to them. So my guess here is that these are in reference to test point location numbers. *Looked at the service manual just now* Been a while since I took open a Trak-Ball but it would appear that those are Test Point locations they are talking about on the trak-ball PCB itself. So there should be silkscreen markings that match and that is where you would attach a DMM or scope to check and measure for the readings the manual mentions.

 

And yes, it is totally normal for the input to go down and right without a controller plugged in. The 5200 controller inputs show full infinite reading without the controllers plugged in since the pots on the inside aren't able to be read.

 

[unixdude]

Thanks for the reply.  I learned about how to do the POKEY trimmer calibrate on the 5200 main board, and I did that, and now the controllers seem more sane.

 

And, thanks for the info on the "TP#" test points!  I do see all those on my CX-53.  Now I'll get back to the troubleshooting in the manual, and hopefully I'll have this thing working perfectly before long.

 

At this point, the CX-53 works perfectly except for that one fire button -- it works about 75% of the time.  Maybe I just need to clean under the bubble.