Anyone know if this is a standard thing...

[leech]

Or did someone do this in an entirely terrible fashion?

 

Okay, original symptoms were the coleco screen would pop up, but if I put in the AtariMax SD cart, it would give me a pink screen.  I moved it to a different TV, and it just game me a rolling white screen... so I took it apart, did some cleaning.  Used some deOxit in the cartridge port, let it sit for a bit, qired it out... and now I can't even get the Coleco screen to appear, it is just black...

 

But I noticed thos blue wire and a resistor soldered to the bottom... is this an mod by a previous owner, or were drunkards working at Coleco (based on some of their design choices with the Adam, this would not surprise me.)

[allansim]

The picture below shows they are not typical from the factory.  The blue wire looks like it is connecting together the 2 chips that interface with the joystick ports.  This kinda stuff happens at the factory usually if there's a problem with the pcb.  I would test with a cleaned standard cartridge first like Donkey Kong before the AtariMax.

 

[leech]

2 hours ago, allansim said:

The picture below shows they are not typical from the factory.  The blue wire looks like it is connecting together the 2 chips that interface with the joystick ports.  This kinda stuff happens at the factory usually if there's a problem with the pcb.  I would test with a cleaned standard cartridge first like Donkey Kong before the AtariMax.

 

Thanks.  I think the little resistor is a mod for making the channel autoswitch, from what I could find online.

 

Sadly after just opening it and putting it back together qnd trying deOxit on it,  ow it gives me the same screen without a cart.  So yeah for somehow making it worse.

 

The shielding was soldered to it, so maybe it has really terrible grounding...

[Ikrananka]

2 hours ago, leech said:

The shielding was soldered to it, so maybe it has really terrible grounding...

Check the three voltage levels when the system is powered on.  Post them here.  It may be that one or more of the voltages is dipping too low - most likely if using an original power supply.

 

Even with the shielding removed, 99.9% of cartridges will still work.  If the ground plane around the central screw hole is connected to the rest of the ground plane on the board then all carts will work.  This grounding connection is normally achieved via the bottom shielding but can easily be manually forced by soldering a bodge wire between the two ground planes.