AV Modded a jr 2600 still have a weird ghosting flicker before and after mod

[MikeDijital777]

Hello all, I bought a Jr. a while back, no mods on it, the RF has terrible static, the screen flickered a ghosting effect ever few seconds, and the color was way wrong. my first fix was to solder the RF wire to the board.  That eliminated some static but not these two rolling static bands, Then I started turning this rose colored plastic adjustor thing in the RF area of the board. That made the roll slow down to a crawl but some games could push enough signal for my modern TV to see it. I also spun the color adjustor as well..  

This seemed to make it playable, but certainly not perfect, and like I said not all games would push a good signal to the TV... I got a A/V mod from ebay and installed it as per a youtube video I watched, and it seemed to work great except the darn ghosting flicker never went away.. not all colors do it, but white, and lighter colors seem to do it. it just rocks between sorta fuzzy, and crisp with a ghost. 

I did have a rolling white shadow bar that rolled the same as the RF static bands after I did the mod, but I read a thread here where it was a power supply issue, and after I replaced my universal plug pushing 9 volts with a radio shack one and pushed it with 12 volts as per the suggestion, it got rid of those bands... so now im almost perfect except this distracting flicker.... Id also like to reiterate the flicker was there before I did anything to this system

Any ideas, ive put so much work and trouble shooting time into this, I just want to see it running great...  any advice you all have would be wonderful

Sorry for a rough video, the swirling lines arnt there to the human eye, its the vertical lines on the side of the white boxes. 

 

   

 

 

Edited May 13, 2023 by MikeDijital777

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I'm guessing the AV kit you installed provide composite output only? I've seen composite outputs from the various kits be hit n miss and look better on one TV vs another. If you want more crisp outlines, then you are going to have to step up to something along the lines of a UAV or other similar AV upgrade that provides an s-video output. From there you would need something like a RetroTink2x classic/Pro or Tink5x or other similar device to convert that s-video to something you can use on a modern display like HDMI. 

 

Or use an older CRT with your current AV upgrade in place as older CRTs had additional hardware inside them to filter composite signals and as a result, they looked better on those older displays.

[MikeDijital777]

38 minutes ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I'm guessing the AV kit you installed provide composite output only? I've seen composite outputs from the various kits be hit n miss and look better on one TV vs another. If you want more crisp outlines, then you are going to have to step up to something along the lines of a UAV or other similar AV upgrade that provides an s-video output. From there you would need something like a RetroTink2x classic/Pro or Tink5x or other similar device to convert that s-video to something you can use on a modern display like HDMI. 

 

Or use an older CRT with your current AV upgrade in place as older CRTs had additional hardware inside them to filter composite signals and as a result, they looked better on those older displays.

It was doing that weird flicker before the mod when it was RF only... thats the whole reason I did the mod was to eliminate the flicker, but it just made it much more clear and flickery lol im wondering if a chip, transistor or cap is bad. 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

To be honest, I'm not able to see the flicker you are talking about in the video above? In fact it looks pretty much like standard composite output on an LCD in most cases? So is there another example of it you can show? What game is it that you are playing you see this most on?

 

[R.Cade]

A lot of times, people are expecting emulator-quality graphics from a 2600, and that just doesn't happen. Various combinations of consoles/displays/mods can be good/better, but you will always have some ghosting.

 

It is 1970's analog video. That's how it was.

If you want pixel-perfection, run FPGA or emulation.

 

 

Edited May 16, 2023 by R.Cade

[+-^CrossBow^-]

45 minutes ago, R.Cade said:

A lot of times, people are expecting emulator-quality graphics from a 2600, and that just doesn't happen. Various combinations of consoles/displays/mods can be good/better, but you will always have some ghosting.

 

It is 1970's analog video. That's how it was.

If you want pixel-perfection, run FPGA or emulation.

 

 

This is quite true. Even the RGB solution for the 2600 consoles still has a few visual quirks that show up in some games from time to time. Aside from the RGB, something that provides a good s-video output like from the UAV or similar AV upgrade combined with a good scaler designed for retro gaming, is about the best option you can get with actual hardware.