Looking to repair a joystick port on Odyssey 2

[8bitwidgets.com]

I was in the process of unplugging a joystick while it was plugged in and the Odyssey 2 froze..  and now one of the two ports is not working properly.  Does anyone know what chip(s) on the board might need replacing to fix it?  

 

I have some spare boards for parts I can take from.  I just don't know what chip might have been damaged. the other controller port.   

 

I shouldn't have been so quick to do all that..  forgetting how delicate these old chips / boards can be.  

 

NOTE:  This didn't happen with the 2600 adapter thankfully!   that worked fine after playing the hell out of Casey's Crazy Chase     but I was testing out some other original controllers and i unplugged one of them it while a game was playing and it locked up and i reset it.. seemed fine but then the port was no longer responsive.  

 

Thanks,
Caleb

Edited May 21, 2023 by Caleb Garner

[8bitwidgets.com]

I'm trying to figure out if these brown discs are fuses..  I think they are..  i suspect maybe one or two of those popped?  I'm going to take it to my local repair person to have a look..   

 

Mine has joystick ports and it's inside a casing but i suspect under the metal housing is a similar design.   

 

Edited May 21, 2023 by Caleb Garner

[+-^CrossBow^-]

On 5/21/2023 at 6:16 PM, Caleb Garner said:

I'm trying to figure out if these brown discs are fuses..  I think they are..  i suspect maybe one or two of those popped?  I'm going to take it to my local repair person to have a look..   

 

Mine has joystick ports and it's inside a casing but i suspect under the metal housing is a similar design.   

 

No..those are just standard ceramic disc capacitors that you find in all sorts of electronics. I'm not familiar with the O2 that much at all but I would guess that similar to other consoles of the era, it will have an IC that handles the controllers the inputs that might have gotten zapped. Similar to what can happen with the 5200, CV etc... But that is only a guess. 

 

I would have them check the most obvious first that being, to make sure none of the controller port pins has a cold solder joint that might have come loose. With no response I'm going to guess a ground or other common connection that all the functions use.

 

[8bitwidgets.com]

Thanks for confirming that. I forgot about it being a possible capacitor. I also agree with your diagnosis that it is likely an IC chip. Thankfully it is a fairly common when I believe it is still available. I’m gonna take it to my local TV repair guy to diagnose and fix. He’s help me in the past with composite mods.

[8bitwidgets.com]

I also need to just see if it could be a trace or something.. after all the freak out happened when i unplugged a controller (not aggressively but i had plugged / unplugged a few things that evening trying different things out) and maybe it just caused some kind of short that keeps sending an "Up" signal which i think is Pin 6..  don't have the chart in front of me.  

[8bitwidgets.com]

I'm happy to report that replacing the small IC chip that runs to the joystick port fixed the issue.  Lesson learned..  don't change joysticks while it's on..  sure it can do it, but I can see it might just be a risk with such old hardware.