5200 Problem

[Mindfield]

Okay. Last spring I bought a boxed 4-port 5200. No RF, no AC, just the system, two controllers and a really ratty box. I figured I'd be able to score the AC and RF at some point in the future.

 

Well, I finally did thanks to a trade with Curt Vendel. Unfortunately, though the RF and AC work, and the system powers on just fine, and the games boot, I get no response from the controllers at all. Neither of them. Not the keypad, not the start/select/reset buttons, nothing. Now something tells me this isn't the controllers -- both being that dead in the same way is a bit of a coincidence. It seems more like it may be the controller ports, but having never owned a 5200 back in the day (a friend did but I never really got to 'know' the machine) I don't know enough to say for sure.

 

Was it only the controller in port 1 that was able to perform game actions? (i.e. selecting start level, starting game, resetting the machine) Would controllers in ports 2-4 be able to do anything that could tell me whether or not it was the controllers or the ports? (Assuming it isn't all of the ports) Or perhaps the chip that controls I/O?

[MrRetroGamer]

Without knowing if you have a good working controller, it could be hard to say. There are many points of failure on the 5200 controllers including the circuit, buttons and cable itself, and if they don't work properly, you are pretty much dead in the water as you describe. Not sure if you can troubleshoot it from another way.

[+Mitch]

I would be very surprised if it wasn't the controllers. Having two dead 5200 controllers is very common.

 

Mitch

[video game addict]

Most games you can change the difficultly & number of players with the # & * buttons down on the keypad. Might see if that part works,

 

The start/reset/pause & all 4 fire buttons are very common failure points, ALL of them, it's more common to find them all not working than to have one or two non working and a few that are working. Most of the time a good cleaning will help bring them back to life, well enough to at least test out the system and start up the games. Sometimes the circuit itself has cracks in the traces where the left side fire buttons & the start button is, it's a sharp bend on the circuit there and I've seen several that have cracked from stress in that area. But the number one killer is dirt. Poor contact between the carbon dots and the circuitry. Cleaning does a good job to fix this on the short term. I use regular pencil erasers, an alcohol/water mixture, and sometimes emory cloth to clean them up.

 

But I would agree with the others here, it's more likely your controllers are shot than the system itself is broken. But I did once have a 5200 with broken ports before, Of course I had working system to test my controllers on to know they were in fact functional, not trying to diagnose a problem with two unknowns.