I finished Mass Effect 3 yesterday, and I got a big important paper done today, so I was sitting about deciding what to do with my afternoon. I just did a complete reorganization of my living space, and playing all my consoles had become a lot easier, so I decided to break out my Atari 2600 and work through the massive pile of games that I had for it. I recently read the book Racing The Beam, which is all about development for the 2600, so I thought it might be interesting to approach the system with the insights I had gained.

Unfortunately I had used this A2600 exactly one time since I got it for Christmas last year, and that was on a kind of busted TV. When I plugged it in, I was disheartened to see this:

Note the lack of any colour whatsoever. Well, there is some yellow, but that doesn't show up in this image. Obviously I had checked the colour/B&W switch, so I was forced to the conclusion that my A2600 was broken. Fortunately there is no silly security nonsense that prevents you from fixing consoles from the 70s...so I did just that. I had to do some searching, but I found a tip on the interweb and cracked out my screwdriver.

It became immediately apparent that I wasn't the first person to do this...2 of the screws were a few centimeters too long, and one was outright missing. Unfortunately, whoever had opened it before didn't feel the need to clean it.

Look at how small that board is. The A2600 could easily have been the size of a DVD case, but this was a time when bigger always meant better (he says not really knowing anything about it because he wasn't born until 10 years after the 70s were over). Anyway, below is the relevant component.

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It's a chroma dial, which does exactly what it sounds like: it controls the level of colour in the image. I adjusted it (while the game was running by the way) until the Dig-Dugian sky was blue, and presto-chango, working Atari. I'm not really sure why this dial was necessary in the first place, but if I'm going to have a problem I would prefer that it be one that is easily fixed. While I have this thing open, I also wanted to point out this:

The coaxial cable isn't soldered or anything. It's just a regular old cable plugged into the...mainboard? sure, the mainboard. I know that some people have modified this to output s-video. Those people are crazy, and I'm only saying that because I'm not brave enough to do it myself.

As a postscript, this got me wondering if I could fix the same problem in my Commodore 64. I've had that for about 8 years, and it has always displayed black and white. I cracked it open...and found out that it ALSO was previously opened and very dirty. My C64, however, did not have any kind of dials on it (though it looks like switching between PAL and NTSC might be fairly simple). I ran a Google search that suggests that I might need to figure out some different cables, but for now I'm leaving that one alone. I'm just happy to have my Atari working.

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I say this is episode 1 because I think that I'll do another one on replacing worn analog sticks in a 360 controller...with a twist.

Rock the Casbah

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