Atari 2600 joy :-)

[hawsey]

I came home with one of these beauties off a customer yesterday I have more photos to upload , I need some advice prefrably off someone that has had a UK model and managed to get it to work through a modern led type tv .

[hawsey]

More of my 2600

[nidge]

If you still have an old VHS video recorder, you could proberly try conecting by scart? Hook up the Atari to the RF in socket of the VCR and tune it on the UHF frequency, channel 21 I think is what most of the original consoles used? This, if it works, wouldn't give you a brilliant picture but at least you could test it, and record your best scores onto video tape lol

Most DVD/Hard Drive recorders also have RF in, but they would need to have an analogue tuner.

[hawsey]

Hi nidge , thanks , the thing is when I first plugged it in and had a fiddle about with all the switches then did an auto tune of the analogue channels I managed to get it working for a few minutes and it had a great picture but then it seemed to go off so I gave it a good old clean after taking it all to bits but still no joy , I know it is working as I can see the graphics of the game just through a haze of screen noise .
I am thinking it must be faulty as I can not now get back to the great picture I had before .
I have just fished out of the loft an old CRT portable for testing tonight and will report back ....

[hawsey]

An update , I tried an old TV and with the same results , I switched the TV on and did an auto tune and it comes up on something like 598 but kind of out of tune , so I tried fine tuning and I can see the game but only just !!

[Geeba]

Aha! - I've got one of them! woody in the box!

Hmmm I seem to remember it tuned ok just via the RF connection...

[hawsey]

No good for me will hunt in other forums for a solution .
As a kid I always wanted one of these , my best friend got one and I had my first of what I call "gadget fever " at the age of say 10 , I ended up getting a zx81 and then a ZX Spectrum with my money from a paper round saved up the good old way

[asbo]

I have no idea about a 2600 in particular but noise is often caused by a grounding issue. Maybe check its all grounded properly, assuming its meant to be?

[professor_jonny]

the fuzzyness is usually caused by a dammaged rf cable /switch box quite often they break by the plugs.

sounds like you need to replace it and it will be all fixed

[hawsey]

Cheers , will check this out later the rf cable just plugs in inside the case so it will be easy for me to swap out .

[professor_jonny]

on the a2600 junior it unplugs on the back I believe your one is soldered in.

[seriouslycgi]

After your post it reminded me that i had one when i was young, i got pretty good at basketball and some others. I remembered sitting on the floor to use it. So i downloaded an emulator to show my kids, they took one look at the graphics and laughed, told me its lame. They usually snatch up any game and play it but this they just couldnt do it lol. Oh well i was impressed back then and it brings back fond memories for me so theres that. Thanks.

I used to play games on pc before that and everything was ascii characters. I was so young i cant even remember what it all was. Big floppy discs turbo button. pacman, frogger, digdug or something, sierra helicopter simulator was like 1 fps.