Solid capacitors like that basically never fail. Never, ever, ever. It's much more likely the chip has failed, especially since it's a cheap nasty glop-top. Kung Fu Master was an 8K ROM, the 2600 was designed to run 2K and 4K games. There were only enough address lines at the cartridge port to support 4K (and only enough on the CPU itself to support 8K, they used a lower-cost version of the 6502 CPU to save money). So if you wanted more than 4K for your game you had to invent a way of bank-switching, a way of dividing the ROM in your cart, say 8K or 16K, into segments that would fit in the 2600's 4K range. Then swap those segments about as necessary. Since the 2600 generates it's picture in software, that's easier said than done. The 2600 has no video RAM, the screen is drawn with code instead, on the CPU. The CPU can jiggle about 2 sprites (with up to 3 duplicates), 2 single-pixel missiles, and a 1-pixel "ball". And 20 bits of background that only fill half the screen width so the rest you have to either repeat over, or mirror. It was designed to be able to play Pong and Breakout, and maybe Combat. The sort of games that were in arcades in the late '70s, which weren't up to much. Most of them weren't even in colour! So when the '80s came and people expected better computer games, the 2600 was really in a pickle, to actually get anything to happen at all is a miracle of programming. So that they managed to stream the '80s worth of computer games through a completely unsuitable bit of hardware deserves a real pat on the back for everyone who did it. You should read up on programming the 2600 one day, it's... weird! "Racing the beam" is a good book about it. I mention the 8K carts cos Kung Fu Master is one, so it would have an additional logic chip in the cart beside just the ROM chip. This would provide the extra address lines, by lurking at an address (1FF8 usually). You access that address and it flips it's address bit automatically, meaning you now get the other half of the cart's ROM. Switched in right where the other half was previously. Fortunately you'd prepared for just this eventuality! So that blob-top chip will contain 2 chips. Possibly on one bit of silicon, I dunno how well ROM technology works at implementing logic, but a couple of OR and AND gates surely aren't gonna tax it. OR possibly it's 2 bits of silicon, 2 chip dies, under one blob of plastic and wired together with those little gold wires, except in this case probably aluminium or something, you wouldn't waste actual gold on an Atari game! Other carts had more sophisticated ROM mapping, and some even included more RAM! Another 128 bytes, to go alongside the 128 bytes the 2600 had on board, usually using the same chip Atari did. Atari 2600 hacking is a whole world, and a well-developed one since the 1990s. You might wanna get involved, hardware to program your own isn't expensive. There's even a version of BASIC with powerful features, but I think to get the real experience you'd want to do it in assembly.
>Solid capacitors like that basically never fail. Never, ever, ever. This is patently false, you have no idea what you're talking about. Ceramic multi-layer capacitors, as well as other types like tantalum, mica and polypropylene film capacitors all have failure modes associated with them and they are not rare. I've replaced thousands of shorted ceramic capacitors, hundreds of tantalums and innumerable other solid types. Ceramic capacitors in particular are ridiculously fragile due to their nature of being a hard ceramic. This makes them very prone to mechanical damage from flexing, which can be caused by the PCB they're soldered to warping from heating and cooling. When measuring the forces of material expansion due to thermal change, we're talking about hundreds or thousands of pounds, and since ceramic capacitors have no give, they break. Disk and axial capacitors are less prone to breaking because they have leads that can absorb some of the flexion, but it still happens. Shock can also break them, like from drops on a hard floor or table. In general, the smaller the ceramic capacitor, and the higher the rated capacitance, the more fragile the ceramic capacitor is going to be. This is due to the plates being ever thinner and more of them in a given space, which gives even less margin for things like heat and shock tolerance. SMD MLCC caps are notorious for their high failure rates. Tantalums are even less tolerant than ceramic types. They hate voltage spikes, so a dirty power supply or component fault can make them short and explode. Mica caps are subject to "silver mica disease". Polypropylene film capacitors have an interesting failure mode where when a short between the film plates happen, they blow clear and the overall capacitance drops from a reduced plate surface area. The capacitance can eventually drop so low that the circuit the capacitor in fails to work.
When chopper command came out, there was a booklet in the box. If you scored 20,000 points, you could take a photo of the screen and mail the photo to Activision and they would send you a patch. I'll never forget grabbing my polaroid and sticking it in an envelop and mailing it off and getting my patch a few weeks later. I never sent off for any other patches but the space shuttle patch would have been cool. Thanks for the video.
The Kung Fu Master isn't even a real period release, that's very obviously a 21st century reproduction board from Asia. Chip-on-board epoxy tech wasn't used in consumer gear back in the 70's/80's era of the 2600. The board doesn't even try to hide it and has a copyright of 2016, so it was made at *LEAST* as recently as 2016.
2 years late here myself, but yeah, it's definitely a knock off cartridge. The label is not correct, font wrong, and the MX 2002-2016 on a blob chip board is the dead giveaway. Activision isn't even spelled out all the way on the board, and they put their full name on their original released boards.
Hey Vince!!! :) If anyone is ever interested in preserving the sticker by cutting, you can sometimes cut a straight line over the screws all the way across and pull up that strip easier and then put it down again so as not to be obvious you were getting at the screws. :)
A heat gun works for sticker removal on a lot of games, especially the metallic stickered ones, they come off really easily. Then just glue them back on again afterwards.
Yeah really… ‘awww. That was an easy fix, I’m disappointed… let’s hope the next one is completely knackered’ Gotta love his approach to buying stuff on eBay 🤣
When the cart is bad/unresponsive/non-existent the console will just load up random sound/graphics as the TIA registers have random values on powerup. It's not an indication of the cart almost working.
I remember always being blown away by the awesome 'creative' graphics on the tape cassette covers and barely being able to see what it would look like on my system which was an Amstrad cpc back in the 80s only to be sadly let down each once I loaded it up!
I know this isnt a tea break repair but it seems everytime I make tea, you upload a video! Thanks for the entertainment/knowledge to enjoy with my tea!
The original arcade game was in 84, but they were releasing home ports through at least 1990. Wikipedia says the game was released on the 2600 in 1987, so 8912 which is written at the top would be a reasonable date code. It doesn't really make sense for a bootleg to put the Macronix logo and SINGAPORE on a PCB that nobody would see without destructively opening the game. Modern bootlegs are made in the Hong Kong / Shenzhen area anyway, not Singapore. Also lastly, who would bother making a bootleg of that game.
a good tool to have in your kit is a Pen / Ink erasure ... one of them blue/white rubbers you used to have in school . ideal for gently removing tarnish of the gold contacts ..
Could it be that two of those games uses higher address lines and the consoles pins are dirty power-up could go to a higher address and not getting to the correct result causing the console to hang?
Hey Vince: There are companies in the United States that makes replacement labels for Atari 2600 game cartridges. So if you want to restore the appearance of the cartridges you can order labels on ebay.
I've noticed in my collecting, trading, and reselling of thousands of games that people would rather have a game with an authentic label that's ripped and covered in filth than a perfect-looking replica label.
@@GiuseppeGaetanoSabatelli Yes that is true that a full-fledged genuine game collector desires to have original labels on all of their cartridges, but unfortunately there were a few games publishers who had terrible labels on all of their cartridges. (e.g. Activision, Parker Brothers, Telesys, Tigervision, etc.) Thus these labels must be replaced because they keep falling off of the cartridges.
Despite popular belief, Mask ROMs do go bad over time. Electron migration and a number of other things can cause them to fail and no longer work. There's also a number of games that used cheaper windowless EPROMs, which are more susceptible to failure than mask ROMs are. The only way to recover a cart that has suffered bit rot is to replace the ROM with another chip programmed with the game on it.
Like others have noted, Circus required the paddle controls. Atari games assumed you had the manual. Some games required the controls to be plugged into the P2 port for whatever reason. You just pretty much had to be familiar with these quirks. That said, some games reacted very interestingly when using the wrong controls. In Combat, for example, if you used the paddles, you could do things like cause jets to hover in one spot.
You should try scrapping off the solder mask over the vias and soldering them on both sides, vias can fail especially when exposed to physical stresses as these cards are when inserted and removed.
Another quirk of Ghostbusters - When you've had 2/3 of your team slimed and have to go to GHQ, you MUST pull down and hit fire to enter the firehouse, if you dont the game will crash. You also have to flip the difficulty switch when the ghosts all start to rush ZUUL, provided you bought the bait for Staypuft. If you dont get the bait, or dont flip the switch in time, Staypuft will stomp a building flat.
Great video, I see you worked out Circus, in the end, great selection of games. There is probably instruction manuals available on Atari Age, sometimes the games are not completely obvious Yar's Revenge is probably worth checking out, it is a really good game once the mechanics of the gameplay are understood.
That's right, the moisture in the board evaporates with the temperature of the soldering iron. This moisture also causes damage to the board, so it needs to be heated slowly with hotair.
Vince never mind sometimes these things fail. I used to have one of those Atari 2600 consoles it's a 6 switcher which is quite sought after. Have you tried cleaning the contacts inside the 2600 as it may be the pins inside the console? I wonder if there is another 2600 they work on such as the Junior.
I was a memory product engineer at AMD when the Atari games were selling like gangbusters. I had copies of about 30 of them on EPROMs and a slightly modified card with a ZIF socket from an old game.
I tested about 300 carts this weekend and about 1/2 of them didn't work the first try. I cleaned them with an old stock cart cleaning kit and all but 4 worked. I got another 3 to work by using 2000 grit sand paper lightly on the card edges. Didn't open any of them.
I always clean the card edge connections in the equipment I repair, as even the gold plated ones tarnish over the decades and cleaning will often fix erratic behaviour. I use a couple of wipes with fibreglass brush (gently!) and deoxit, works a treat.
The bubbling is air escaping from under the solder mask. You can see the solder wicking under and making a puddle under the masking as you watch the bubbles come up.
Cool fixes :) Had myself strangely behaving solder joints at my old 80's Salora Manager computer game controllers. Tried to re-flow those old solder joints, but some of them kind of "exploded", sending solder blobs flying to the table and leaving empty hole to the joint. I didn't even wear safety glasses, as I didn't expect this kind of behaviour, but luckily no injury. I did put them on immediatly after the first explosion. Filled those holes with new solder of course. Still, there's some problem with one direction, no continuity from right direction to the joystic socket pin, haven't had the time to diagnose it further yet.
That's the worst thing you can do to contacts. Pencil erasers are a harsh abrasive that scrapes off metal from the contacts and leaves microscopic abrasions on the surface. Putting IPA on after that oxidizes the exposed clean metal and creates an environment for the oxidation of the connector to rapidly accelerate. Alcohol is extremely corrosive to many metals. This is why game carts have to be cleaned so frequently, the oxidation returns immediately and gets worse. The "dirt" you remove from the edge connector with a cotton swab is metal oxides. Just ask yourself how impossible it is for a cart to get so filthy sitting in its sealed game case. It's even worse on carts that use tin contacts like those in the video. All of that dark gray/black stuff in the cuetip was tin oxides. That was a significant amount of material removed from the contacts. Do that enough and there won't be any contacts left. The best way to clean cart edge connectors is chemical means. Use Deoxit Gold G5, CRC 2-26 or Krud Kutter rust converter on a cotton swab and wipe the contacts down. These will protect the contacts from further oxidation. In the case of Krud Kutter, it converts the surface to a phosphate and prevents further damage.
Circus needs the paddle controller (as you discovered lol) =D Where you get a chip on a board, you will usually see a bypass cap (generally one per IC) - that's what those caps were on the cart PCBs. They simply connect between VCC and ground. The only way a cap like that would cause a problem is if they are shorted! The cart would work perfectly without the cap! I know they are only simple but a fun to watch video =D
You can typically remove the black epoxy using paint stripper which has the main ingredient of Dicloromethane. Generally it does not damage electronic components and it works even better when its warm. The thicker gel type is better as it tends to stay in place. You just place a blob of stripper onto the epoxy and let it sit for period of time depending on the temperature and then wipe it and the loosened epoxy off and repeat as many times as required. Sometime we place the entire board or component in a sealed container covered in paint stripper and leave it overnight. Have been using this technique for years to remove epoxy and repair circuit board. Do not work on game consoles, so you would want to experiment a bit first. Be careful not to get it on the cartridge plastics, im sure it would melt them in seconds.
Will a solder reflow fix this problem because of the solder being too old and loses its connection over time I just wonder if this would fix this issue or not the chip is bad and it is not fixable
The 2600, my first and only console, I switched to an Atari ST after that. Never looked back. Great video. I loved Kung fu Master! Activision like Ea were decent back then :-)
I going to check the continuity on my dig dug cartridge. It stopped working. I did use the q tips to clean but still nothing. It used to work like 3 years ago. I always stored it in a case away from dust and humidity.
Whatever you're working on @23:41 -(super cobra?) it looks like the PCB had absorbed some liquid - you can see the PCB color gets lighter where you applied heat. You may want to try baking it in the oven at 110c for about an hour to dry it out, and see if that has any effect. I'm guessing the chip is fine, but the pcb has issues.
I have noticed, that for some reason, the Activision carts are the ones that I have the hardest time getting to work. I have gone through three of the Boxing ones so far and they were all DOA.
Do you have a crt? A lot of these games played very fast and loose with NTSC, so modern LCDs have some issues with them. Also if you have a way to dump the roms maybe that will tell you if they are bad?
Great video! Those 2600 games are nearly indestructible. Except in some cases obviously. I always use a hairdryer to remove the labels without damaging them. You can then just stick them back on when you're finished.
when the atari 2600 was starting to get old both Atari and 3rd parties started to release their games in cheaper quality boxes with plain no art or simple art labels. they got even cheaper and flimsier when the 7800 was released and the more popular 2600 games were rereleased again as they would work fine on the newer system.
If memory serves, from like almost 40 years ago... if you got that green screen on the game, just flick the reset button on the console a few times and the game may come up. There was a way to glitch out some games to get odd versions of the games by playing with this as well.
I’m 51 and I can still remember getting this for Xmas when it came out and I still have it, games all in boxes as well - those games look a bit ropey, the Circus game I have, the sticker has colour artwork, not black and white like yours, same with ghostbusters. If you had space invaders and turned the console off and on really quick, you got double bullets ! Lol Great video, some brilliant memories
A Submarine Commander cartridge a friend had given me over 20 years ago and had resided in my dresser's top drawer was fixed about a year ago after I did basic continuity testing and found the D3 line was broken. A good scrape of solder mask and a bridge solder blob got it working again.
Buddy, you have to choose your weapon for the situation. Non destructive cleaning IPA or circuit board cleaner, next up warm flux and a tooth brush, for more 'destructive' cleaning you can use an eraser, fibreglass or brass tipped pens etc or finally a grinding pen (think Dremel with a 1mm grinding tip). The art of cleaning contacts is a mysterious one and the choices you make reflect your personality.......
@@Paperghost Well, I usually use the fibreglass, but I'm dealing with 40 years of constant air exposure edge connectors on 80s microcomputers like C64, Spectrum and CPC464. Those tarnish really badly. And as anyone that had a spectrum knows, even a new machine was pretty touchy when you had anything connected by one of those ports!
@@Graytail A buddy of mine suggests using WD40 and a 100% cotton cloth if the connections are sound on the pcb. I can see the logic but can't attest to it.
The best way to clean Cart Contacts is a Pencil Eraser works great brings back the luster of the plating. You can get the wedge type that goes over the pencil or the large block type with a 45 on each end if needed cut the eraser with a razor to fit into each side of the cart. Then clean with cotton tip and IPA. Works everytime for me witout taking the cart apart.. : )
Over the past few years I have bought several Atari 2600,7800 consoles with bundles of games and of the carts that I have tried I haven't had a one that didn't work after a spray of contact cleaner and a couple of insertions. I still have my original 2600 from when I was a kid too.
Very nice video. Depending on the condition of the stickers, you might be able to loosen the labels with some IPA so that you don't have to cut into them. I learnt that neat little trick from Odd Tinkering. If you try it you should probably test it on a small area first, in case it just dissolves the label.
a hair dryer can peel the sticker off, and you can make new stickers for the games. Also iff q tips doesnt work use metal polish and fiber glass pencils.
The Kung Fu Game is definitely a reproduction that someone stuck inside an original case. The PCB says MX2002-2016 and the chip under the blob was way too small for the 70s. It was made sometime between 2002 and 2016. Does he not care if they're counterfeit or reproductions?
Vince, buddy, my brother from another mother, a hairdryer would have peeled the atari cart labels easily in order to get to the screws, I do it all the time, you should have tried it before coming to the conclusion that it won't be possible.
I was watching an old film on Fran Blanche's channel other day, its an old one I had seen many times but it shows how easy it is to replate contacts and traces on pcb's using the brush plating method and as you already have gold there a simple swipe over with some solution would make them contacts like brand new.
Use a hair dryer and blow hot air on the blob chip/ blob top. Get it really hot. It usually fixes the issue without having to take the cart apart. Btw, I have seen blob tops on original US carts.
The flimsy carts are later titles. There was a "crash" in 1984 in the USA, people got sick of console games. Over in the UK we more wisely bought computers with games on tape for 2 quid, but Americans bought horrible massively clunky consoles with games for 30 quid them-days money. So no wonder they got sick of the prices once the novelty wore off. So after that there wasn't as much money in 2600 software, so companies made cuts. Even using shitty flimsy plastic must've saved enough money to be worthwhile, compared with the thicker ABS (I think) they used to use. Surely it's only a matter of pennies per cart though. A lot of companies had games written and ready to publish right about the crash, so decided to at least get some return on the investment of programming them by releasing them in nasty carts. 2600 programming is really no joke, takes very smart people a fair length of time to get anything working at all. They were nearly all one-man jobs but one smart man. Even the label is black-and-white text rather than the picture labels earlier carts had, I presume being black-and-white means they could use a cheaper press to print them. Real scrimping! The Ghostbusters cart is 8K so must have the bankswitching circuit inside the chip, so it's not just a ROM, it's slightly custom. It's a fantastic game though, one of the most fun on the 2600! Read the manual online to figure out how to play it, it's not complicated but you need to know what controls to buy your initial equipment. Then you start the game proper, running your Ghostbusters franchise in your town, hoovering up and trapping ghosts. At the end of the game, the Marshmallow Man comes, and after you beat him your score is used as money to start over again, but with better equipment. Better versions were on the Atari 8-bit computers, and indeed other 8-bit computers, but the 2600 version has nearly all the features included, a feat for such a limited console.
Just liquidated about 130 Atari 2600 games that I couldn't get to work with deep cleaning. lol. Always wondered what could cause them not to work assuming the contacts are perfectly clean.
Yeah the paddle controller games won't work with the CX40 joystick. When you program CX40 controls in 6502 assembly for the Atari 2600 you have the code perform simple bit checks for the different inputs. Then the code branches to whatever instruction you want the game to perform. The paddles are more tricky to program because there's a capacitor inside them that charges at different rates depending on the position of the potentiometer. You perform bit checks but you also have to measure the time it takes for the potentiometer inside the paddle to discharge. This is so you get the appropriate rate of movement on the screen.
I was gonna say Circus definitely needs paddle controllers. Glad you figured that out on your own. Worth noting, even though some of those Carts had a single chip on the board, those weren't always just regular ROM chips, some had extra stuff inside for bank switching (especially 8k games), or other features (some carts added extra RAM, etc.), because it was pretty common to just custom fab your own chips in the late 70s (generally cheaper than using a mask ROM and external components -- you were already doing the mask for the ROM, so you might as well bake everything in). I'm surprised Circus actually had all those extra discrete components. To me that signals that it's using a regular PROM chip (that and the sticker, sure, probably an EPROM), with external logic (that single transistor), for bank swiching.
Circus is a 4K ROM so no bank switching needed. That's also something a single transistor couldn't do, unless it had help from extra stuff on board the chip, and then you may as well integrate the transistor too. Sometimes something like that would be added to make up for an error in the chip's design, but Circus just being a dumb 4K ROM, I can't think what.
@@greenaum you're right it is only 4k. It might be getting used as a "not" gate? maybe the enable pin is active high (not sure if that's even a thing, but what else would it be used for?). Also I feel like with a transistor and a capacitor you could pull off poor man's bank switching, but yeah, no reason for that with this rom size...
@@BrainSlugs83 Nah, cos for bank switching you need to do address decoding, which one transistor can't do. Actually it COULD be a not gate... IIRC, mask ROM chips used an active high chip-select, where EPROMs used active-low. Or possibly the other way round. So a cart initially manufactured with ROM, but then later done as a short-run re-release, might switch to EPROM, necessitating a NOT gate. Good thinking!
Funnily enough, I was just talking to a friend earlier about how a lot of people must have thrown their cartridge games out because they didn't work any more, not realising they probably just needed cleaning, then this video popped up
Definitely. I would estimate 95% of these type of cartridges given to me as not working required only a good cleaning! Ironically the 5% that didnt work often had almost pristine looking contacts! Suggests to me a chip problem.
Why did you open the carts before cleaning the contacts with a pencil/ink eraser and some isopropyl alcohol? This is the first thing to do before damaging the labels. A Bummer :(
0:25 - You, sir, are a man of excellent taste in video games!
34:23 - Circus requires the Paddle Controllers to work properly.
In some clone consoles Circus is hacked to work with the joystick
23:57 You can see the green protective layer slowly lifting/spreading,
A pencil eraser can sometimes work as an effective, nondestructive way to clean cartridge pins.
This. I usually start with the eraser then follow up with the ipa
Yep learned that one in the days of the Atari 2600
Was about to write this very comment.
I really like that you are sitting on the floor on the carpet playing the games like we all did as kids..... ah, the memories!
Solid capacitors like that basically never fail. Never, ever, ever. It's much more likely the chip has failed, especially since it's a cheap nasty glop-top. Kung Fu Master was an 8K ROM, the 2600 was designed to run 2K and 4K games. There were only enough address lines at the cartridge port to support 4K (and only enough on the CPU itself to support 8K, they used a lower-cost version of the 6502 CPU to save money). So if you wanted more than 4K for your game you had to invent a way of bank-switching, a way of dividing the ROM in your cart, say 8K or 16K, into segments that would fit in the 2600's 4K range. Then swap those segments about as necessary.
Since the 2600 generates it's picture in software, that's easier said than done. The 2600 has no video RAM, the screen is drawn with code instead, on the CPU. The CPU can jiggle about 2 sprites (with up to 3 duplicates), 2 single-pixel missiles, and a 1-pixel "ball". And 20 bits of background that only fill half the screen width so the rest you have to either repeat over, or mirror.
It was designed to be able to play Pong and Breakout, and maybe Combat. The sort of games that were in arcades in the late '70s, which weren't up to much. Most of them weren't even in colour! So when the '80s came and people expected better computer games, the 2600 was really in a pickle, to actually get anything to happen at all is a miracle of programming. So that they managed to stream the '80s worth of computer games through a completely unsuitable bit of hardware deserves a real pat on the back for everyone who did it. You should read up on programming the 2600 one day, it's... weird! "Racing the beam" is a good book about it.
I mention the 8K carts cos Kung Fu Master is one, so it would have an additional logic chip in the cart beside just the ROM chip. This would provide the extra address lines, by lurking at an address (1FF8 usually). You access that address and it flips it's address bit automatically, meaning you now get the other half of the cart's ROM. Switched in right where the other half was previously. Fortunately you'd prepared for just this eventuality! So that blob-top chip will contain 2 chips. Possibly on one bit of silicon, I dunno how well ROM technology works at implementing logic, but a couple of OR and AND gates surely aren't gonna tax it. OR possibly it's 2 bits of silicon, 2 chip dies, under one blob of plastic and wired together with those little gold wires, except in this case probably aluminium or something, you wouldn't waste actual gold on an Atari game!
Other carts had more sophisticated ROM mapping, and some even included more RAM! Another 128 bytes, to go alongside the 128 bytes the 2600 had on board, usually using the same chip Atari did. Atari 2600 hacking is a whole world, and a well-developed one since the 1990s. You might wanna get involved, hardware to program your own isn't expensive. There's even a version of BASIC with powerful features, but I think to get the real experience you'd want to do it in assembly.
>Solid capacitors like that basically never fail. Never, ever, ever.
This is patently false, you have no idea what you're talking about. Ceramic multi-layer capacitors, as well as other types like tantalum, mica and polypropylene film capacitors all have failure modes associated with them and they are not rare. I've replaced thousands of shorted ceramic capacitors, hundreds of tantalums and innumerable other solid types.
Ceramic capacitors in particular are ridiculously fragile due to their nature of being a hard ceramic. This makes them very prone to mechanical damage from flexing, which can be caused by the PCB they're soldered to warping from heating and cooling. When measuring the forces of material expansion due to thermal change, we're talking about hundreds or thousands of pounds, and since ceramic capacitors have no give, they break. Disk and axial capacitors are less prone to breaking because they have leads that can absorb some of the flexion, but it still happens. Shock can also break them, like from drops on a hard floor or table.
In general, the smaller the ceramic capacitor, and the higher the rated capacitance, the more fragile the ceramic capacitor is going to be. This is due to the plates being ever thinner and more of them in a given space, which gives even less margin for things like heat and shock tolerance. SMD MLCC caps are notorious for their high failure rates.
Tantalums are even less tolerant than ceramic types. They hate voltage spikes, so a dirty power supply or component fault can make them short and explode. Mica caps are subject to "silver mica disease". Polypropylene film capacitors have an interesting failure mode where when a short between the film plates happen, they blow clear and the overall capacitance drops from a reduced plate surface area. The capacitance can eventually drop so low that the circuit the capacitor in fails to work.
@@GGigabiteM you're absolutely right. But then again, I'm sure he just miss to add "in these cartridges" part in his statement.
Perfect timing there's nothing like a good Vince video on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
Circus was a paddle game using the other type of controller same as used on breakout.
We had sunday morning competitions with Circus :D
Had this as a kid but no paddles
When chopper command came out, there was a booklet in the box. If you scored 20,000 points, you could take a photo of the screen and mail the photo to Activision and they would send you a patch. I'll never forget grabbing my polaroid and sticking it in an envelop and mailing it off and getting my patch a few weeks later. I never sent off for any other patches but the space shuttle patch would have been cool. Thanks for the video.
Circus used paddle controller. The unusual thing was 2 paddles used 1 plug. They were both wired to the same plug.
Ahh... the soothing beeps of the continuity tester. Music to my ears.
🤣🤣🤣👍
I study electrical engineering, so I get PTSD when I hear it.
Bubbling solder could be iron too hot or the multicore solder used or a mix of them both
The Kung Fu Master isn't even a real period release, that's very obviously a 21st century reproduction board from Asia. Chip-on-board epoxy tech wasn't used in consumer gear back in the 70's/80's era of the 2600. The board doesn't even try to hide it and has a copyright of 2016, so it was made at *LEAST* as recently as 2016.
2 years late here myself, but yeah, it's definitely a knock off cartridge. The label is not correct, font wrong, and the MX 2002-2016 on a blob chip board is the dead giveaway. Activision isn't even spelled out all the way on the board, and they put their full name on their original released boards.
Hey Vince!!! :) If anyone is ever interested in preserving the sticker by cutting, you can sometimes cut a straight line over the screws all the way across and pull up that strip easier and then put it down again so as not to be obvious you were getting at the screws. :)
A heat gun works for sticker removal on a lot of games, especially the metallic stickered ones, they come off really easily. Then just glue them back on again afterwards.
Vince is the only person to say "That's a let down" when the job is easier than expected lol
Yeah really… ‘awww. That was an easy fix, I’m disappointed… let’s hope the next one is completely knackered’
Gotta love his approach to buying stuff on eBay 🤣
When the cart is bad/unresponsive/non-existent the console will just load up random sound/graphics as the TIA registers have random values on powerup. It's not an indication of the cart almost working.
I remember always being blown away by the awesome 'creative' graphics on the tape cassette covers and barely being able to see what it would look like on my system which was an Amstrad cpc back in the 80s only to be sadly let down each once I loaded it up!
Kung Fu Master is a repro board from 2002-2016
"Right, let's just blow everything up". Definitely needs to be on your next batch of merch. 😁 Great video as always, Vince! 👍
🤣🤣 Cheers Steve
I know this isnt a tea break repair but it seems everytime I make tea, you upload a video! Thanks for the entertainment/knowledge to enjoy with my tea!
Just curious - did you clean the contacts in the machine? The cartridge contacts are often only half of the problem.
The "blob chip" is a modern bootleg cartridge. The chip-on-board package were not made in 1983.
when I saw that I was like... "wtf! who bootlegs atari games?"
The original arcade game was in 84, but they were releasing home ports through at least 1990. Wikipedia says the game was released on the 2600 in 1987, so 8912 which is written at the top would be a reasonable date code. It doesn't really make sense for a bootleg to put the Macronix logo and SINGAPORE on a PCB that nobody would see without destructively opening the game. Modern bootlegs are made in the Hong Kong / Shenzhen area anyway, not Singapore.
Also lastly, who would bother making a bootleg of that game.
Yup. I was thinking Vince would see the date on it. It clearly says 2002-2016, he must have had blinders up as soon as he seen that blob chip. 😄
Several of these look like bootlegs. Amazed at the janky poly-box on that Ghostbusters cart!
@@chrisa6120MX2002-2016 is a part number. This is a late release, after 1989, but not a recent home brew, reissue or bootleg.
Those are no doubt filter caps between the power and ground to clean up any noise on the voltage to the cart.
a good tool to have in your kit is a Pen / Ink erasure ... one of them blue/white rubbers you used to have in school . ideal for gently removing tarnish of the gold contacts ..
Could it be that two of those games uses higher address lines and the consoles pins are dirty power-up could go to a higher address and not getting to the correct result causing the console to hang?
“Re-arranging the insides…” I’ve had to do that more than once.
Hey Vince:
There are companies in the United States that makes replacement labels for Atari 2600 game cartridges. So if you want to restore the appearance of the cartridges you can order labels on ebay.
I've noticed in my collecting, trading, and reselling of thousands of games that people would rather have a game with an authentic label that's ripped and covered in filth than a perfect-looking replica label.
@@GiuseppeGaetanoSabatelli Yes that is true that a full-fledged genuine game collector desires to have original labels on all of their cartridges, but unfortunately there were a few games publishers who had terrible labels on all of their cartridges. (e.g. Activision, Parker Brothers, Telesys, Tigervision, etc.) Thus these labels must be replaced because they keep falling off of the cartridges.
Despite popular belief, Mask ROMs do go bad over time. Electron migration and a number of other things can cause them to fail and no longer work. There's also a number of games that used cheaper windowless EPROMs, which are more susceptible to failure than mask ROMs are. The only way to recover a cart that has suffered bit rot is to replace the ROM with another chip programmed with the game on it.
Like others have noted, Circus required the paddle controls. Atari games assumed you had the manual. Some games required the controls to be plugged into the P2 port for whatever reason. You just pretty much had to be familiar with these quirks.
That said, some games reacted very interestingly when using the wrong controls. In Combat, for example, if you used the paddles, you could do things like cause jets to hover in one spot.
23:45 Is that solder flowing between the layers of the PCB? Is a delaminating PCB a known issue?
You should try scrapping off the solder mask over the vias and soldering them on both sides, vias can fail especially when exposed to physical stresses as these cards are when inserted and removed.
Another quirk of Ghostbusters - When you've had 2/3 of your team slimed and have to go to GHQ, you MUST pull down and hit fire to enter the firehouse, if you dont the game will crash.
You also have to flip the difficulty switch when the ghosts all start to rush ZUUL, provided you bought the bait for Staypuft. If you dont get the bait, or dont flip the switch in time, Staypuft will stomp a building flat.
Great video, I see you worked out Circus, in the end, great selection of games. There is probably instruction manuals available on Atari Age, sometimes the games are not completely obvious Yar's Revenge is probably worth checking out, it is a really good game once the mechanics of the gameplay are understood.
the bubbling is caused by moisture in the board ,i,ve seen it before when i,ve done outdoor led light circuits boards
That's right, the moisture in the board evaporates with the temperature of the soldering iron. This moisture also causes damage to the board, so it needs to be heated slowly with hotair.
My absolute favorite 2600 game is River Raid
Vince never mind sometimes these things fail. I used to have one of those Atari 2600 consoles it's a 6 switcher which is quite sought after. Have you tried cleaning the contacts inside the 2600 as it may be the pins inside the console? I wonder if there is another 2600 they work on such as the Junior.
Atari had 2 mosels of 6-switch units.. is it a light-6er or hevay-6er?
Awesome video! Thanks! Interestingly enough, I am having trouble with another Parker Brothers game. I really hope it's not the chip...
I was a memory product engineer at AMD when the Atari games were selling like gangbusters. I had copies of about 30 of them on EPROMs and a slightly modified card with a ZIF socket from an old game.
I tested about 300 carts this weekend and about 1/2 of them didn't work the first try. I cleaned them with an old stock cart cleaning kit and all but 4 worked. I got another 3 to work by using 2000 grit sand paper lightly on the card edges. Didn't open any of them.
I always clean the card edge connections in the equipment I repair, as even the gold plated ones tarnish over the decades and cleaning will often fix erratic behaviour. I use a couple of wipes with fibreglass brush (gently!) and deoxit, works a treat.
The bubbling is air escaping from under the solder mask. You can see the solder wicking under and making a puddle under the masking as you watch the bubbles come up.
Cool fixes :)
Had myself strangely behaving solder joints at my old 80's Salora Manager computer game controllers. Tried to re-flow those old solder joints, but some of them kind of "exploded", sending solder blobs flying to the table and leaving empty hole to the joint. I didn't even wear safety glasses, as I didn't expect this kind of behaviour, but luckily no injury. I did put them on immediatly after the first explosion.
Filled those holes with new solder of course. Still, there's some problem with one direction, no continuity from right direction to the joystic socket pin, haven't had the time to diagnose it further yet.
Dirty contacts on my neo geo mvs cartridges are solved by using regular eraser along the contacts and follow up with Ipa.
Works every time!
That's the worst thing you can do to contacts. Pencil erasers are a harsh abrasive that scrapes off metal from the contacts and leaves microscopic abrasions on the surface. Putting IPA on after that oxidizes the exposed clean metal and creates an environment for the oxidation of the connector to rapidly accelerate. Alcohol is extremely corrosive to many metals.
This is why game carts have to be cleaned so frequently, the oxidation returns immediately and gets worse. The "dirt" you remove from the edge connector with a cotton swab is metal oxides. Just ask yourself how impossible it is for a cart to get so filthy sitting in its sealed game case. It's even worse on carts that use tin contacts like those in the video. All of that dark gray/black stuff in the cuetip was tin oxides. That was a significant amount of material removed from the contacts. Do that enough and there won't be any contacts left.
The best way to clean cart edge connectors is chemical means. Use Deoxit Gold G5, CRC 2-26 or Krud Kutter rust converter on a cotton swab and wipe the contacts down. These will protect the contacts from further oxidation. In the case of Krud Kutter, it converts the surface to a phosphate and prevents further damage.
Circus needs the paddle controller (as you discovered lol) =D Where you get a chip on a board, you will usually see a bypass cap (generally one per IC) - that's what those caps were on the cart PCBs. They simply connect between VCC and ground. The only way a cap like that would cause a problem is if they are shorted! The cart would work perfectly without the cap! I know they are only simple but a fun to watch video =D
Thank you Chris👍👍👍 That Circus game had me baffled for a good while 🤣🤣
@@Mymatevince Circus is the best game in that bunch of games if you ask me.
A quick and easier way to clean the contacts is to lightly use a pencil eraser. After that use alcohol.
You can typically remove the black epoxy using paint stripper which has the main ingredient of Dicloromethane. Generally it does not damage electronic components and it works even better when its warm. The thicker gel type is better as it tends to stay in place. You just place a blob of stripper onto the epoxy and let it sit for period of time depending on the temperature and then wipe it and the loosened epoxy off and repeat as many times as required. Sometime we place the entire board or component in a sealed container covered in paint stripper and leave it overnight. Have been using this technique for years to remove epoxy and repair circuit board. Do not work on game consoles, so you would want to experiment a bit first. Be careful not to get it on the cartridge plastics, im sure it would melt them in seconds.
Will a solder reflow fix this problem because of the solder being too old and loses its connection over time I just wonder if this would fix this issue or not the chip is bad and it is not fixable
The 2600, my first and only console, I switched to an Atari ST after that. Never looked back. Great video. I loved Kung fu Master! Activision like Ea were decent back then :-)
I still think heat could work, but lighter fluid will degrade glue without damaging print. maybe do a best label removing technique exploration video
this video brought back a lot of old memories of my child hood playing the atari 2600
Dear Vince, how do you Connect your Atari to this new TV ?
I going to check the continuity on my dig dug cartridge. It stopped working. I did use the q tips to clean but still nothing. It used to work like 3 years ago. I always stored it in a case away from dust and humidity.
Whatever you're working on @23:41 -(super cobra?) it looks like the PCB had absorbed some liquid - you can see the PCB color gets lighter where you applied heat. You may want to try baking it in the oven at 110c for about an hour to dry it out, and see if that has any effect. I'm guessing the chip is fine, but the pcb has issues.
I have noticed, that for some reason, the Activision carts are the ones that I have the hardest time getting to work. I have gone through three of the Boxing ones so far and they were all DOA.
Do you have a crt? A lot of these games played very fast and loose with NTSC, so modern LCDs have some issues with them. Also if you have a way to dump the roms maybe that will tell you if they are bad?
Great video! Those 2600 games are nearly indestructible. Except in some cases obviously.
I always use a hairdryer to remove the labels without damaging them. You can then just stick them back on when you're finished.
Just got a telegames (2600) and looking to power it up and or repair it. Any suggestions would be appreciated thanks for the video
where could I get that capacitor tester?
Used to make various miniature boards using thick film technology, bear chips with vias, brought back memories you revealing the chip.
when the atari 2600 was starting to get old both Atari and 3rd parties started to release their games in cheaper quality boxes with plain no art or simple art labels. they got even cheaper and flimsier when the 7800 was released and the more popular 2600 games were rereleased again as they would work fine on the newer system.
Morning,
Very instructive repair video as always especially continuity cheking
Yours Faithfully
If memory serves, from like almost 40 years ago... if you got that green screen on the game, just flick the reset button on the console a few times and the game may come up. There was a way to glitch out some games to get odd versions of the games by playing with this as well.
I’m 51 and I can still remember getting this for Xmas when it came out and I still have it, games all in boxes as well - those games look a bit ropey, the Circus game I have, the sticker has colour artwork, not black and white like yours, same with ghostbusters.
If you had space invaders and turned the console off and on really quick, you got double bullets ! Lol
Great video, some brilliant memories
Good as always :) miss my atari. joist was a fave of mine :)
A Submarine Commander cartridge a friend had given me over 20 years ago and had resided in my dresser's top drawer was fixed about a year ago after I did basic continuity testing and found the D3 line was broken. A good scrape of solder mask and a bridge solder blob got it working again.
Methinks you have a bad power supply or about to go bad. Filter cap needs changed.
Long time subscriber here Vince, just wanna say again that I love your channel and content 👍⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Which do you think is better for claning edge contacts like these Vince, earbud and iso, or one of those fiberglass pens?
Buddy, you have to choose your weapon for the situation. Non destructive cleaning IPA or circuit board cleaner, next up warm flux and a tooth brush, for more 'destructive' cleaning you can use an eraser, fibreglass or brass tipped pens etc or finally a grinding pen (think Dremel with a 1mm grinding tip). The art of cleaning contacts is a mysterious one and the choices you make reflect your personality.......
@@Paperghost Well, I usually use the fibreglass, but I'm dealing with 40 years of constant air exposure edge connectors on 80s microcomputers like C64, Spectrum and CPC464. Those tarnish really badly. And as anyone that had a spectrum knows, even a new machine was pretty touchy when you had anything connected by one of those ports!
@@Graytail A buddy of mine suggests using WD40 and a 100% cotton cloth if the connections are sound on the pcb. I can see the logic but can't attest to it.
Pencil erasers work great for cleaning contacts.
I use to play Super Cobra on my C64, great game indeed.
Great video as always :)
The best way to clean Cart Contacts is a Pencil Eraser works great brings back the luster of the plating. You can get the wedge type that goes over the pencil or the large block type with a 45 on each end if needed cut the eraser with a razor to fit into each side of the cart. Then clean with cotton tip and IPA. Works everytime for me witout taking the cart apart.. : )
Over the past few years I have bought several Atari 2600,7800 consoles with bundles of games and of the carts that I have tried I haven't had a one that didn't work after a spray of contact cleaner and a couple of insertions. I still have my original 2600 from when I was a kid too.
Hey for Chopper Command....try holding the fire button down and watch the fire power you get.
Very nice video. Depending on the condition of the stickers, you might be able to loosen the labels with some IPA so that you don't have to cut into them. I learnt that neat little trick from Odd Tinkering. If you try it you should probably test it on a small area first, in case it just dissolves the label.
a hair dryer can peel the sticker off, and you can make new stickers for the games. Also iff q tips doesnt work use metal polish and fiber glass pencils.
The Kung Fu Game is definitely a reproduction that someone stuck inside an original case. The PCB says MX2002-2016 and the chip under the blob was way too small for the 70s. It was made sometime between 2002 and 2016. Does he not care if they're counterfeit or reproductions?
On Kung_Fu Master with the hole in the blob is because someone let the smoke out.
Vince, buddy, my brother from another mother, a hairdryer would have peeled the atari cart labels easily in order to get to the screws, I do it all the time, you should have tried it before coming to the conclusion that it won't be possible.
I was watching an old film on Fran Blanche's channel other day, its an old one I had seen many times but it shows how easy it is to replate contacts and traces on pcb's using the brush plating method and as you already have gold there a simple swipe over with some solution would make them contacts like brand new.
Very interesting how they look on the inside. Crazy that one of them has a blob chip.
Use a hair dryer and blow hot air on the blob chip/ blob top. Get it really hot. It usually fixes the issue without having to take the cart apart. Btw, I have seen blob tops on original US carts.
The flimsy carts are later titles. There was a "crash" in 1984 in the USA, people got sick of console games. Over in the UK we more wisely bought computers with games on tape for 2 quid, but Americans bought horrible massively clunky consoles with games for 30 quid them-days money. So no wonder they got sick of the prices once the novelty wore off.
So after that there wasn't as much money in 2600 software, so companies made cuts. Even using shitty flimsy plastic must've saved enough money to be worthwhile, compared with the thicker ABS (I think) they used to use. Surely it's only a matter of pennies per cart though. A lot of companies had games written and ready to publish right about the crash, so decided to at least get some return on the investment of programming them by releasing them in nasty carts. 2600 programming is really no joke, takes very smart people a fair length of time to get anything working at all. They were nearly all one-man jobs but one smart man.
Even the label is black-and-white text rather than the picture labels earlier carts had, I presume being black-and-white means they could use a cheaper press to print them. Real scrimping!
The Ghostbusters cart is 8K so must have the bankswitching circuit inside the chip, so it's not just a ROM, it's slightly custom. It's a fantastic game though, one of the most fun on the 2600! Read the manual online to figure out how to play it, it's not complicated but you need to know what controls to buy your initial equipment. Then you start the game proper, running your Ghostbusters franchise in your town, hoovering up and trapping ghosts. At the end of the game, the Marshmallow Man comes, and after you beat him your score is used as money to start over again, but with better equipment.
Better versions were on the Atari 8-bit computers, and indeed other 8-bit computers, but the 2600 version has nearly all the features included, a feat for such a limited console.
the labels on activision carts can be peeled back if its the original glue
Is there any way to identify a game chip? New to the atari games
If memory serves me, I think the player 2 difficulty button drops the ghost bait (Ghostbusters)
Just liquidated about 130 Atari 2600 games that I couldn't get to work with deep cleaning. lol.
Always wondered what could cause them not to work assuming the contacts are perfectly clean.
Great video as always vince
Hmm, that PCB shows 2002-2016 printed on it. That is not an original PCB.
You can use a heat gun to remove the label and replace it back without breaking the labels.
One more electronic item saved from the landfill . Save them all ! ( Sarah McLachlan's song, Angel, plays in the background )
Let’s hope so.
Keep up the good work fella and stay safe.
Yeah the paddle controller games won't work with the CX40 joystick. When you program CX40 controls in 6502 assembly for the Atari 2600 you have the code perform simple bit checks for the different inputs. Then the code branches to whatever instruction you want the game to perform. The paddles are more tricky to program because there's a capacitor inside them that charges at different rates depending on the position of the potentiometer. You perform bit checks but you also have to measure the time it takes for the potentiometer inside the paddle to discharge. This is so you get the appropriate rate of movement on the screen.
37:50 Also sold renamed as "Wüstenschlacht" from Quelle Germany.
man i remember when you use to have 10k subs. Congrats
So look forward to your new videos popping up
I was gonna say Circus definitely needs paddle controllers. Glad you figured that out on your own.
Worth noting, even though some of those Carts had a single chip on the board, those weren't always just regular ROM chips, some had extra stuff inside for bank switching (especially 8k games), or other features (some carts added extra RAM, etc.), because it was pretty common to just custom fab your own chips in the late 70s (generally cheaper than using a mask ROM and external components -- you were already doing the mask for the ROM, so you might as well bake everything in).
I'm surprised Circus actually had all those extra discrete components. To me that signals that it's using a regular PROM chip (that and the sticker, sure, probably an EPROM), with external logic (that single transistor), for bank swiching.
Circus is a 4K ROM so no bank switching needed. That's also something a single transistor couldn't do, unless it had help from extra stuff on board the chip, and then you may as well integrate the transistor too. Sometimes something like that would be added to make up for an error in the chip's design, but Circus just being a dumb 4K ROM, I can't think what.
@@greenaum you're right it is only 4k. It might be getting used as a "not" gate? maybe the enable pin is active high (not sure if that's even a thing, but what else would it be used for?).
Also I feel like with a transistor and a capacitor you could pull off poor man's bank switching, but yeah, no reason for that with this rom size...
@@BrainSlugs83 Nah, cos for bank switching you need to do address decoding, which one transistor can't do.
Actually it COULD be a not gate... IIRC, mask ROM chips used an active high chip-select, where EPROMs used active-low. Or possibly the other way round. So a cart initially manufactured with ROM, but then later done as a short-run re-release, might switch to EPROM, necessitating a NOT gate. Good thinking!
Can you look more into that blob chip and how to fix it please?
Circus is a paddle game.
If I remember correctly, circus was one of those games you needed the know roller controller to play
seeing the AMD logo on an atari cartridge is pretty cool
Funnily enough, I was just talking to a friend earlier about how a lot of people must have thrown their cartridge games out because they didn't work any more, not realising they probably just needed cleaning, then this video popped up
Definitely. I would estimate 95% of these type of cartridges given to me as not working required only a good cleaning! Ironically the 5% that didnt work often had almost pristine looking contacts! Suggests to me a chip problem.
Wow didn't think I would ever say this..... Ghost busters on the speccy 48k looked miles better 😂
Why did you open the carts before cleaning the contacts with a pencil/ink eraser and some isopropyl alcohol? This is the first thing to do before damaging the labels. A Bummer :(