So right now I have an ac adapter running to the Atari, the coax cable running into a TV switcher, that running to a a VCR, and the VCR running into the TV.

My current set up is my Atari and my Cable going into my Atari switch box, that's attatching to my NES AF switch along with my NES, that's going into my VCR, and the VCR going into my TV. One bump of the wires and the whole screen messes up, but hey it works most of the time  

My setup is Atari goes into tv and that's it.  

The Atari 2600 that is in my current setup is the same unit that my Dad bought about 2 days after I was born. It's been in the family ever since and it's a system I still have a lot of good memories for. There are a ton of good games for the system and the prices are pretty cheap for the majority of the library. In addition to the 2600, I have an Atari 5200, Jaguar, Jaguar CD, and both models of the Lynx. I also have the Starpath Supercharger add-on for the 2600. If you haven't heard of that, I highly recommend checking out a youtube video of it. Not too many people can say they play their video games off cassette tapes.  


Here is my Atari collection. It doesn't include the Lynx games which are on a different shelf.

Ok, after messing around with it for a while, I think it's safe to say that my Atari is officially broken  

My entire 7800 collection......  and no console to play them on.   



 

That is awesome TDIRunner. I wish I still had my childhood games. My mom thought the system was broken and gave it plus all our games to salvation army. Someone got good shit in the 90s

Oh man... and how infuriated you get getting to the Death Star in RotJ but die stupidly! Holy shit, worse than I feel playing Super Star Wars.

I may be able to help you but I'm going to bed. We'll talk tomorrow  

Can I assume you are using a little RF to coax adapter, or do you have an Atari switch box?

Edit: never mind, missed your pic. 

When Ichinisan and I were 6yo, our neighborhood friend got an NES. It was our first exposure to it and after watching him play we were exploding with anticipation! Our stingy "friend" simply would not let us play because, he said, "you don't know how."

We soon found an old BOXED wood grain Atari VCS in the closet, left by our half brother and sister who were much older and had moved away. We only had a black and white television but we set it on the floor next to the Atari and started trying to figure out how it all worked. Apparently, we were missing the crucial TV/Game switch box, but we were determined little kids.

We had no idea what UHF or VHF was or how you connected antennas or RF leads. Heck, we were probably still learning to read. All we knew was that you use metal to make connections and that there was a little bit of metal inside twist ties. Through sheer determination, trial, and error, we eventually managed to get the tune from The Empire Strikes Back to play on a scrambled screen. You should've seen what we concocted! We had twist ties chained together and touching screws on the back of the TV. Pretty sure I damaged my teeth by stripping them like that.

Once we had sound we restarted the machine over and over as we systematically changed various knobs and screws to see if things improved or worsened. We also fought to keep our twist ties from crossing while ensuring that they stayed connected to the RF lead. We were so close, but we probably heard that Star Wars jingle a hundred-plus times before we got a playable image! We continued tweaking more and more until we had it all looking as good as possible. Eventually, we saw what the switch box was supposed to be and realized that we didn't even have to go to K-Mart to get one because our neighrborhood convenience store run by the landlord had them (Gemini brand, just like K-Mart had). They also sold Gemini paddle controllers!

Oh yeah: it felt so good telling that same so-called friend "...not unless you let us play your Nintendo!"

I don't know what we did with that Atari 2600 but I did remember expanding the library a bit. By the time we got our NES in the late '80s, I think it was already gone. Perhaps our sister came back for it. I do recall finding another with a ton of games for cheap at a yard sale and I eventually sold that one to a friend and finished the '90s without one. Now I have too many!

My friend and I got a new Atari Jaguar for $30 from K*B Toys but N64 was already out so we only played a bit of it out of morbid curiosity. Not sure what he did with it but it never made it to my house and he didn't have it for long either.

These days I have a 5200, 7800, 800, and 800XL. After familiarizing myself with the 800, I really wish I had one of those instead of my VCS. I did get a TI-99/4A around 1990 with a ton of game carts but it was already obsolete for games and after a short honeymoon period where I tried some games I really only practiced BASIC programming on it. I have fond memories of it, but an Atari 800, it ain't.

I actually never heard of the 5200 until seeing Cloak & Dagger in the early '90s. Even then I thought it was just a made-up game system for the movie and that I was really just seeing a 2600.  

Now that I've looked at your picture I see exactly what's wrong. The rabbit ears are actually two different antenna systems: UHF and VHF. There is no connection between them and you cannot connect to one through the other. The only reason they should be connected to your Atari TV/Game switch is if you want to watch some good ol' analog broadcast TV, which doesn't exist anymore. The other thing coming out of your TV/Game switch is supposed to be two fork terminals that connect to the VHF screw terminals on the back of old television sets. Most sets have a coaxial F-type connector instead. It looks like someone tried to adapt your switch box to coaxial by splicing a coaxial to fork adapter in the backwards. You would use the opposite kind of adapter (fork to coaxial) and then pop that into the VCR or TV's antenna input.

Because there's very little reason to run a broadcast antenna through a TV/Game switch these days, it makes more sense to completely bypass all that with an adapter that connects the RCA Cinch connector from the Atari directly to F-Type coaxial. These should only be a couple bucks at your closest Radio Shack, likely less if yours is going out of business like mine is.

Love the Atari VCS! Even though I was born in the 90s, this was the very first console I ever played. Ya we were a little behind of the times.

All you need, NesKing80:
https://www.google.com/search?q=a...

that's what I was going to say. Also make sure your power supply is the correct voltage. I don't like that theres no light to say the system is on

I had a few minutes, so I thought I should share a picture of my Starpath Supercharger. That big devise with the cord coming off of it plugs into the 2600 in the same place the game cart plugs into. The cord is then plugged into the headphone port of any cassette player. The games come on actual cassette tapes which you play in your cassette player. While playing the cassette, the audio is transfered through the headphone cord into the Starpath Supercharger plugged into the 2600. During this transfer the sound heard through the speakers is the same type of sound heard when you used to dial into a phone based internet connection (anyone remember that)? One thing that is pretty interesting is that the Starpath Supercharger increases the 2600's RAM from 128 bytes to 6 KB. Those are small numbers to today's standard, but the increase is pretty significant. Imagine if the PS4 Pro or Xbox One S increased its RAM by 4,800%. That would never happen today. Another interesting fact is that today, you could skip the cassette player completely and put all of the game files into MP3 format and hookup your iPod to the Starpath Supercharger to transfer the games. Overall, it's a neat little piece if Atari history. Only 12 games were released for the system (of which I have 7). The game I have pictured is Frogger which is a good example, because Frogger was available as a normal 2600 game. There are pretty significant differences between these two versions.

^^That supercharger is awesome! I didn't know you could just hook up an iPod with mp3s and it works

*all the Commodore 64 gamers glare at TDIRunner*

 

I think the 12 of you who are glarring at me count as "not too many people."   
 

Yeah. LOTS of old computers could play games from cassette.

My TI-BASIC could do all kinds of stuff from the optional tape drive. My buddy got a Coleco ADAM from Goodwill with a bunch of games on cartridge and tape. He almost immediately sold it on eBay (this was back in the very late '90s). I remember one of the cassette games was by "Service Games" and it made me realize that's what "SEGA" means.

I got a Gameline Master Module modem in the box around 2003/2004 and promptly sold it on eBay. These days I would have kept it.  

that sounds like a fun goal. How difficult would you say reaching those scores is?

Also I'd love to get a set of them patches

I used to have a heavy sixer and about 30-40 games but sold them on eBay long ago.

Some of my favorites were:

Seaquest
Megalomania
Demon Attack
Combat
Kung Fu
Spider Man
Frogger
Q-Bert
Yar's Revenge
And some game where you planet hopped. Forgot the name of it. Pretty sure it was an Imagic game.
I also liked Cosmic Kroozer. I think that's what it was called. You had to shoot aliens chasing people.

Mum was ace on River Raid. She could play that thing for hours without dying.
I played it a lot during my wee years too.
Loved playing Wizard of Wor, Keystone Kapper, H.E.R.O., Seaquest, Pitfall among others, many of which I don't remember the name any more.
A particular one was a game where you avoided a fire breathing dragon at the first screen then tried to collect as much treasure as possible on the next screen.

Good times were had with the 2600 between 1983 and 1988.

Found my old Gameline Master Module show-off pic from December 2003:


This was a modem and online service for the Atari 2600/VCS which allowed you to download new games and uploads high scores in the style of Sega Channel and BSX Satellaview. Wish I had kept it.