Anomalous Anomaly

When I was offered an Atari 2600 Junior for perhaps the most awesome reason imaginable, I could hardly believe my luck. I wasn’t able to have one when they were new, and the only time I got to play one was while I was at a grandmother’s house. I still have my NES, but it’s a different sort of thing. One plays an Atari for the experience. Or the nostalgia. As for me, I haven’t played one since I was about four, so it’s a little from column A and a little from column B.

So when a package came for me last week, I was thrilled, knowing what it was. Opening the package was a little less awesome, however. The system was a damaged one, and it was almost certain that all the visible damage was done in transit. Pieces were rattling inside the system and in the box.

It would suffice to say that the system isn’t exactly working at this moment, but I’ve not lost hope for it. The power light itself did light up for a brief moment before dying out, so I think that this system is savable. It’s sort of out of my scope right now, however, because I don’t know what’s wrong with it. That didn’t stop me from opening it up to take a look though.

Now, I know that things in the mail aren’t typically handled with kid gloves, but there’s one thing I’m particularly curious about, and that is what the hell was done to this package. The system was packed decently, but not superfluously. Yet the corner was, for lack of a better term, shattered. This could be due to the age of the plastic, but could be the sheer force that the package hit.

Case in point: How hard would you as the reader expect the system to be hit if I said peg A and switch B were physically separated?

Well, they were. I had though the switch was busted, but as it would happen, the peg was set to the “color” mode and the switch was jammed in the “B/W” mode. It’s just happy that the switch itself wasn’t broken.

It doesn’t make me at all happy, though. This isn’t the first time that the post office has manhandled my packages. The prior time was a full desktop computer mailed from southern Texas and showed up with a fractured motherboard, bent GPU, and shattered case. Best part was that this particular one was an insured package, and the post office refused entirely to honour that insurance.

But I digress.

At this point, I am simply wondering what might be broken. Seeing as I have never seen the insides to one of these things while functional, I really don’t know what might have been knocked loose or is now missing. I really am not thrilled with this turnout so far, but am hoping there’s something to be had from it.

I am welcoming any suggestion for repair. I have a few thoughts. In the first image below, it would appear that one piece here that I assume acts as a ground is separated. There was no screw to anchor it down, however, so that might have been incidental. The third and fourth pictures are the obverse and reverse of the main circuit board. Hopefully someone will have some insight.

A person can hope, right?

(with apologies and givings of thanks nevertheless to frigginjoe)