2 replies to this topic

[captainblack]

i recently bought an old pong system and iv been having some trouble wih it, its not an atari one, its called APF tv fun im pretty sure, but i was hoping id find some help her anyways, when im playing it the paddle often jolt up and down randomly, its not to big a problem and its still playable but it just gets annoying when it screws you up every once in a while. i think the contacts for the knobs are just dirty but i took it apart and they werent exposed, i thought id get some feedback before i do anything else to it because i really dont know alot about it and dont want to break it. any help is apreciated, thanks.

[BigO]

captainblack, on Mon Sep 1, 2008 9:39 PM, said:

i recently bought an old pong system and iv been having some trouble wih it, its not an atari one, its called APF tv fun im pretty sure, but i was hoping id find some help her anyways, when im playing it the paddle often jolt up and down randomly, its not to big a problem and its still playable but it just gets annoying when it screws you up every once in a while. i think the contacts for the knobs are just dirty but i took it apart and they werent exposed, i thought id get some feedback before i do anything else to it because i really dont know alot about it and dont want to break it. any help is apreciated, thanks.

From what you've described, I agree that the potentiometers in the paddle are in need of cleaning.

Take a look around this site for the keywords "paddle" and "jitter" to get some ideas on how people go about cleaning potentiometers in the Atari 2600 paddle controllers. Your potentiometers are likely to be very similar.

[awace]

BigO, on Mon Sep 8, 2008 2:09 PM, said:

captainblack, on Mon Sep 1, 2008 9:39 PM, said:

i recently bought an old pong system and iv been having some trouble wih it, its not an atari one, its called APF tv fun im pretty sure, but i was hoping id find some help her anyways, when im playing it the paddle often jolt up and down randomly, its not to big a problem and its still playable but it just gets annoying when it screws you up every once in a while. i think the contacts for the knobs are just dirty but i took it apart and they werent exposed, i thought id get some feedback before i do anything else to it because i really dont know alot about it and dont want to break it. any help is apreciated, thanks.

From what you've described, I agree that the potentiometers in the paddle are in need of cleaning.

Take a look around this site for the keywords "paddle" and "jitter" to get some ideas on how people go about cleaning potentiometers in the Atari 2600 paddle controllers. Your potentiometers are likely to be very similar.

If youre very carefull you can use a snippers to bend the cover off the pot then whipe ring w paper towel be carefull then carefully bend the whiper down a little more then wipe this off carefull not to kink metal then when you put back to gether use a large needle nose to bend tabs back this will work like at least one time and make pot tight as new mabie better than new... this will definanlty fix the gitter problem.... mostly the wipers get carbon gunk on them making it slip cause the grease they use to make wiper spin more easly gets on the wiper and all over the pot ring making a carbon mess and making the pot gitter I have done this with my atari paddles and some volume pots before and it always makes it work way better just dont bend wiper to far as it will scrape and break then you are sh out of luck although you could always just get a atari paddle off ebay and take the 1meg ohm pots out and use them in the pong unit witch would probably work just as good as the ones it came with..