Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 12
The Joy of Joysticks!
Today, I pulled out Omega Race and tested my joysticks and paddles. I have original Commodore accessories plus a bunch of Atari compatible knock offs. All the joysticks worked great. The fire buttons and mechanisms all were in good shape and worked fine. The paddles on the other had were in very bad shape. The fire buttons worked by the rotation control was either poor or non-existent with all of them.
I used my DeoxIT®, #D100L-2DB on the connectors. These have not been plugged in for decades and looked bad.
That took care of the connector end.
I removed the two screws from the back of the paddle and had easy access to the 1 Meg-Ohm variable resistors/potentiometer they used inside. I the sprayed a bit of RadioShack® Anti-Corrosive Lubricant Spray right into the inner-workings of the pot. This should eliminate the corrosion and oxidation in the pots. I tried this on my generic paddles first and it worked like a charm! I then cleaned up my original Commodore paddles and tightened the nut holding the pots in place. They were very loose and the knobs were flopping around. Now the response is perfect and they feel great.
I discovered the cable hookup to my TV was incorrect. I have four RCA wires at the end of the video cable. The yellow was video and that worked great. What I thought was audio right/red and audio left/white were not audio at all. There was a forth black RCA - that one was audio! I am not sure what the red and white cables do but for now I have video AND audio!
I was able to use my 5-cartridge expander and switch between Omega Race and Gorf. Everything seems to be working very well. Now for the piles of tapes and disks to be rescued...
The Joy of Joysticks!
Today, I pulled out Omega Race and tested my joysticks and paddles. I have original Commodore accessories plus a bunch of Atari compatible knock offs. All the joysticks worked great. The fire buttons and mechanisms all were in good shape and worked fine. The paddles on the other had were in very bad shape. The fire buttons worked by the rotation control was either poor or non-existent with all of them.
I used my DeoxIT®, #D100L-2DB on the connectors. These have not been plugged in for decades and looked bad.
That took care of the connector end.
I removed the two screws from the back of the paddle and had easy access to the 1 Meg-Ohm variable resistors/potentiometer they used inside. I the sprayed a bit of RadioShack® Anti-Corrosive Lubricant Spray right into the inner-workings of the pot. This should eliminate the corrosion and oxidation in the pots. I tried this on my generic paddles first and it worked like a charm! I then cleaned up my original Commodore paddles and tightened the nut holding the pots in place. They were very loose and the knobs were flopping around. Now the response is perfect and they feel great.
I discovered the cable hookup to my TV was incorrect. I have four RCA wires at the end of the video cable. The yellow was video and that worked great. What I thought was audio right/red and audio left/white were not audio at all. There was a forth black RCA - that one was audio! I am not sure what the red and white cables do but for now I have video AND audio!
I was able to use my 5-cartridge expander and switch between Omega Race and Gorf. Everything seems to be working very well. Now for the piles of tapes and disks to be rescued...
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