Atari 5200 - Hopefully back to life soon...

[80sFreak]

Last weekend I picked up an Atari 5200, power supply, RF adapter, two joysticks and a few games while visiting Bill D. (Read about the vintage computer goodness that went on here (http://www.vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread.cfm?id=57).) This system is in good shape but there is no power at the tip.. I look at the bottom of the supply and there are two screws.. I think to myself this should be a relative piece of cake. About an hour or so and many colorful metaphors later I dig off one of the rubber feet.. Lo and behold Atari (in their infinite wisdom) put screws under two of the feet! :mad: So once I removed *those* two screws the two pieces of the supply come apart easily...

Once I get it apart I see that the fuse does not look totally blown but it definitely looks like it needs replacing. Now to the next fun part - the fuse *looks* like it is held to PCB by these two "caps" with a wire soldered to the board.. I *thought* I would be able to remove the fuse from the caps, but found out that the cap is attached to the fuse. After quite a bit of searching on the web (and also trying to figure out what to search for!) I finally found this (http://www.digikey.com/scripts/dksearch/dksus.dll?KeywordSearch?lang=en&site=US&KeyWords=F2597-ND&x=0&y=0) which is a Slo-Blo 5A 250V fuse with Axial or Pig-Tail leads. A picture of what it looks like is here (http://www.littelfuse.com/data/en/Data_Sheets/313P_315P.pdf). (PDF file)

So now I am waiting on my order from Digi-Key which has the fuse (plus a few more bits! :)) and will (hopefully!) bring the 5200 back to life! :D

Cheers,

80sFreak

[Bill_Loguidice]

Good luck with the unbelievably fragile joysticks. I have two Atari 5200's, both four port, one dead. I have lots of extra controllers in various states of repair. I also have the trackball and a few y adapters and the Wico joystick. I also have the AtariAge adapter to use other joysticks. Controller-wise, the system is very high maintenance. I have lots of boxed software, some rare(ish) and a multi-cart (flash cart from Atari Max), so I obviously like the system, but it's a lot of trouble relative to other videogame systems and even most computers. I'll be interested how you get along with it over time...

[atari2600a]

Ah, the 5200. (or as I like to call it, the Atari 400 with registers mapped at different locations)

Good luck w/ the fuse replacing!