I did the unthinkable and restored an Atari 2600. More accurately, I ATTEMTPED to restore an Atari 2600, hit some walls, and didn't quite finish. Perhaps I will return one day!

Below is everything disassembled before cleaning: the Atari 2600, two controllers, two paddle controllers, and five cartridges. Foolishly, I thought this would only be a simple cleaning procedure. Boy I was wrong.

I deep cleaned everything, all the way down to the motherboard, mostly using rubbing alcohol and compressed air. I Eeen found a little abondoned spider's nest tucked away in an inner corner. Maybe he was waiting for the next game of pitfall :o

From the onset I knew the controllers needed major work done, because half the joystick mechanics wouldn't work in testing. After some research, I caved in and decided to buy some new PCB boards from Best Electronics. Wow, the new boards are top notch and completely fix any problems with the old style PCB and connectors.

However, fate was working against me and still one of the controllers refused to work! >:( After shredding into every bit of the controller my optopsy revealed that, somewhere inside the cable, wires were bad. If you're curious, I took apart the female Atari connector (below).

One controller works perfectoly, while one controller does not. hmmmm, not a very good turn out so far. I push forward and decide to work on the paddles! The paddles are extremely wishy-washy. They kind of worked before, and only kind of work after being cleaned. :'( Also, my stubborness and ignorance broke a fragile connector in one of them. IT WAS SO FRAGILE A GUST OF WIND COULD'VE BROKEN THAT METAL PIECE OFF..

Cleaning the cartridges was straight forward and, while none of them were broken before, I hopefully improved there connection.

At the end of the day, the paddles and controllers are quite a problem. I'll have to return to this eventually. I am quite taken aback with how much is mechanical in here: catridge springs, trap doors, switch levers, and circuit contacts.