General Specifications

Console Variations - I know this is a repeat of what I've mentioned before, but there are a total of around six official Atari console variations, made both as Atari Video Computer System/2600 products, and Sears Telegames Products for the 2600 VCS/Sears Telegames Video Arcade. Please note I'm not going into PAL units or the Sears Telegames Video Arcade II/2800, or the rare prototype stuff, because this is more about the most common variants, and those of which I've owned (in my 25 years of collecting I've had: short stripe Jr, 3-4 Woody 4-switches, 1 Sunnyvale Heavy Sixer, 1 Vader, and 1 Sears Telegames Light Sixer (which is my current one).

PICTURE(S)	MODEL# & DETAILS
	CX-2600 - The original CX-2600s were built between 1977 and 1978 at the Sunnyvale California Atari Consumer plant before moving to Taiwan between 1978 and 1980. They came in two variants: the "(Sunnyvale) Heavy Sixer", and the "Light Sixer", referring to the weight, and the heavier 1/2" thick plastic injection molded bottom piece of the original Sunnyvale machines. Otherwise, the circuitry, assembly process, and design of the machines is nearly identical, with some visual differences between the two, mainley the Heavy Sixer having a more rounded bottom, and a more decoratively adorned back bottom plastic with molded in text and plugin jacks for the controllers. The Taiwanese "light sixer" variant got a lighter weight plastic bottom about 1/8" thick, and the area where the power jack and joystick ports are just has a D-Sub shaped area milled out of plastic texture, with the same port layout as the heavy sixer. Sears & Atari Units differed only cosmetically, and came in both versions. The Sears version got a "burled walnut" simulated wood front panel, with the word "Video Arcade" on the front left of the case. The control panel was different as well, replacing the orange/yellow surround with chrome, and painting the face of the panel white with black text, with "Tele-Games" in 7-segment display font in green above the cartridge port where the "Video Computer System" is written on Atari units. The Difficulty switches are also renamed "Right Skill" and "Left Skill" with "Expert" and "Novice" replacing the "A" and "B" naming for the skill levels. Otherwise, they are internally identical to the Atari branded products since all these were were rebranded Atari VCS machines. They use the same assembly method. Basically, the bottom plastic attaches with six screws, the motherboard is housed in an aluminum enclosure in the center of the case, held in with 2 more machine screws, with 2 more machine screws affixing a separate control and RF board to the motherboard enclosure - whcih are connected via a ribbon cable on the back edge. A RCA-style cable with a shortened plug-end on the console end attaches inside the case. It also appears Atari added a cable guide inside both Light and Heavy sixer cases, but it's often found they did not perform this step at the factory. Some variants have a Channel A/B (2/3) selector switch next to the RF box reachable via a pencil/screwdriver/etc through a slot in the bottom of the case, though some might have the hole and no switch and be hard-wired for Channel 2 or 3.
	CX-2600A - Production of the "4-Switch" variants, also known as the "Woody", and "Vader" variants, were the most popular version of the Atari Video Computer System (2600) released, with the "Vader" version being the first to use the number "2600" in the branding. These were revised to increase production, reduce product overall cost, and facilitate ease of use. The main change to ALL of these units, were that the Difficulty switches were now moved to the back of the unit in a line, as the motherboard is now one solid rectangle combining the 2 separate boards of the six-switch models. The "Woody" variant is the most common. It's basically the same console as a "Light Sixer" in shell, with early ones having the "speaker vents" of the sixer, and even having the cutouts in back for the light sixer power/controller jacks covered over with a thin, adhesive sheet of plastic. Some even have a yellow surround, rather than a orange one around the controls. This was also produced in a "Sears Telegames" version where all the same Sears Livery (burled walnut front panel with "Video Arcade" on the right side of the front, white control panel, green 7-segment "TELE-GAMES" over the cartridge port, and chrome switch surround). In 1982, when Atari went to the newer "silver" branding in preparation for the newcoming 5200 Super System, the Atari VCS was re-branded as the "Atari 2600" and had a minor alteration in that the very 1970's woodgrain front livery was replaced with bare black plastic, and "Atari 2600" in silver on the left front of the case. This version is known as the "Vader" for it's all-black appearance. This was also when Atari started putting Pac-Man in as the pack-in game and not Combat. General assembly of these units is a bottom plastic held together with 4 screws, then a rectangular motherboard measuring in at about 8"x5" in size sits at a diagonal against the two diagonal screw holes in the middle of the bottom of the case. The console switches and ports all fit through holes in the TOP part of the case, which means you can install that side first. The cable now has 2 cable guides inside the case - one in front of the RF output box, and the other on the SIDE of the inside of the case.
	CX-2600B - Also known as the 2600 Junior/Jr.. These units were roughly the size of a VHS tape, and first came to market in 1986 with the tagline "The fun is back for only fifty bucks". They come in two variants - long stripe, and short stripe, referring to the rainbow stripe stamped/printed on the aluminum strip that labels and underlines the main four controls on the console and the cartridge port. They also feature a red power LED light as well. These now used stylized slide switches for the power and B&W/Color switches, but used a pair of membrane/adhesive-layered push-buttons on a strip for the reset/select switches. The board also has a bigger RF Sheild. They are also pretty easy to open, only 7 screws on the bottom and bob's your uncle. There's also a rare variant that has ALL of the chipset (6507, TIA, RIOT) reduced down to a single chip - as Ben Heck has shown with his builds - basically a 26OAC (2600 on a Chip). These also use a DISCREET RF cable instead of having it "hard wired" (well, connected rather) on the inside of the case.

ATARI 2600 VCS CONTROLLER CABLE PINOUT

This is based on official Schematic Data from Atari Corp. This should allow you to troubleshoot/repair/construct 2600 compatible controllers for whatever specific purposes you want.

JOYSTICK - The standard Atari Joystic is basically just a box of switches/buttons. All it does is sends the signals to ground for each associated connection. While the schematic seems to make less logical sense at first glance, it really makes sense once you start to understand the data lines of the 2600 VCS.

The original CX-10 and CX-40 joysticks are not all that prone to failure. THe biggest problems people have with the CX-40 seem to stem either from a bad connector cable, or a broken joystick yolk at the most functional. SOmetimes that plastic ring arond the rubber grip breaks and makes the grip loose but that's merely a cosmetic issue.

The caveat in making a multi-controller with a Joystick is the issue with the left/right buttons being shared with the paddle controllers fire buttons, and the up/down being shared with the Indy 500 driving controllers. Actually, that's the biggest concern with making a multi-controller (something I intend to do), is making sure that the INDY 500 controller is isolated.

PADDLES - The Atari Paddles are the second most used controller of the lot as they were used for Video Olympics, Night Driver, Super Breakout, Breakout, Blackjack, Racing, and others that required analog control. They come in a pair for players 1 & 2, and 2 more can be put on the player 2 game port for up to 4 players simultanious for games like Warlords.

The biggest problem with PAddle controllers is the infamous "jittery" paddle controller. This is cased by a dirty or damaged potentiometer (the thing inside that rotates). These can either be cleaned with a potentiometer cleaner, like DeoxIT (like us guitarists use on noisy volume and tone pots on our guitars), or if the pot is busted, may need replaced. Of course, cabling can go bad too, and the push buttons go bad as well sometimes so those may need replaced. The best source for this stuff it seems is Best Electronics - name checks out, LOL.

How they work is they take lines 9 and 5 for each potentiometer, and then compare against a +5VDC reference voltage from pin 7 to position the in-game elements. The push buttons - as there has to be two per controller, instead of using pin #6, use pins 3 and 4 (left and right) for the buttons on each respective paddle. This is also why one of the tricks for "hyperspeed" in combat involves plugging in Paddle Controllers and pressing both buttons at the same time (resulding in an Alarm Buzzer engine noise and a very fast circulating tank)

DRIVING CONTROLLERS - The "Indy 500" Driving Controllers are one of the least used Atari 2600 peripherals - actually, the Driving Controllers only work with ONE game - Indy 500 - and that is it. However, they have, up until recently, been a bit of a huge caveat to create.

The big problem with the driving controllers is first off, people often mistake them as Paddle controllers, then throw them away because they are broken when they don't work on Super Breakout (happened to me with my mom as a kid), often forgetting that Paddles come in PAIRS. The second problem is that they don't work like Paddle Controllers at all. The knob is SUPPOSED to turn 360 degrees. This is because there is not a pot(entiometer) in there, it's a 16-position digital encoder - and it takes the address lines from the up and down, and mixes them together in the proper combinations during a turning operation to make the little cars on screen turn a full 360 degree circle.

However, there is a MODERN equivalent using a Bournes PEC16 Encoder - basically, with the shaft facing up, the white wire goes on the left lug, the blue one on the right, and then the center lug takes the ground wire (black) from pin #8. The standard orange pin#6 fire button is used for the "accelerator".

If creating a multi-controller with driving support, you'll probably want to find a way to isolate the other lines of the Joystick from the fire button. I'm planning somethign using 4016 CMOS switch chips and a rotary selector to handle this problem.

KEYPADS - Atari released THREE versions of their "Keyboard Controller" - one is the classic pair of "Keyboard Controller(s)" that can be joined together and use both ports to create a elaborate I/O device for the Atari 2600. The next one was the "Star Raiders Touchpad" which added additional control to the game Star Raiders by providing the same exact circuit as the Keyboard Controller, but designed for a special overlay for Star Raiders. Lastly was the "Kid's Controller" (not shown in the picture to the right) - basically a big-button, blue version of the original Keyboard Controller aimed at small children, mostly for the Sesame Street CTW licenced titles from the early-mid 1980's.

Some games that used these controllers included: BASIC Programming, Star Raiders, Paul Slocum's Synthcart - just to name a few. It did not see a whole lot of use, as most games required either a Joystick or Paddle controller, with the majority using the Joystick.

How the keypads work is that lines 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 9 (up, down, left, right, paddle pot 1, fire, and paddle pot 9) are used to create a "Matrix" of sorts of various combinations of data lines for a total of 12 different combinations for 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,#,0.* for inputs. So "3" is pins 1 and 9, pins 1 & 6 are "1", and so on.

Luckily - the keypad does not introduce much issue for a multi-controller, to the point that you could literally leave all of the buttons as/is in any mode, and have the keypad active at all times if needed be, as they are all "normally open" contacts - thusly not interfering with regular operation. This actually - could be pretty cool because it could allow expanded functionality within a regular Atari game using one controller with some programming strategy - ie, making it more like a NES or Intellivison game. Plus, the kind of logic for enabling the keypad and disabling all the others would require either 7 3-4x throw switch poles to switch all the data lines specifically to the one controller. The one thing though, that adds complexity, is the use of 2 resistors inside the controller, which the values here are listed as 4700 (so 4.7K ohm resistors?).

• Chroma/Luma - This changes the chroma/luma information sent to the Television, it uses a flat-blade screwdriver (usually) and is a trim pot located near the TIA chip. So if you have a weird pink Pitfall Harry, or it looks like someone spiked your pizza with the wrong kind of Mushrooms, then this might need adjusted.
• Channel Fine Tuning - This is that weird pink/brown/blue hex thing on the motherboard near the TIA that fine tunes the channel adjustment for the console. This might actually be useful for cleaning up some noise from your picture (I have mine kind of dialed in a little higher than Channel 3 to clean up the picture).

Heavy & Light Six Switch Consoles (CX-2600)

Four Switch Consoles (CX-2600A)

2600 Junior Models (CX-2600B)

• Sixer-Construction - This is used by both the heavy and Light Sixer. These