Atari Video Music and my Avante
 

Not sure where to put this, but since It's hooked up to my Avante, I'll post it here.

So I finally got around to hooking up my Atari Video Music unit to the Avante (unit is one of the first electronic color organ that uses your TV). It is being fed the music from a Sherwood S-7100. I have never fired the unit up before, so I'm hoping there is something I need to adjust/replace in it to give me a good image. As it looks now, the screen it produces is lacking any real color definition and most colors are muted. The areas of the screen with no activity are supposed to be black, but instead, it is static filled (blue, white and red).

I would imagine the caps in it might be on the dry side after 40+ years. Maybe the RF unit isn't up to snuff. Also, the detail of the moving graphics aren't as clean as they show in their brochure. I've attached how they show them and what I am getting.

Anyway, any suggestions are welcome. Could be this is as good as it was back when new and someone here can verify.

Thanks

You may have already seen this, but here's a video on the Atari Video Music:

http://youtu.be/wle0eqBwtL8

Here's another, more in-depth video that was referenced in the first:

http://youtu.be/INnpnJvDXDg

First thing I see is diagonal lines in the pix. Also a grainy / snowy
background. Cure that first. Check the RF switch, cables & matching
transformer.
Also if you can take some pix of the set with real live people programing.
Its much easier to judge the TV that way.
Oh BTW with the Cromatic switch on ( red) you can not adjust the
color, tint, brite & contrast from the normal controls.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

Okay, I recapped it and cleaned all contacts. It still doesn't have a very clean black section, but it is better. I don't want to adjust the TV's controls for this one device as I have it perfectly set for TV viewing.

You will probably at a minimum have to adjust the finetuning on the TV to get no snow...Unless you have a VCR or other device with a tuner that can tune the Atari and feed audio and video into the RF modulator that you normally feed the TV with...

It is a fact of life that different models of modulator have slightly different carrier frequencies.

I will try it through the tuner in the VCR and then into the TV.

Atari Video Music and my Avante
 

Did you watch the Ben Heck video? He seemed to have an issue with snow too and determined an op amp was faulty.

I'm not saying that's what's going on with yours -- just a shot in the dark.


I also agree with the others that the modulator and/or TV could be the culprit(s). Have you tried this on another TV/monitor, to rule things out through process of elimination?

I didn't even know this beast existed. Awesome!

I haven't had time to pull out the scope again. My bench rotates from task to task and it's not a test bench at the moment. Still, my issue seems a bit different. He was having a problem with the unit keeping the image on the screen. It seem to keep blanking out.

I guess I can go out the the garage and dig out the other CRT set and test it.

Quite expensive, too. 170 back in '76, so that would be about 500+ now.

I still prefer the basic 3 channel color organ.

Note all the youtube reviews above are major channels where the core demographic are "Starbucks regulars".
There's a reason they are so expensive. Right now the core demographic of buyers is hipsters who want that "vintage" (*hurk*) Atari product with those "retro" (*wrench*) graphics and they got a PHP programming (*puke*) job giving them a lot of cash.

Oh yeah, I know. They are driving up the prices of many things. I used to by sealed original pressings of albums for a few bucks years ago, but now that the hipsters are into vinyl, the price has increased greatly.

Still, the cost I was noting was based on inflation. Was pointing out that people back in '76 were basically paying 500 bucks for those units (adjusted for inflation). That's quite a bit back then.

Whoops, that was me rambling off again.... :D