Trouble with Magnavox Odyssey

From: Dr. Ido <drido_at_optushome.com.au>
Date: Wed Sep 10 00:49:00 2003

At 03:27 PM 9/10/03, you wrote:
>Has anyone here ever tinkered with a Magnavox Odyssey and got it to work?
>I have four of these dang things and have not gotten one of them to fire
>up. I can't imagine that they are all bad. I am pretty sure that the
>video connection from the unit to the screen is solid as I tested it with
>an Atari Pong console and got video. I'm using a 9 volt adapter and have
>tested the voltage and have also tested that voltage is getting to the
>unit and that is all working.
>
>The unit gets turned on when you insert a carthridge. I've inserted and
>re-inserted the carthridge several times but there is nothing on the
>display, not even a glitch or flicker in the background noise. I've used
>contact cleaner on the carthridge and inside the slot but that hasn't
>helped.
>
>Has anyone else ever played with one of these and gotten it to work?

I've never had an Odyssey, but I've had similar problems with some other old
consoles (RCA studio 2, Radofin 1392 and various pong clones come to mind).
 What I found is the RF signal from the console
is either too weak or to far off spec for a TV with auto tuning to pick it
up. On the relatively modern TVs that I tried I either got no signal, a
black screen or a distorted picture that won't lock on. It wasn't until
I'd had the same problem with several consoles that I tried a different TV.
 On an older TV with manual tuning I was able get a good stable picture
from all
the consoles that I thought had problems.
Received on Wed Sep 10 2003 - 00:49:00 BST