Atari 2600 not working on flat screen tv

[solarpv]

Hi,
I set up an older Sharp 12" flat screen to test my equipment. I tried my 2600 and some pong machines and they don't work on that tv through the switch box and coaxial cable. They work on crt tvs. I tried changing settings and doing channel searching with the units on using antenna and cable searches and nothing shows up. Is there an adapter to convert the Atari to composite hook up using the yellow, red and white RCA cables? Thanks

 

[GiGaBiTe]

The problem with old game consoles and computers that used televisions for displays is that they didn't really adhere to the NTSC/PAL spec to the crossed t and dotted i. This wasn't an issue on old CRT TVs because they generally accepted a pretty wide range of signals while still working due to the analog nature of them.

Modern LCD monitors on the other hand are usually highly intolerant of out of spec signals and will just refuse to sync to them, which is probably what's happening in your case. There are conversions available to convert the 2600 to have composite video, but you'll still have the same issue with the signal and may have to use something like a scan doubler to scale up the image to a format that works with modern TVs.

 

[Towmater]

I ordered an "ultimate Atari Video" chip that switches the output to s-video.

 

[solarpv]

Update - I did get the Atari working on the flatscreen. I removed the tv switch box and used a small RCA to coaxial adapter hooked straight into the tv coaxial input. It worked fine without a vcr or modulator. I don't know why it works like this but it does.