Atari 5200-vertical bars on screen

[YoshiM]

Recently I picked up a 2-port 5200 complete in box with 16 games that were also complete in the box. Unfortunately the store I bought it from couldn't test it but I couldn't pass on the price as it looked pristine save for the system box that had a line of duct tape on it. One controller even has the protective clear plastic over the metal piece.

Got it home and cleaned the cart slot and a few cartridges then gave it a whirl. All I get is a screen with a bunch of vertical bars, like my 5200 was displaying a bar graph. No sound, no reaction to the controllers, nothing. The screen would go away after a bit. Sometimes I'd get a screen with a funny dashed green horizontal line at the top.

I noticed that the system was purchased from a thrift store (saw the label and the place's phone number inside the box) and 5200 4-port RF switch was in the box that allowed power to go through so part of me wonders if anyone might have hooked it up wrong and fried something.

I'll post images when I can but does anyone have an idea what could be up? Thanks!

[raylydiard]

I got junk on atari 2600 i think its a ic chip on the motherboard.
If you have one working one try swaping the ics from the faulty one and try on there other to find the faulty chip.

[YoshiM]

I was able to get my hands on a machine that displayed the game but controllers didn't work. I'd find it hard to believe both of my controllers were totally shot to the point of no function whatsoever.

So I set out to swap chips. On my first machine I saw a folded pin-someone tried to fix this machine. Chip swap didn't work.

Oh well.

[ApolloBoy]

Exactly what chips did you swap? Have you also checked both voltage regulators to see if they're putting out 5V?