Hello,

When using Atarimax 5200 Ultimate SD, on a 5200 with a Sophia 2, the trackball drifts upwards on Centipede and Missile Command. This does not happen on the original cartridges or on the Backbit Pro. I am running the latest Atarimax firmware and have the Game Quickstart set to off.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Okay, I've had this same issue for years with the 128-in-1 cart and now the Ultimate SD cart.

For me it's joystick drift up and to the left, haven't tried the trackball yet. I always thought it was something wrong with my joysticks but after seeing someone else having the same issue, I pulled out my old cart collection and found that they all run fine, no drift, no issues.

it makes using the cart nearly impossible because it's always fighting me on the selection screen pushing up while I'm trying to go down the list.

Clearly this isn't a widespread issue so maybe it's our particular systems? Mine is a four port that had a mod done in December '83 to allow the use of the 2600 adaptor. Otherwise, everything else is standard issue.

I'm using standard 5200 joysticks that were refurbished/upgraded by Best Electronics to have the gold connections and they've worked beautifully, without a hitch since I got them.

Anyone else experiencing this? Please add info about your system and input devices.

I finally sat down and did the proper logical step by step testing that I should have done in the first place and learned a few things. When two joysticks are plugged in, everything with the Atarimax works as expected without a hitch for about 95% of the time. The "hard pinned up direction joystick" issue appears every now and then but can (almost always) be corrected by pulling the joystick down, right, or left to fight it and it goes away. With just the player 1 joystick plugged in, it's nearly unusable.


It also dawned on me that my reconditioned 5200 controllers from Best Electronics (with the gold circuit boards) are self centering. I have a third original controller that I was going to send in for the gold board upgrade but I haven't gotten around to it. I plugged that in and while none of the buttons work, literally none of them, the joystick still moves and the Atarimax menu was fine, no issues. I tried one of my trak balls and it was also fine, no issues with the Atarimax and regular carts (Missile Command, Centipede).


So after all that, the issue appears to be tied to the self centering reconditioned sticks from Best. Sorry, I should have done more thorough testing to begin with, but at least I now know what's causing the issue, just not sure how to fix it, if that's even possible.


I've got the entire retail library of 5200 games and about 30-40 homebrews and repros and all that I've tested (so far) work fine with no signs of the (hard) drift that shows up with the two Atarimax carts. So for now I'm just going to use my original carts, trim down the stuff on the Atarimax to just the games and protos I don't already have and use the two joystick solution since it's mostly working.

Final update and a fix!

With some help from the AtariAge Forum members, for joystick drift issues: when the cartridge boots, immediately push the joystick fully up, then fully down, fully left, and fully right. This will calibrate the maximum endpoints and then everything works great.