Atari Repair Box: Jaguar, Team Tap and a Dead Lynx

This box of Atari hardware for repair, bought from Paul Jepp for a very fair price, took about a week to reach me. That was my fault: a copy and paste error sent it to number 8 instead of number 18, five doors down. Paul is a comedian in his own right, and given what he wrote on the label, I can only imagine what the neighbours thought. Inside was a non-working Atari Jaguar, its accessories and a surprise Atari Lynx.

The Jaguar controller and power supply

The boxed Jaguar came with a controller wearing a slightly dog-eared Cybermorph overlay. The controller looks good, but the pins on its plug are a bit mashed, probably from someone trying to push it into a normal joystick port. Nothing that can’t be straightened.

Atari Jaguar controller with a Cybermorph overlay unpacked from the repair box — Jaguar controller with its Cybermorph overlay

The power supply was a bad sign: a generic multi-voltage adapter. On a lot of these machines the wrong polarity takes out the power regulator, which isn’t protected by a diode. That’s repairable, and any Jaguar repair videos I make will be based on Kieran Hawkin’s repair guide, which covers multiple common Jaguar faults. The flaky multi-voltage PSU itself is probably destined for the bin.

The Jaguar itself

The console is grubby, with the faint tang of garage about it, and there’s some damage around the controller port where someone has forced a plug in. The power button seems to work. I have a working Jaguar, a proper Atari PSU and some carts in the loft, so this one will be brought back if only to keep a piece of gaming history out of landfill.

Grubby non-working Atari Jaguar console bought for repair — The non-working Jaguar, grubby but complete

A boxed Team Tap

Also in the Jaguar box was a boxed Team Tap multiplayer adapter, allowing up to eight players in supported games. I don’t know how common they are, so let me know if you do.

Boxed Atari Jaguar Team Tap multiplayer adapter — The Team Tap allows up to eight players

A surprise Atari Lynx that won’t power on

Hidden under the packing was the mystery extra: an original, big Atari Lynx, the model where you can flip the screen. Something was rattling inside, which made me nervous. I scraped together six AA batteries, but with no cartridge to hand it wouldn’t power on at all. Not promising, but this is Mark Fixes Stuff, so it went on the repair list.