Modding an Atari 2600

[crazydean]

So, I bought a vader 2600 about a month ago. I've never owned any Atari console, but thought this would be fun and relatively cheap. RF is just awful on any console, and I'm thinking about going for a full RGB mod and connected it to a BVM. Anyway, I have a few concerns before I spend the time and money to do the mod:

1. It's currently connected to a 55" LED TV because that's all I have that will accept RF. Anyway, when I first turn it on, the colors are very dark, but brighten up within about 10 seconds or so. Is this normal? Maybe it's due to the internal converter in the tv?

2. When I took the console apart to clean it, I found the board sticky. I started to clean some of it off with alcohol and a q-tip. This resulted in a foul-smelling odor and it appeared to be taking off the green stuff from the board. I could get confirmation of this if necessary, but at the time, I didn't want to ruin anything. Could this be a problem in the future?

Thanks to anyone willing to help.

[HuMan]

For issue 1, sounds like bad capacitors, or a bad RF modulator.

For issue 2, the sticky green stuff sounds like anti-corrosion coating, that's very common on PCBs. It's possible it's leaked capacitor fluid, but that would corrode the board, assuming there's not much corrosion protection present.

[crazydean]

Hmm, I was thinking caps. When I briefly looked online, the caps didn't seem to be a typical problem so I wanted to ask you guys to see what you thought. Would it be best to remove caps, run through dishwasher, then replace caps?