It is ALIVE!
Mad props to
@Pezdude for the groovy TV that is way, way easier to get photos of!
As you've probably surmised from the picture, something is definitely amiss within this Colecovision system yet. Everything is a shade of yellow or brown. The controllers "kinda" work, but nowhere near where I want them to be to be actually "usable" for the public. I'm going to work with them to get them back where they need to be, but I have no idea how long that might take as I expect part of the problem is corrosion in the contacts for the joysticks, and some of those parts might need to be recreated from scratch. Worst case, I did find a source for aftermarket controllers, though they're kinda expensive.
The Atari expansion results in a black screen on power up, but again it may just have some bad contacts or something. I'll keep messing with it.
I do see that there's a composite mod for these, and that might be the most practical solution for this machine going forward too.
If anyone has any thoughts or ideas, I'd love to hear them! More on this to follow soon!