SNESNESCUBE64

Neat. I've never ordered from Steve personally. My goto is Marco Pinball if the shop I work for on the weekend doesn't have what I need. They have been awesome. Very cool that they can make their own coils though, it is super important that folk still make em.

Symptom: Lower left drop targets not resetting when all three are knocked down. Troubleshooting Steps: The first thing that I do whenever I deal with a non-functional coil is I check the coil itself. On a pinball machine, it is super easy to do this typically. The first thing you would do is remove the lock bar and playfield glass. Next, be sure to remove the balls themselves. This is an important step, as when you are lifting up the playfield, they can free themselves from the trough, potentially causing damage to the plastics or if you are REALLY unlucky, the back glass. After the balls are removed, lift up the playfield and secure it on the kickstand (or whatever means that particular unit has for doing such. For Black Knight, it has a kickstand so that makes it easy. Upon visual inspection of the coil, I could see that it is super burnt, meaning that it was constantly engaged for way too long. You should be able to move the piston that solenoid pushes with your hand under normal circumstances and it should move smoothly. This one however was seized, indicating that the coil or sleeve needed to be replaced. This case was a bit extreme, so the coil is just going to be replaced. This happens for a few reasons: return side of the coil is shorted, the switch telling the mainboard to engage it was stuck, or something in the drive circuit was damaged. The drive transistor is typically the first place I check if there are no visible shorts, as those fail pretty often as they are hard working. Looking at the manual, it was really easy to identify which part of the circuit to look at. You can typically find pinball manuals online on websites like ipdb.org. Each manual is different, but manuals by Williams typically were comprehensive. Table 2 and 4 told me the solenoid number (02), what coil to replace it with, and which drive transistors were involved. With the transistor in question identified, I could easily take a look at the board. The only problem, is that Williams did NOT use silkscreen on the gameboards during this time, so you have to refer to the component layout diagram in the manual. You can also double check the schematics to make sure there wasn't a mistake, as well see the rest of the circuit to inspect. So now looking at the board, I could see little balls of solder on the cooling mount tab and discoloration, a strong indicator that it got pretty hot. At this point, I was fairly confident that this was the issue. The 2N4401 that drives the drive transistor could also have failed, but that happens a lot less than the drive transistor itself as it is working with a lot less. The 7408 could also fail, but many times you would see multiple coils having issues. So I decided to just replace the drive transistor at Q17 with a TIP102. After replacing the drive transistor, the coil performed as it should. In order to avoid excessive coil damage like this, make sure that your solenoid fuse is the correct value (the manual has that information and there is typically a fuse chart in the back box) and if you see or hear a solenoid fire and get stuck, it is a good idea to turn off the game and investigate. Coils are still made but are more expensive than a simple switch adjustment, just replacing the drive transistor or coil sleeve, and fuses are cheap so use the right value. Solution: Replace bad solenoid and Q17 (TIP102)

Symptoms Random reset, sometimes resetting rapidly Solution Steps Looking at the schematics, reset is controlled using a Power On Reset (POR) IC. Basically how it works is that it sends a reset pulse to the CPU whenever a threshold voltage is reached, somewhere in the 4V range. With that knowledge, I had to monitor the reset line. In this image, the reset line is yellow and the +5V rail is in blue. What I wanted to do was see if there was maybe a short or if there was excessive noise going on that went below the threshold. To my surprise, it periodically dipped a lot lower than expected, causing the reset. We definitely have a power supply issue at this point. Looking at the power supply circuit for +5V, there isn't a whole lot going on here. How it works, is that an AC line from set of taps directly from the transformer gets rectified and filtered. This makes a unregulated +/- 12V DC. From there, the +12V DC circuit is regulated to 5V using a 2N6057 and MC1723 circuit. Looking at it, my initial guess was the rectifier as these fails often. So I test it in circuit, and suprisingly one of the diodes in it was shorted, specifically on the ones creating the +12VDC line. So if it was failing, it could explain the dip in 5V. What was super interesting was that it didn't pop the fuse. Normally when one of these fails, they take out the fuse. Replacing the rectifier fixed the issue and it hasn't improperly reset since I replaced it with a new one. Solution Bad power supply bridge rectifier at DB1.

So a few months ago, I bought a Nintendo arcade board on Yahoo Auctions Japan called Head On N. It is a Nintendo counterpart of Head On by Sega. Unfortunately I don't know the story behind this one, but I figure it was just licensed to Nintendo by Sega. The main difference between the two games is that the Nintendo version is meant for a vertically oriented screen where as the Sega one is for a horizontally oriented one. Anyway, I got this thing as a converted mess. Someone had converted it to play (according to the listing) Heiankyo Alien, even modding the sound section with a weird hand built daughter card. Unfortunately I could not confirm this though, since all of the ROMs were missing on the back. So basically I had to remove everything and fix all the cut traces (there were plenty on the front and back). This was also used as a parts board at some point as well, as it was missing a lot. I did document the hacks, but I have to do a proper writeup on that. After populating everything in the sound section, I ran into the issue of ROMs. They use 2708 tri-voltage eproms, which are hard to program with modern hardware. My solution was actually to design a PCB to condense all 8 ROMs into one 2764 ROM, mapped with a 74LS148 encoder IC. It just fits into the original sockets. From there, it was time to fix the boardset, I was having graphics issues, but fortunately that was a fairly quick fix. You can read more about it on my repair log: The TLDR is that the chip that serializes graphics was faulty. After getting that replaced, I was able to actually see the game. Head On N, like with other Nintendo arcade boards, does indeed output inverted video. For this I just used a Sanyo 20EZ. It seems to be working just fine. The next step for me now is to do two things: Make a proper reset circuit and test the audio. Unfortunately I don't have a power supply in my test setup that does the -12V that it requires. I also have to hook up controls so I can actually play it. One down the road thing that I would like to do is modify the ROMs so it can just be used on an upright cabinet. It seems that it is meant to be used in a cocktail table, as it will flip the screen. It's been a fun project so far, I hope to do a custom cabinet for it one day, but that is down the road. I have to just get this board fully working first.

I got a pretty interesting board on the bench this time: Head On N, released by Nintendo, Licensed (Or stolen) from Sega. This is an interesting boardset, as this is for the most part a clone of Sega Vic Dual hardware, except they spread it across two boards and included the sound board on the CPU board. I had already done a deal of work deconverting the board, unfortunately this thing was missing a lot of parts and was modded to play an unknown game (the roms weren't included). On to the issue. The problem at hand is that there is no detail, just blocks moving around on the screen. First thing I did was hook it up to my Fluke 9010A to do RAM and ROM checks. The RAM had been previously desoldered by someone else, so I socketed it (4027 DRAM fail pretty often) and fixed some damage traces done by the previous owner. Everything came back as good, so I figured that the issue was after the RAM, since graphics and system RAM are shared. There are no schematics, but since this is so similar to Sega Head On hardware, I just used schematics for that (I actually used the schematics for Tranquilizer Gun, since Head On used a custom IC for video stuff). Looking at it, the first thing that happens is the graphics data gets serialized. From there, it get's processed with sync and color gets overlayed. Also note that on Head On N, the 74ls166 was sometimes substituted with a 74ls198 (as other Nintendo games like Space Fever used that IC at the time). Looking at the 74ls166 (found at 3C) with my oscilloscope. Looking at all the signals, everything except for the output looked correct. Output was stuck high. I decided to hook it up on my logic analyzer just to make sure that it wasn't some weird timing. However, it just seems that the output was always high despite not supposed to be. Notice that it gets loaded, but the output doesn't change despite being enabled. Pulling the 74ls166 out of circuit to test in my ABI chipmaster, the chip tested bad! After replacing the 74LS166, the graphics were back to normal. Next step is going to be testing sound!

I always eat the fries first. They never reheat at home well if for some reason there are leftovers, burgers however reheat just fine.

I don't have a whole lot of books these days and most of them are in boxes as I don't have a real bookshelf, and even so they are just kinda thrown on top of my parts shelving (grouping similar books). I would sort by category then alphabetically, which is how I sort my electronic parts. I do this form of sorting of all my physical copies of arcade manuals and schematics.

It is a very OK kind of game. If you like puzzle games you might like this one. Tetris Attack is a much better Yoshi themed puzzle game.

Oh wow I am sorry for being so late, but I have fixed this issue several times for work. There are two versions of this cabinet, the full upright and home version (you can tell by whether or not the coin door is just a sticker). Both suffer from similar problems but the full upright can have additional issues. Before you check anything, try adjusting red drive on the monitor, typically found on the neckboard. Be sure to remember where it was. Tubes wear out, especially if the cabinet is on location. Odds are it is not a gameboard issue here, but rather a monitor issue. So if you are uncomfortable working on monitors with high voltage or do not know alsafe practices, perhaps find someone local to help out. First things first, check your connections. Validate that the video signal is actually getting to the monitor (no broken wiring and whatnot). Secondly, wiggle the video connector. Cold solder joints are super common on the monitors used in there (going off memory WG K7200 for the home use, WG K7400 for the full upright). If you partially get your red back or there is flickering of the red color, you have bad solder joints, easy fix. If that is not the issue and you know the gameboard is working, I would try replacing the drive transistor on for red on the neckboard if it is the larger wells gardner monitor. Drive transistors ran REALLY hot on the K7400, U2000, and U5000 monitors by wells gardner, so they are a VERY common failure.

They were custom as far as I am aware. In the past when I needed something like that I always took parts from third party controllers. You might be able to find the pins, but I don't know the measurements. I do know you can buy the console end on ebay...

Forgot this title screen

I'd love the beta yoshi one. It's my favorite out of the batch.

Glad that it helped you out. Those capacitors are all terrible in there, so perhaps that is causing your horizontal lines issues. @dewisp02 Can my name be removed from the list? I sold my kiosk (for sale link below) to the user Anthony on this site.

IDK, about that. Zeldafreak I think is better than me at this point. Wish I coulda joined but unfortunately I had saturday night plans for some reason.

Haven't done them. If you have questions shoot me a PM.

Youtube has some neat functionality so you don't see a user's content. Being mad at someone who makes content online is a waste of your time. Time you can effectively use to make a sandwich or scream at the squirrels chewing through the top of your garbage can in order to get to the delicous garbage.

Oh my god, this might be mine too. That was ABSOLUTELY BRUTAL. The problem was that enemies would keep spawning, so you would have to get lucky and just push through. The last two missions in particular took me forever because of the respawning. Well they say the German soldiers were on Meth during the second world war, perhaps they were making the AI like that...

Isn't it great when you are having a terrible week and you get a "gimme"? When the fix is super easy or super silly? I had that happen yesterday with an Asteroids Deluxe board. Currently I am just starting a restore on an empty Asteroids Deluxe table, it was empty so I am currently sourcing everything for it. Well I got to the game board after rebuilding a junk AR1 supply I bought years ago on the cheap and building a little test harness that just runs power. Well at first I got nothing. So I pulled the board out to inspect it, see if there was any damage. Sure enough, the crystal had broken off at some point in the past. I borrowed a crystal from another board that I will have to repair at some point, and it fired right up it seems. Now it's hard to tell of I am going to run into any issues because I didn't hook up the Z axis, hence why everything is connected. But this is a good sign that this board is working at least from a video perspective. What was your favorite "easy one" story? Doesn't have to be an easy one. Just could be a guess you made that ended up being the issue.

That's a lot of money for something with no board pics...

For thanksgiving, mashed potatoes are better for logistical reasons. Kind of a pain to serve a bunch of baked potatoes. Baked potatoes are better in every single way otherwise and I will die on that hill. A nice baked potato with sour cream, green onions, shredded cheese, and bacon bits is great.

1. Beating the shadow queen in paper mario and the thousand year door. This game was a childhood favorite of mine but I was never good enough to beat the game. I finally did it some 5 years ago and it was such a good feeling because I was finally able to see the ending. It was also super close, almost didn't win. 2. Fixing my Atari Millipede cabinet - it was my first real arcade repair that required in depth troubleshooting. 3. Not really a particular moment, but playing games with my mother as a youngyin. Those moments and her constant emphasis on the importance of utilizing technology to not only have fun, but also work hard and help others with it helped define myself as a person especially later on in my late teens and now young adult life. I owe a lot to those times playing games with her. It gave me a career path and goals to work toward.

It's an interesting thought. I've never had goals, just passing "hey this is interesting". For myself and many, when you are done with one thing you move on to the next. For me I moved to arcade stuff I moved on to arcade collecting and reproducing boards and other boards because I found I enjoyed it more. What do I do when I ultimately grow to hate everything electronic or can't do it anymore? Travel and enjoy something else.

Gorf is an arcade game released in the early 80s by Bally Midway. It was a very neat game with speech synth and featured a very appealing cabinet for the time. The gameplay was also nice because it featured variety in the saturated space invaders genre of the day. It was based off of similar hardware used in the Bally Astrocade console (I don't know which came first) and was fairly high tech for what it was. The reason I hate the hardware so much is because of the astrocade part. It used custom components that fail often. These components are a pain to source now and have gotten to be pricy (something I had to deal with when I was working on my Gorf cabinet). Midway also cut corners whenever possible with electronics as well. Super fun game, just not a fan of the hardware. Being that there was a shooter theme in the image, I just made a guess...

We can talk about how much fun gorf is but how much the hardware sucks. Words cannot describe how much I despise astrocade arcade hardware.

Sell them so I can live in the woods with all my gold and gasoline. No need for plastic toys made for babies in an end of the world scenario.