Part 1

So I was given this Breakout PCB earlier in the year and thought I'd fire it up and see if it worked.



First up the PCB was covered in lots of wires that were soldered onto the board but with nothing connected to them, some sort of previous mod that had been removed.



I de-soldered these wires and re-made a trace that had been cut on the PCB.

Visually there were a few IC's missing and one that was broken almost in half and partially de-soldered. After looking up the IC locations in the Ops manual, all three were 74LS08's, clearly someone needed them for something else! The solder pads were cleaned, new sockets fitted and IC's fitted.



Next up was the big filter Capacitor near the edge connector. This was clearly past its best so I replace it with another I had in my stash.



There were four wire links on the board which denote the game bonus given depending on score. These were a right mess where I guess they had previously been moved around. I removed the links and fitted a nice new 4-way dip switch block similar to what all the later Atari games have.



Next up it was time to make a basic loom to apply power and get some composite video out of the game.

Looking at the high level wiring diagram for the game, the power input comes from a 16.5Vac centre tapped transformer, which via a couple of diodes feeds the audio amplifier and then into an LM323 regulator which provides the regulated 5Vdc for the game logic.

From previous experience with these old Atari Black & White games I know you can happily run these games from a 12Vdc power supply as long as it supplies 3 Amps of current if the have an LM323 regulator.. Most JAMMA switcher supplies wont work as they don't provide enough current on the 12V rail. With power connections made to an edge connector I looked up the pins for the Video output and it's ground connection and wired these to a phono (RCA) connector which would plug into my video monitor.

With only these connections made I should be able to see if the board is dead or alive, or somewhere in between.

One final check I decided to make was to confirm that the 5V rail and the Ground rail on the PCB were not shorted to each other, this was confirmed as being OK with my Multi-meter set on continuity test.

Time to fire it up!

So with monitor connected to the video cable and the edge connector plugged into the PCB I powered it up...



Not bad... The board has a video output, which is stable apart from some image tearing on the right hand side, I'll need to confirm if this is a fault with the PCB or if my monitor is struggling to sync to the signal.

You can see the score numbering along with the numbers indicating which player is 'up' and which ball is is in play. There are clearly not correct, but the fact they're being show is a good sign.

There's no playfield of bricks, a players paddle or any balls flying around the screen so the board at this point so I need to investigate further to see whats going on.




So next up I need to make connections for controls, and coins switches etc, then I'll print the schematics and get out my trusty Logic probe.

To be continued...  

So, my Pole Position board had been working perfectly for a year since its last repair, it's had regular play every week and in my eyes it wasn't a scary event turning the cab on, expecting the a bad outcome.

A few weeks ago I play a game on the cab entered my initials at the high score page and moved onto another game, 10 minutes later I took a peek at the screen and something had gone wrong... The attract mode scoreboard and the title screen all worked fine, but during the screen showing the cars, the track was missing and the background and clouds we gone


Grass tracking instead of GP racing.


All the scores, timings, signs and other cars were present, the track had gone walkabout... After a couple of re-powers and checking of test mode for RAM & ROM failures, I knew the board had thrown its dummy out of the pram and would need some attention.


Test setup for testing.Power and video only at this point.

Well after being on the test rig for a very short time, the image deteriorated even more than when it failed in the cab.


Things getting worse...

To me it looked like the 'Green' video signal in the track elements were now missing, the signs and the cars had notably changed colour.

After some extensive google searching for possible faults I came across one post on KLOV arcade forum saying that if the custom IC's 5L or 6L from the Video PCB are removed, you will get the the exact fault that my board originally had.

I did have a spare Video board that had never been powered on, my first test was to swap the two custom IC's around, luckily they are socketed so that didn't take more than five minutes to find I still had the same problem with them swapped out, it would have been unlikely all four were bad so I moved on to some 'real' fault finding.


Video circuit showing the two Custom IC's mentioned above

With a logic probe, all the input and output signals looked busy pulsing away, signals 'PIC1-4' feed into an 74LS157 Multiplexer at location 8C.



74L157 at location 8C on the Video PCB
With a logic probe I moved through the input signal and everything looked well, moving to the four output signals pin four was stuck low while the other three outputs were pulsing away. I fired up my scope to look that what was coming out of the output pins, and even on the three outputs that were pulsing away, there wasn't much data on the signal and the output on pin four was definitely dead.

I did a quick piggyback test and when fires up the green grass seemed to be back and I could see an outline of the track but it still looked pretty messed up. Anyway, I removed the IC, put a socket in and pressed in a new 74157. With finger crossed I powered the game up and was gladly met with the game fully working again.


Pole Position lives again

With the game fully working I did confirm that removing either custom at 5L or 6L will exhibit the same fault my boar had when it failed.

Boom! Thanks for reading, more PP repairs to come in the future. I've got a CPU board to look at, it doesn't boot, and I also have a video board that has a graphic fault in the mountains and clouds.

Hi Guys,

I had a new cab arrive this week and though I’d show a few photos. 

Some of you guys may have more info on it being a French Atari built, It was bought in an unknown state, but after various tests it only appears to have a game board fault which I’m currently working on. Its made from 100% chipboard which is a shame, theres some slight swelling on the left side by the CP. I'm not sure what the monitor chassis is but it has an audio amplifier onboard, the only wiring in the cab that has been hacked about is the interlock wiring, everything else seems to be original.

Other than needing a deep clean its in great condition. The plan for the next few months is to clean it up and get it sitting next to my other two B&W cabs.



















This last image is from the same cab type that was sold on UKVAC a few years back, seems identical to mine other than the fact mine is missing a nice front glass bezel. I’m not sure if this is the standard Atari breakout size, if it is I should be able to get an original replacement.

Well after close to four years since moving house, all the cabs I own are (touch wood!) working, Well I need a new starter for my Tempest Fluorescent light, but thought I best capture them while they all do work. My current line up consists of:

Fire Truck, Jet Fighter, Electrocoin Midi with a dual JAMMA adapter playing Pac-Land & Wonder Boy, Tempest Cabaret, Centipede Cabaret, Hang-On and Pole Position.

On the way to getting my current lineup I’ve also owned the following cabs: Outrun Mini, Midway SI, Nitsi Cocktail converted to Arkanoid, Zaccaria Cocktail with Phoenix, Lethal Enforcers, Cruis’n World, Missile Command Cabaret, Asteroids Cabaret, a Popeye Pachislo & 2 JAMMA cabs.

Photos below and a video, sorry for the lack of commentary but I’ve got a stinking cold at the mo and the vocals don’t sound too good.

Can't seem to get the video to embed in the thread but here's a link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkI3WyQLRY0






ATARI Hot Wheels!

I thought you guys might appreciate a repair I've been working on for the last few evenings 

Back in March I fired up my new cab and was pretty happy with the results, The game powered up and seemed to work, with exception of what I took as a graphic fault seen below where the Jets were displayed multiple times vertically down the screen.


Original testing in March.

I decided I was going to spend some time to look at this board this week just gone. My initial diagnosis above was not quite correct... Looking closer at what was on the screen the 'Jet' graphic was not complete and had bits missing especially noticeable in the white Jet. Also it was not possible to score points, I thought it may be due to the fact so many Jets were on screen at the same time. So I was looking at multiple faults already, and as (bad) luck would have it, after having the board on soak for a few hours I looked at the screen to check the game was still running and all I could see was a black screen! A few expletive's came out of my mouth and then I re-powered the cab, the image below is what I now had to work with...

The black 'Jet' and 'Score' were missing and instead of having a solid light background colour there we now horizontal bands in alternating colour going down the screen. (difficult to see in the photo below, but move visible in the photos further down.)


The fault log begins with this screen.

I have a copy of the Operation & Maintenance manual and it has some great description of what signals control certain aspects of the game, this certainly aided my fault finding, I also printed some A3 schematics that I could mark up in pencil and highlighter pens.

Initially I did go round the houses trying to work out where in the circuit the faults were, but after reading the manual a few times and following the signals in the schematics I got hot on the trail of issues, cutting to the chase, the faults were as follows.

IC location F3 a 74LS10 (3 input NAND gate) now had no output from pin 12. This provided the Jet/Score and Shell for black Jet.


Black Jet & Score back, but Jet video is inverted.

So with video back, I played a few games and noted that the score wouldn't increase when the Jets were hit with shells and the fact that no explosion registered to say the Jet had been hit. As it turns out another 74LS10 this time at location E1 had no Output on pins 6 & 8, these are the two trigger signals for Jet 1 & 2 respectively that further down the circuit chain pulse a 'BLO UP 1/2' signal which is used for detection of a hit. With this IC changed the score now worked and Jet explosions happened when hit by a shell.


Scores now working

The White Jet graphic was slightly corrupt not correctly displaying properly, The data for plane comes from ROMS at J5 & K6 (2K each). This data is shared between the two planes, so as the black Jet looked fine (although inverted) I was pretty sure the ROMs were OK. The ROM data is fed into a pair of Parallel to serial converters. For the white Jet they are at locations J4 & K4. Pin 7 of K4 provides the serial data through a few more IC's before becoming the Jet 2 video signal. The IC clearly was outputting something as you could see the image on screen, but my Logic probe was saying that pin 7 had no signal (High/Low or pulsing) Pin 9 is the inverted state id pin 7 and although not used in the circuit appeared dead too. I compared this to the Logic to the Black Jet and those same pins were pulsing along nicely. Time to swap K4, once replaced the Jet graphic was spot on and working.

I needed to get to the bottom of the 'multiple Jets on screen' fault that this board has had since I first turned it on. I'll put finding this fault down to mild guess work and lots of general probing around. I had the opinion that the issue was in the Vertical motion counter section of the circuit. Seeing as the fault was on both Jets and that each Jet had its own counter I had a hunch that these weren't directly the fault. The output from the counter for both Jets was fed into a 74LS74 flip flop IC. Pins 5 & 9 are the output pins which are mixed with the Horizontal blanking and Horizontal Jet position. They were stuck low. I cut one of the pins in circuit to confirm nothing else was pulling the pin low and it stayed low. Time to replace it...
Wohoo! Fixed as shown below, just the inverted black 'Jet' video and the background bars remaining.


Only one black Jet (Video inverted) and one white Jet.

More general probing around the final stages of video signals before they are joined in a resistor network found me this fault, IC at E4 an 74LS08 pin 6 provides the final video data for the White Jet. (Jet video and H/V blank info) As with the earlier fault the output was working but using a logic probe gave odd results, I did 'piggyback' an IC on top of the one in circuit and the background issue was gone, so I replaced the IC and that left the inverted video fault...

I remembered reading in the manual that when a Jet was hit by a shell the Jet's video was briefly inverted, to me it seemed this was happening constantly. The 'BLO UP' signal comes out or a 2 input gate at position K8, the logic probe was telling me this signal was constantly low, I monitored this in a game and made a white shell hit the black Jet, the output on the gate stayed low. Next up I cut this pin and re-powered the game. The Black Jets video image was now the correct was round, using the White Jet I fired a shell at the Black Jet, the game functioned as expected but without the brief inversion of video (that pin now wasn't connected!) So I replaced the IC and for now the game is fixed and fully working.

I've really enjoyed getting these faults fixed and think I've learnt a fair bit these last few evenings. Now its time to sort the cabinet out.

Cheers, Mart.



Background banding issue fixed, inverted Black Jet video fixed. Game...Fixed!

Hey All, I've got a Fire Truck restoration on the go. I'll update the thread as I make more progress but here's the story so far...

Well a few years back now three (yes THREE!) FT's were up for auction on eBay UK, I had an itchy finger but never bid on them, no one else did either and life moved on until earlier this year when I was reminded about the FT's and found out someone local to me had actually picked them up after the auction ended. After some gentle persuasion I was Offered one of the cabs, still in the same untouchecd condition as below. Photos from the original auction.









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Wednesday, 10 April 2013
Fire Truck in the house!

Thanks to a very kind fellow arcade collector, I am now the proud owner of an Atari Fire Truck cabinet.

So here it is, Atari Fire Truck. Serial Number: FT-394



The owner who originally sold all three had them in storage for years, the collector who I bought it from had also never tried firing them up. The main casualty of the cab is that the monitor tube had been 'necked' and removed. Other than that the cab was complete but very dirty! and of course totally untested. Here's a few more photo's from when I unloaded it after making an unusually short round trip of 15 miles to collect it!


Very tidy side art on this side. unfortunately the other side is not half as good.


Front view
                                    

Around the back! Power supply and Main PCB enclosed in its  RF cage.

Items I've noted about the cab so far...
* The seat is made from Plywood whereas the main cab is Chipboard, Its a great shame Atari didn't use ply for both as I expect the main cab would be in 8/10 condition.
* All the artwork is made of some type of laminate which was glued onto the the cab. In places around most edges the laminate is flapping loose. This will need some contact adhesive to stick it back together.
* The two player button on the rear CPO is broken, so I'll need to find a replacement.
* One of the main sides of artwork is in a pretty poor state, I'm not sure if it was exposed to cold air or sunlight, but the paint has turned flakey. I'm not sure about the plan for this, It will probably be one of the last items that gets attention.
* The back door sheet which contains the self test and dip switch info had been tucked up behind the RF cage, It has small rips where it was once stapled to the back door.

More updates to come soon, I need some good weather so I can get the cab outside and give it a real good clean.

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Wednesday, 10 April 2013

Fire Truck fired up.
After getting itchy fingers, I just had to find out if the cab was a worker or not. 20+ years of unknown history would the game fire up or maybe catch fire! I wasn't sure what parts would work and considering the mains cable had been chopped short at the back of the cab it didn't give me much hope..

I unplugged all the connectors gameboard, psu coin mech etc, and verified that they were clean and had no bent pins, I had to straighten a few pins on the interlink loom between the front and back half but nothing major seemed wrong here.

I rewired the mains lead, checked the on-board fuses. The main power switch at the back of the cab had been a casualty over time, at some point it had become good friend with wasps or bees and had become completely destroyed. so I have temporarily used some terminal block to have the cab wired in a permanent 'on' state. The back door interlock mains wiring had also worked free from the connector so this needed re-connecting.

With the gameboard disconnected, I fired the cab up and got the distinctive hum for the mains transformer, no smoke, sparks or pops. Good start! All the Power brick voltages checked out against the schematics which was good.

Time to remove the main game board from the RF cage...It turns out the board is in a very tidy condition, and looks like its never been repaired.



Fire Truck main PCB

A visual inspection didn't show any bent pins on the underside of the board, I gently removed and re-seated all the IC's that were in sockets, and after that put the board back in the cage nearly ready to fire it up.

Before turning the cab on I need to improvise a monitor and the original on in the cab was missing. The video signal from the game was standard composite video so without too much fuss I moved in a little test monitor I have and made some temporary wiring to connect it to the original loom.

Time to turn the cab on, and here's what I got...


Cab fired up for the first time in 20+ years

Wee the cab fired up, I got a good solid video image but something wasn't quite right. I had a loud tone constantly coming out of the speakers, and the the main playfield graphics were messed up. The game coined up, but the game wont start properly.



The above photo gives a better indication of what is being displayed on screen. Not great but in truth this was a better result than I had expected. I need to confirm all the cab wiring is correct at some point in the future. I tried the test mode switch which is supposed to show some gradient bars and confirm RAM and ROMs are in working order, but this doesn't seem to work. At this point I'm guessing its a game board fault, but due to the unknown state the cab has been in, I will be doing continuity test on the looms when I next get some time to work on the cab.

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Saturday, 20 April 2013

Fire Truck. Rear control panel overhaul
I decided that I would get the seat section of the cab completed first, leaving the main part of the cab for a bit later in the year when the weather is better as I definitely have some woodworking to do on this section of the cab and my space indoors is limited to say the least. Anyway I thought a good place to start was on the Control panel, below is a photo of how it currently looked.


Original rear CP condition.

As you can see, it was pretty grimey and one of the buttons was missing a cone and it was also broken. The steering wheel also wouldn't freely spin.
Below is a close up of the wheel showing the surface rust that had built up on the wheel over the years in storage.


Steering wheel before a clean up.

The steering wheel cap showed how clean the wheel could be and would have originally been. After a good scrub with a metal scourer and some metal polish I found in one of my old tool boxes it now had a very nice shine!


Steering Wheel with a shine!

The wheel has cleaned up lovely the Control Panel is clean but does have some signs of rust coming through, there's not much I can do about this, but hey the machine is 34 years old so its allowed to show some signs of age.


Rear CP after being cleaned up.

As you can see I've replaced the broken button and put a cone on it, but I will be replacing all three so they match before the project is over. I'm assuming the front Control Panel will come clean up into a similar condition. More on that when I get to the main cab.

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Saturday, 20 April 2013

Fire Truck. Rear seat clean up.

First up was the leg levellers on the cab, they were only threaded with a single nut on either side and as you can see below weren't very straight anymore they had sunk into the plywood under the load of someone heavy playing the game in its past life!


Original leg levellers bent up.

My solution to this was to put some large flat washers either side of the plywood to spread the load over a greater area. Photo below, hopefully this should now do the job better than the original.


New washers on the leg levellers spreading the load over a greater area.

As I've mentioned before, the artwork sides of the cab are actually a laminate which is stuck to the main plywood cab. This has now come loose and the sides are 'flapping' about. I need to glue these back on so I don't damage them when moving the cab about. This will hopefully be done in the next update.


Laminate side coming away from the cabinet.

As for the actual cab clean up, I decided to go down the T-Cut route which is a polish for cleaning cars. It turned out really well, I'm very happy with the results. Photos below:


Front view, CP and coin door removed.


Oh yes! This is clean.


Bad photo, but more of the same.

I really have to look into getting some new T-Moulding now as this is going to let the cab down as it is pretty heavily marked. I don't want to stick the side laminate back on without removing the T-Mould so this would be a good reason to go for new and make the cab really stand out.

Also as you can see from the photos, the coin door is removed and the metal plate that connects the seat to the main cab has also been removed. I will post updates when I have cleaned and re-sprayed these items. More to come soon if the sun keeps shining, I've had a great day today working on the cab, thanks for reading.

EDIT 2. small photos now. EDIT. Sorry the photos are so large, I copied them straight from my blog which is hosted on google and they're massive. Usually I can copy my posts direct from google but that doesn't work with this forum software so I've had to do it manually.

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More updates coming soon