Q*bert. A man and his grail... FINISHED !!!

[level42]

1) Yes this fits very very nice.

2) OK....so I measured everything to make there are correct contact and no weird shorts.....and insert a fresh battery.

[level42]

Before we go on: I had to make one bridging wire jumper to connect the battery to the PCB's minus, but I forgot to take a pic......



So.... let's check work....yes we have a nice battery supply on the "outer" PINs of the SRAMs at position 0 and 1 !

[level42]

Now let's apply power ! I checked the +5V, that it was not going in direction of the battery, and also the GND connection. Looked good, so let's power up.....and play some games to get some scores in the table....


And it works GREAT !!!! No Hi score loss so far at all, and I've tried powering up and down couple of times and not at the "most ideal" moments....


The result is the same hi-scores still being there.....

[Etienne MacGyver]

Sweet ! nice job.

I don't know why, buy i like this pic 

[level42]

Me too.....but I would have loved to see some blue bubbling stuff too

It does show that this super cap mod has been done quite some time ago as the yellowing of the board has been stopped by the super cap, you see the circle clearly. It's as if the board has been laying in the sun for some years.

The super cap mod is fine for an arcade environment where games are probably only shut down for the night. It will easily survive a week or so....when I removed it it still had 3,5V or so on it. However, It can happen that I have my games powered down for weeks......sometimes months.....although this sure hasn't happened with Q*bert, man I love this game !

The SRAMs used on Q*bert need at least 2V to keep the memory so this lithium cell I used wil last for at least ten years. We have the same kind of batteries in the fire control panels at work and regretfully I didn't have any "supplies I could borrow" because although we started installing those systems about 10 years ago, none of those cells show lower voltages than 3V, at least the old one's that I've seen.

[ckong]

Why did you remove r40? Is that because d3 was also gone?

[level42]

https://www.dragonslairfans.com/smfor/index.php?topic=2937.msg93148#msg93148



 

[level42]

Mmmm, maybe I didn't actually explain what R40's function is there....well my guess is that it either drops the voltage a bit when the original battery was being charged by the +5v when the cab was powered on.

That or it limited the charging current. Or both. Anyway, you don't want to have R40 when it is Discharging, not even when the original battery was there and this is why they included D3, this forms a "short cut" for the current when it's discharging (power off).

So...there's no need for it anymore since there's no charging going on anymore, in fact, if I would have left it there there would be charging going on, which is going to make the lithium cell go boom. Don't want that

[level42]

So.....where are we with Q*bee ?

Well....it's finished. Apart from two things really:

- the coin door, should be back from the sand blaster before the end of the month....I said there was no rush....of course I meant I wanted it yesterday, but you can't "push" a favor, right ?
- the missing marquee bracket

But I did all the other little things that still needed to be done. The ground straps, some wire guiding with ty-raps etc.

Here's the results:

1) Coin door area. I installed the coin counter for now, also mounted the remote pot-board...I love these. Yes not original but they're REALLY useful.

I "fixed" the Street Fighter marking in a very smart and quick way: I turned the bucket around. Done

2) The backside. As neat as it gets.

[level42]

1) Lower area

2) There's a "damage" in my marquee. A thin stripe. Not sure what it is/how it got there, it looks like a production failure. This (and the cracking CPO) are the "bliss" of storing art for too long....but I'll live with it...

I am very eagerly awaiting the CPO from the UK.

Also on the way from the UK should be a little PCB to improve the sync of the Q*bert board. The issue I have now is that when the cab is cold, there are tears over the screen. I can adjust it out, but then the picture is not perfectly aligned. Q*bert's sync signals are far from standard and this little PCB should fix it.

[level42]

and then........the marquee holder.

I was especially sick of it that it was missing because my good friend Thorsten had especially repro-ed it for me !!

But I _KNEW_ it had to be in the gameroom somewhere.

And this evening I decided to play a few games. Of course first Q*bert and then I went to play some Robotron.
I still hadn't noticed anything and I was playing the game, I got pretty far for my standards and got to play a little exited and felt something mentally touching my hand while I moved the sticks pretty wild.....it was the freaking marquee retainer !!!!

I had put it on the Joust/Robotron CP, upside down and shifted all the way back. This way, it was almost invisible !!!

Yippie !!!!!

So THIS will be fixed soon !!!

[level42]

Oops....forgot one picture

The lovely reproduced retainer

[Luigi]

LOL, when I read that the marquee retainer was missing I wasn't sure if I had done one for you or if that was something I had promised but never did 

Glad you found and I really hope it fits 

And yes, some arcade parts seem to have some serious camouflage ability and use to hide from our eyes, while still being in front of us

[level42]

Haha, well to be honest that very same thought crossed my mind !!!! Following that I checked some PMs and it got clear enough that you did do it and deep in my mind I just knew it too

BIG thanks for that again because it's simply unavailable anywhere else

Oh yes it fits perfectly, I already had it on the cab before I started the restauration

Hah, man it looked as if it belonged there, it's almost the perfect length and it lay such that it looked like just an edge between the control panel and bezel.....not that crazy that I missed it

[ckong]

If you are tired of working on your game, then you can lie down on the couch and read something: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/qbert/qbert.htm

Especially the links to some old magazine articles at the bottom of page 1 about Q*bert are fun/interesting to read. And there is some great artwork in those articles.