Patient: Poker Machine UR, manufacturer unknown
Technician: Chris M
Problem: Game will not power on.
Troubleshoot: This poker game is in very nice shape other than a broken corner on the coin box door. I’m used to seeing these poker’s in horrid shape. This one was so clean I was hopeful for an easy fix. I unloaded the game in my garage and gave it a quick once over. Checked all the fuses and they were fine. Looked over all the connections and found a bad crimp on the single crimp wire near the transformer, the wire just pulled right out. Must have been a bad factory crimp as the wires were stapled in place and not easy to move around.
Solution: Pulled off the bad connector and extracted the pin. Crimped a new male pin in place and put the connector back in place. Powered it on and game fired right up with a nice picture on the monitor. I played a few hands and everything seems to be working just fine. I have no space for this game, so it will be hitting the sale page. Drop me a line if you have any interest in a nice working Poker Machine.

Not too exciting I suppose, but Galaga is a true classic and worthy of recognition, even if it’s just about the cpo. This is one of the Namco reproduction overlays that I picked up awhile back to use in my Gaplus project. I have a Galaga UR and wanted to add Gaplus to the cab. I figured I could just install one of the double jamma adapters from Mikes Arcade and have both games in my Galaga cabinet. Gaplus uses an 8-way joystick and I wasn’t about to hack up my nice Galaga panel, so I picked up a crappy one and cut a hole for the 8-way joystick. (see that post here) This overlay is destined for that panel, if I ever get around to finishing the project!

After numerous unsuccessful attempts to sell my non-working Bud Tapper upright, I have decided to bite the bullet and restore this game myself. Once it’s cleaned up and brought back to life, it should bring a few bucks on eBay. Even with the depressed market on video games, a few classics still bring in more than average and Tapper is one of those games. (more…)

Victim: Exidy Clay Pigeon upright no. 17970

This rare piece of arcade history came my way thanks to Jon Jamashid, or evil exidy on the forums. He was moving cross country and had to unload some games. I ended up with Clay Pigeon and Hit N Miss. I shipped them all the way from Florida to the Midwest because Exidy cabs are somewhat scarce in these parts. I’m a huge fan of the Exidy 440 series of games and was looking forward to installing my multi-Exidy kit into a cabinet. (more…)

The Tron control panel overlay by Willis was a decent attempt at capturing the feel of the original cabinet design in an aftermarket product. A step up from some of the random artwork jumbles commonly seen in bootleg artwork, this cpo was produced by Willis in 1983 with quality materials and an attention to detail. While the artwork is vaguely similar to the original overlay, there are some notable differences. (more…)

At some point in this crazy hobby you’ll find yourself buying something on eBay or through one of the newsgroups. It’s a part or piece you’ve finally found after months or even years of searching. The last piece of the puzzle to complete a restoration! Except, the guy selling doesn’t care as much as you do, and it shows in the most painful way. In the packing. (more…)

I’ve been working on a Reactor restoration for a friend, a very patient friend, because I think it was about an eternity ago that I started the project. I plan to wrap it up this winter and thought I would share some pictures of the artwork before it all gets applied. It’s very nice stuff. (more…)

I got lucky with this game pickup, right place right time and all. Way back in November 2004, I was returning a Uhaul trailer to a location in Cicero after having just hauled home a load of games. I noticed some commotion in the Uhaul garage and heard some familiar sounds. I went to check it out and there were two employees playing an upright Galaga, pretty funny to see at the time because it was cold out and they were bundled up in winter gear. (more…)

Patient: Vectorbeam Space War UR
Technicians: Mark H, Bill K and Chris M
Problem: Slightly shaky graphics during game play.
Troubleshoot: After discussing the problem with Mark H, I pulled the monitor and got it over to his place for testing. He didn’t find any issue with the monitor and suspected the ribbon cable, which I hadn’t brought along. Apparently the ribbon cable is a common failure point on the old Vectorbeam and Cinematronics games, similar to those crappy MCR ribbon cables that are always brittle and prone to failure. Good idea to just replace it. Here’s the old red ribbon cable attached to the monitor/pcb. (more…)

Patient: Warlords upright
Technicians: Bill K and Chris M
Problem: Continuous tone with intermittent screeching noise. Volume must be turned all the way down to play the game comfortably. Listen to this sound bite on You Tube and you’ll get the idea.
Troubleshoot: We first attempted to swap in a known working AR II board, but there was no change. Next step is to check the audio oscillations to see where they are originating from. We checked the audio test points on the pcb with an oscilloscope by hooking one lead to the test point and the other to ground. This was the resulting square wave display.

The scope leads were then connected to the sound test points on the AR II, with the same result, except the square wave was amplified (larger). This ruled out the AR II pcb as the cause of the problem because the oscillations were the same. The noise was originating from somewhere else. We had to take a closer look at the schematics which I didn’t have on hand, but could easily find at the arcade archive. The schematics show that the audio section on the pcb can be traced back to leg 37 on the pokey, a likely culprit as they are known to fail. Quick history of the name…”The pokey is an I/O chip used by Atari in many of the classic era games, its name comes from POtentiometer and KEYboard, as it was commonly used to sample (ADC) potentiometers (such as game paddles) and scan matrices of switches (such as a computer keyboard).” – Wikipedia. We powered down and swapped out the pokey with a known good chip, but there was no change. Isolating pin 37 on the pokey, responsible for audio output, also gave us the same wave display result on the o-scope. This ruled out the pokey.

Since it appeared that the pokey was good, the likely problem was now with the audio portion on the pcb. That was all we could do at this point because I didn’t have any of the audio amp chips on hand to replace or piggy-back onto the existing chips. Bill took the board home to change out the chips and capacitors from the audio section. I took this opportunity to lay the game down and add some gliders (levelers with nylon). This would allow me to move the game around a lot easier without damaging my floor like the metal levelers do.

Picked up the repaired Warlords pcb from Bill along with a spare pcb Bill had on hand, just in case. Installed the original pcb into the game and fired it up. Same problem with absolutely no change. Installed the spare pcb and got the same noise issue, but at least I was able to verify it was working and also potentially rule out the pcb as the noise problem. At this point I was a little irritated and because I use tokens to run my game room, the coin door on the cab was open to allow me to easily add credits. I closed the door a little rough and got a fluctuation in the sound, interesting. Opened the door and noticed the sound fluctuated as I moved it around. Jiggled the coin door wires and got the same changes. So now it appears that the connection to the coin door is the issue. With so many wires and connectors to check, this is going to be a pain. Bill stopped by later that night to poke around at the coin door. He moved wires, jiggled coin mechs, pulled on coin shutes and then moved the slam switch. Huge change occurred. Bill pulled the leaf apart on the switch and the sound vanished, bingo!

Solution: Slam switch on coin door was closing/sticking with door movement causing leaf switch contact and the horrid sound. A simple piece of blue tape between the switch contacts keeps them from closing and the sound is gone. I guess it pays to check ALL the simple solutions before running the repair gauntlet, but at least I learned a few things.