Asteroids PCB Repair - Classic Arcade Game Troubleshooting 

That makes sense... you could definitely work through the logic of these things, like you said you just kind of need to figure out what each chip SHOULD do when it gets a signal then find the one that isn't acting right!

Yeah that is really the only reason we're able to fix any of these, the schematics are very complete. Thanks for watching Kingsman, we appreciate it!

They're exactly the same, the only difference is they're made out of paper

@@LyonsArcade They're actually pretty well made, but not for commercial use of course. Bottom line is that I can't afford a real Asteroids or Defender, so this is my only ticket to getting to play the two games I truly loved as a teen at the time. Hell I've been waiting like 35 years for this, no shit, it's like a mini dream come true. But my real dream is a Stargate, that was the game I was crazy for, the Defender is close but not the same. So maybe someday that'll happen too. If it weren't for Arcade 1 UP, I'd be missing out on all the fun so I'm grateful that they filled this niche for us G Xers that remember that era. And the games play just the same, they look and feel and even sound the same, so is the fun factor. Cheers.

Thanks Edward, I hope you're on the mend soon !

I think everybody has a certain game that it's possible for them to get really good at, maybe that just wasn't your game :) Thank you for watching Vegas!

Thank you John, we appreciate you watching!

Thanks Russell, we appreciate you watching. Stay tuned!

They seem really complicated but you can break it down to smaller parts to figure it out.

Thank you Doug, we have a good time filming them!

Glad to help!

Yeah, very frustrating!

Thanks Hans, glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks Tommy! We were glad to get it working. We have another repair video coming up soon.

@@LyonsArcade actually not responding to this specific comment it's actually a direct reply to you directly for this video. And others of course so this would not apply to you but other people that are technically minded. And some questions for others. You'll see what I mean. Didn't know how to say that really sorry if it's a mishmash! Watching something right now because I'm not feeling good and it's affecting how I'm thinking and processing information. But I'm here enough to comment and let you know some things. And a few others other people may comment on if they have it already this may have already been brought up? Didn't have a chance to scan through with her comments so I don't mean to be redundant. and I'm not being critical what's you know what something is and how it works it may help you in the long run right? The abbreviation CS is Chip select. Start out in Old School logic of course and yes is still used in modern times of course. Note how you said cable select. Now if you had some sort of arcade cabinet or machine with two hard drives and you were talking about that. there is that term for selecting master-slave hard drives or other devices. there is an option for what's called a cable select 4 Master Slave drives is what I was getting at. Where are working on a computer look for the older hard drive a few minutes before the video? LOL. More seriously back to the other things I was going to bring up. I do agree about using a socket when replacing a chip I do it where practical there are times that doesn't work well I doubt you would run into it because usually Plenty of space above the chip. But sometimes there might be in clearance issue in terms of space above the circuit board or card which ever. When I build custom projects I would always try to use a socket for anything that I could. And I did try to go for a modular approach much like on pinball machines and other machines that you've shown in your videos. I coined a phrase for myself future feature connector. Or FFC. Modular is the way to go. I'm sure you've heard of Jama arcade machines right? Also I'm sure you've heard of the super super guns or somewhere. basically a machine that would take the arcade cabinet hardware like it work cartridge. Basically turning a arcade hardware store board what have you into a a cartridge for a Oversized game console. Does anyone have experience with these? or would it be better to emulate? I know I'm on an arcade video but it's just I would like to be able to play some classic games! The maintain is budget and also room available is virtually nil. Although I will be having a Raspberry Pi in my entertainment center. which would be suitable for that. Emulation that is I know that's a dirty word in the field but.... Sometimes that's the way you have to do things When you're on a budget crunch. And a space in resource crunch as well. which would also basically be my gaming system plus doing other tasks simultaneously. Also that would allow me to use original controllers for the original games via USB converters. Also I have carpal tunnel in both wrists and my plan is to use one of the newer not newest but you get the idea. PlayStation controllers as I replacement for the mouse and also map all the buttons to whatever functions I would need at a time. And since it's Bluetooth that could work for just about anything. With the proper doggle that is. Also would be good for remote control of media through VLC media player and other applications in Windows. Not to mention with the Raspberry Pi and Android as well. Also you lost me the referee play in the Air Command Center that could run everything in the whole place. So that means the PlayStation controller could be your remote for your system as well such as one button might be audio mute. Since you would have the capability with the road for a pint of Bluetooth Wi-Fi and whatever else with the right Hardware that is. Basically over systems would be interconnected in one way or another. Trying to set up VLC in Windows for remote control at this time and ran into a bit of issues you could say. I know a lot of this does not have to do with gaming and such but it just goes to show send should be modular. Also with those beeps and such for Diagnostics. I did not realize that they would have something like that in those earlier arcade machines! That actually reminds me of the PC speaker beeps that you would get if there's an issue which is still pertinent. And also for the longest I did not realize that some systems had different tones of Beats instead of just a series of beeps. But some actually used short and Long. I did not run into either of those two things for a long time even though I've been working on computers a long time. And tell you where I crossed it you may not realize it. Also I know somebody that work on Arcade equipment and machines. Years ago. Lost touch of course. But he told me that honor some arcade cabinets. Modern ones at least more modern than the ones you're talking about. Mostly. don't know after what year this would apply? But he told me that you would take a certain value of resistor after disconnecting the I think it was the Green video. Connect that resistor to the input Florida green? Video. And connect a test lead to the other end of the resistor. and the monitor would act as an oscilloscope for troubleshooting. Also I heard from the same person. One of the biggest issues with power supplies was with the voltage sense lines. sometimes not actually sensing proper voltage and causing all sorts of issues. even though that no harm would be done Under these operating conditions. And also he was having a lot of power supplies supposably not working and turns out they were not being tested under any load at all. I'm referring to switch modes of course. there are still some power supplies that require a minimum load to even work but More often than not now it's not as many of them. even he told me that when it stays at a minimum load it's like the people that were checking them Didn't even look at the label! Also is there a adapter that would be readily available that would be able to be plugged into a PC power supply to be used in something else that to be used in something else that would to be used in something else that would use the same voltages. And we just break out to a cable or possibly board with terminals of some sort I'm not talkin about it something that would be used for like a bench power supply but that would be installed in a piece of equipment permanently. Again this is for modularity of things. so that you could use an off-the-shelf PC power supply and if you ever had a problem you can just swap it out. either or if in the future you needed A larger power supply for the application due to upgrades to your system. Again this is 40 retainment Center. and also to other cabinets. including one by my desk And yes part of it has to do with the computer of course. also planning on building a internet router / whatever / whatever would also be running VPN Adblock and others. possibly also would be an NAS. possibly as well as a Google voice setup. And more. Also any surplus power will be brought out through the rear of the case. As in power Supply.

Thanks Neil, see you on the next one!

Not really. Just enough to get in trouble :)

Probably!

Thanks, Will!

Thanks Darren!

It still stands up, when people see it they know what to do and what it is, plus it has that Atari logo which makes it even cooler!

Thanks Ed, we appreciate you watching!

Thanks David, we'll try to do more Logic Probe stuff in the future :)

Thanks, we appreciate it!

Thank you Ricardo!

Thanks Jason, we appreciate it!

You can do it :)

The hard part is finding the time to tape it all :)

I'll try to show a little more....

Yup, the Big Blue strikes again :)

I'm not very good compared to the guys who do these all the time, they'll blow you away :)

I can't get my Asteroids Dx board to do anything... so yeah, you got me beat!

We don't really do repairs Jeff, because we stay so busy working on our own stuff. Did you check all the fuses in the bottom of the cabinet?

Yes, the previous owner plugged in the PCB backwards and blew out all the fuses on the deflection board (which I've already fixed) but the board itself is dead. Power is correct everywhere. CPU is probably toast.

Yeah you'll probably need a logic probe to track it down, did you try putting the game into test mode to see if you get the cross hatch or any error beeps? Do you have a different board you can swap in to make sure the monitor's alright?

It was in pretty good shape :)

Unfortunately Bill i'm not competently qualified to understand or describe the difference in those signals, sorry.

@@LyonsArcade its ok thanks for trying

Yes a Pocket Programmer is a great little machine, we used one for years. You just have to make sure you can hook it up to your machine, our last one only used a parallel port!

We rebuilt the power supply and had it nice and strong.

@@LyonsArcade I really appreciate you sharing all your knowledge and experience with us. And thanks for all the effort you put into rescuing and restoring these classic games. Hope you get it working my friend.

by 'no signal out' i meant it was completely missing, there was a high (or pulsing, can't remember) signal going in and the output was completely dead, no ground or +5.

@@LyonsArcade I see, my misunderstanding. When I watched the rest I was surprised it fixed that issue because I was thinking the odds that a different circuit using another gate in the same IC was the actual fault 😂 What you clarified makes a lot more sense to me now 👍.

Yes those chips are exactly the same, the "N" at the end is a designator that the company that made the chip put on it. So it's the same chip made by different companies.... we order all our chips from www.Newark.com , they're close to us so we always get all the packages the next day with regular shipping cost.

Thank you for the quick response, my system is doing almost the same as your board did in the video but only fails N4 so I am trying to narrow it down. If the ram chip is bad will i need to do anything to replace the ram, will i need a new chip burnt in or can I just order the ram chip and replace it. I just replaced the ROMs to get to this point. Thanks again for the help.

No you don't have to program anything, the only chips that have anything programmed on them are Rom chips. The ram chip is probably soldered into the board however, so you might need a socket and a soldering iron.

You can get one at www.HobbyRoms.com

I think it probably could, if you got used to how they're supposed to look... might be worth a quick one over at the beginning to see if you see any obvious shorts on the camera! Thanks for watching as always!

No James, I'm not good enough at it to teach class.

Thanks Bobby, i appreciate it!

There's about four ways you can do it. You can buy a silkscreened control panel but they're very expensive, it's how the originals were. Or you can touchup the paint on the original, or you can buy a sticker that just goes over the part with paint, or you can put a "full wrap" Overlay on it, basically it's a big black sticker with the artwork on the appropriate part. This one is that 'full wrap' overlay, it covers the parts that were originally painted and all of the black paint area too.

@@LyonsArcade where do you get the silk screen? I did buy a sticker but I don't know if I want to use it. Paint is pretty bubbled up on mine. Love your videos.

Thanks Macfixer, I've never figured the bits out....

It was an inside joke, basically the game was resetting, and I eventually figured out that the 'big blue' cap in the bottom was bad and that fixed that particular cabinet... most people replace that cap first so I was just making fun of myself for not checking it when that's the first thing everybody says to check.

The Meteor pinball? We sold all of them (we've had about 5!)

If it's really high pitched and really quick, and the led's are pulsing at the same speed as the beep, it's just resetting over and over again, you'll have to isolate the Vector State from the cpu side and see if it still does it, to see if it's a vector generator problem or a cpu problem, it's pretty complex by that point. If you watch some of our Asteroids repair videos here you'll see how to do that though, you lift a pin on one of the chips to split the board in half.

@@LyonsArcade Thanks a bunch, I will try that soon!!

I didn't know I said that was a problem, if I did sorry, i wish I could take it back thanks for watching Opcode66!

@@LyonsArcade it was the first chip you looked at and swapped in the video. Not trying to nitpick. I really appreciate and enjoy your videos. Just started watching them two days ago. Thsnks for making them!

I think your problem is 100% in your monitor... check all the fuses on the monitor deflection board, and resolder all the connections on that board. You've lost the top half of your deflection which is a common problem if the transistors that mount on the side of the monitor are either shorted or not connecting good to those connectors on the deflection board.

Thank you for your reply. Good advice. I'll proceed with renewed focus on the monitor and deflection board as mentioned.

Did you find anything else out?

Not yet. I got a hold of a soldering iron but can't figure out how to best access the deflection board. Do I need to remove monitor to access the deflection board and/or the monitor transistors? How do I know if a fuse is blown? Does it look "burned" or do I need to get a multi-meter?

You don't have to take the monitor out, but it'd probably make it a lot easier. The deflection board is on the left side of the cabinet, you can reach it from the back and take the screws out that hold the board in. The fuses sometimes will look black but it's better to check with a multimeter, use the ohms or resistance setting and see if they're connected from one end to another (they should be).

Now I can't clean it, thanks! See you on the next video!

Absolutely. Basically the problem with any of this stuff is always a 'bad connection' somewhere, even if it's inside a chip :) So the caps dry out and no longer connect the way they should, or a transistor or gate inside a chip no longer works the way it should, etc. If you can fix amps you can absolutely fix these.

I knew somebody would know how to shortcut what I was doing :)

@@LyonsArcade i came here to say that a bit was stuck and that is why it was one off. that happens a lot with memory, but someone beat me to it....a year ago....lol

That sounds right!

Where were you last week???!!!!???? :)

We work on them here in our shop, we're in Rock Hill, SC Thanks for watching Gaynell!

I'm not lip smacking, it's the camera, and I filmed this years ago so you're complaining about something that can't be repaired. Why do you do that? Don't be defensive, just ask yourself, why do I complain about things that can't be fixed? It would probably help you out in other areas of your life, because you probably do that often and piss all your family and friends off.