Main > Everything Else

The original frankenpanel?

<< < (2/4) > >>

Howard_Casto:

--- Quote from: SavannahLion on February 19, 2012, 03:29:52 am ---
--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on February 19, 2012, 12:56:04 am ---You've got to wonder what the point to that thing was.  Wouldn't an atari service technician have access to all the atari arcade cabinets to test things on?

--- End quote ---

Uh..... Compactness? There's only so much room for everything. Not only that, the repair technician's job is to repair and fix the boards, not to play the games.

--- End quote ---

Nah man... I'm still not seeing it.


Maybe I'm misunderstanding where this would be used, but boards go back to the factory to be repaired right?  At the time atari only had about 10-20 arcade games, and most of those shared the same cabinet or controls.  It might take up a little more room, but when you are working in a giant warehouse and they are churing cabs out every day it seems like it would be a lot easier to troubleshoot if you just pulled an empty cab off the line and plugged it in.  You'd be using the real wiring harness, monitor and controls afterall and in the days of mostly analog components on a board, those differences in hardware could bring up different issues. 

The device makes perfect sense on paper, I just don't know how practical it would be in real life.  The modern example I would give is a hard drive tester.  There is such a thing as a hard drive tester... it's much more portable than a pc, even a laptop and it efficiently reads a drive for bad sectors.  But it's totally worthless.  You'll be hard pressed to find a computer repair shop that has one.  Why?  Well you can also test a harddrive by plugging it into a pc and running a scan.  You can even use a usb adaptor which is even more convenient.  The reason this method is preferred is because even though the tester does it's job, people are going to want to try to recover their data anyway, and you need a ... (wait for it) computer to do that. 

I guess what I'm saying is even if you manage to get it fixed by using the ultra atari super gun, you are going to have to test it on a real machine anyway.  It just makes sense to me to keep testing it on the real machine and avoid a middle step. 

My guess is the arcade industry agrees with me because afaik this is the only device of it's type aside from a more sensible super gun.

CheffoJeffo:
Boards typically did not go back to the factory for repair. That's why Atari (and other companies) wrote repair manuals and made test kits for ops. Bally did similar stuff, although I have only actually seen their pin test kits.

I would guess that if a game was out of circulation for as long as a HO repair would take, then it would make more economic sense to just buy a new board.

SavannahLion:
Cheffo hit the nail on the head, boards did not go back to the factory for repair. Parts lists, schematics, "The Book" all point squarely towards field repair. I recall times I went with my father to repair shops where PCBs were racked floor to ceiling awaiting repair. Repair shops back in those days were not the pretty and expansive places that Best Buy would have you believe. Space was always tight and tools were usually multi-purposed. Having a handful of cabinets on hand for the express purpose of testing is just madness.

Your example for a hard drive tester is piss poor and misunderstood. I've used the hard drive tester myself. They're not used individually, they're used in clusters. I operated a bank of 100 drive testers for the express purpose of testing and "burning in" drives before putting them in PC's. The reason why full blown pc's weren't used is well.... We weren't in the business of recovery and start-up and shutdown cycles would've eaten too much time at that volume. A small repair shop has no need for one because, yes the pc pulls double duty and, unlike arcade cabs, don't take up an obscene amount of space.

Xiaou2:
I agree with the masses.

 Its probably rare that board were sent back to the factory.

 However, as a company, you have to understand how a company works Logically.
A bunch of games are made in assembly lines, in a crowded and somewhat dangerous enviornment.

 Not only would it be difficult to get one of the cabs off the line for testing... but, what happens when all the cabs have finished their run, and are out of the factory?

 And even withstanding a lot of other related arguments... you also have to realize, that getting in and out of a cabinet isnt efficient at all.   Some board mountings are not easy to hook and unhook. First you have to unlock the cab, (wheres the keys? lost keys in the process?) then you have to unlock and unscrew areas to get access to boards.  TX-1 for example, has a custom metal crate that must be un-screwed in about 4 places, to open it up to get to the PCB.  You also risk bending and or breaking wires on cabinets from too much in-and-out use at the factory.  Also, you may make it look like the cabinet was used... when instead, it was supposed to be squeaky clean new.

 Some guy was probably given this, sat in a single room, running constant tests.  Either before, after, and or both.  And or as said, it was probably sold to Ops who had very large routes, game mechanics for hire, and or Atari's own remote testing requirements (such as on-site arcade prototype testing).

Well Fed Games:
I want to MAME it.  :afro:

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

Go to full version