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| I'm on a cabinet building Rampage! |
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| bobbyb13:
Not even one toad last night. I've had 10-12 hr days this week and then 4-5 hrs of sleep a night dealing with wild pigs, a hunting dog pack gone feral (and chasing the aforementioned)- and the damn toads. We'll see if they make up for it tonight. |
| bobbyb13:
It is impressive how long it has been since this project got any love. Wow- The GOOD thing about being disgusted with the horizontal vector cabinet is that it has freed up time to work on this one in earnest again. I had loaned out the harness to Ken at GoldenAge so that he could document it and build one for another guy and that came back to me a little while ago and in the interim I got to go through a few other things I suppose I didn't post anything about. It gave me time to give the monitor chassis a cap kit- K7000- quite easy it turns out- and also to sort out making sure the marquee, speaker panel, and bezel glass all fit the way they should. All came together nicely. Pardon the squishiness. I hate that when it happens. I figured it would be good to check on the power supply voltages and the original linear thing is really unhappy. But I'm impatient, so while I'm waiting to make sure I can rebuild the original one I got an adapter to use a modern switcher and get this thing playing in the short term. Learned some interesting stuff about my machine once I knew I had clean power. 1. Someone had wired the AC filter in with the line and load sides in reverse. The printing on it was so worn that you couldn't make out what it said but after I looked at it longer it was obvious that someone hacked it up. It made the most interesting smell after it had been powered up for a few minutes and got the protection circuit in the Happ SWPS ticking. 2. Somehow the entirety of the harness connector to the power supply was crossed up. I think 3 out of 20 pins were in the right place. Really irritating since I had a beautiful new harness in there and had to fix everything that I hadn't sent to Ken. No wonder to me now that something on my Sounds Good board blew up a year ago when this first came to me. I spent a LONG time going through the whole thing aftwerwards (thankfully I got the factory manual- including the schematics- along with the machine) and got the harness back to where it should live in the cabinet and secured- so it should be good to go. After all of THAT I powered it up with the harness disconnected from everything and checked voltages at all the pins connecting to stuff and it looked good. So I plugged it all in and fired it up. Apparently the Test Switch must have been in the closed position because I was met with a gorilla growl and I walked around the machine to see a rolling blue screen asking me about what test I would like to perform. And then ran out of time. So now I need to actually finish with connecting the controls (did I mention that I rebuilt those crazy Monroe joysticks?) so that I can actually interact with the machine. That and sort out why the sync appears to not be perfect for some reason. I have read that Rampage uses seperate positive H and V signal so I need to have a closer look. I have also heard (compliments of Todd Tuckey) that possibly the harness connection is to fault. Hope to have some time for this soon because I really would like to be playing it! |
| Mike A:
Nice work. Good to see progress. |
| Zebidee:
One of my favourites - Always surprises me though, just how small the monitor is. I never seem to remember that from kid days. More space for suggestive bezel art! Keep up the good work. |
| bobbyb13:
Thanks Mike. Progress on this one feels particularly sweet. You'll need to tell me when you can bring the kids out here for a visit and play it. --- Quote from: Mike A on June 14, 2023, 07:47:49 am ---Nice work. Good to see progress. --- End quote --- If it didn't come with such a hilarious bezel that was still intact Andrew it would have a 27" in it already. :) --- Quote from: Zebidee on June 14, 2023, 06:39:56 pm ---One of my favourites - Always surprises me though, just how small the monitor is. I never seem to remember that from kid days. More space for suggestive bezel art! Keep up the good work. --- End quote --- Got to spend more time on this after dinner which is fun since the crescendo is palpable at this point- I was brave enough to turn it on again, but felt that I should replace this thing first. Between the corrosion and the Dee Snider nature of the thing it was making me nervous. Once again I got it turned on and it rolled immediately into a test screen. Props to Todd at TNT for his brief aside in a video about the screen rolling from the harness connector on the monoboard being off a hair. I thought I might have some sync drama but I reseated the connector and got a stable picture this time around. Whew. And so I tried to go through a bit of the test scenario with a half-assed joystick connection and then read the fine print: Hit slam switch to advance through test menu. Well who would've looked for the existence of a slam switch? Especially when there was a big lock hasp screwed to the door where the damn switch should be?! Turn off machine, remove stupid unnecessary lock hasp and try to find a slam switch in pile of detritus from ridiculous basement raid like a year ago- Amazing... Install switch (was the fact the ground was just cut open have something to do with the coin switches not working?!) reconnect harness and then get... Nothing- still. What a mess all this other crap is. At least it is just swapping some pins around. Gave up on coin door for the moment so that I coulsd get some controls wired up. The sticks were a mess but I got them back to functional with some love and bleeding. Best part of the rebuild activity is how silly all of the art is. The control panel is nearly as good as the bezel in sheer silliness. My local hardware joint didn't happen to have black 3/4" 8/32 carriage bolts and since I can't wait for ordered ones to arrive I needed to improvise because I am sick of just looking at this cabinet and not playing it. I had only marked the joystick signal wires so I had no idea which buttons were "Jump" and "Punch" so it took a little bit of messing with it running to sort out. Once I had done that however... It runs- and all the controls work the way they should. Still to sort through is the coin door and sound system. I hear some white noise, but only through the right side speaker so the sound amp needs something. And I see no lights at all on the Sounds Good board and have no game sound at all so that needs work too. Have a stack of caps and IC for the Sounds Good but will need to see about rebuilding the dual amp. Closer still! |
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