Gotta love the USPS in my hood.
So I got a few LM305 voltage regulators because it seemed like that was the crispy element on my AR-II.
Cutting the old one out sucked.
A tenacious little bug looking thing that Atari must have felt needed to be shoved as close to the pcb as possible for soldering.
No big deal when fighting two legs, but when you get to this many it is a real PITA.
While I was waiting for those to arrive I discovered that the main board harness connector was cracking.
Old parts sent to me from a friend in Canada to the rescue!
If I don't go one wire at a time with this kind of crap I'm sure to screw it up royally.
I was still paranoid even doing it like this even.
So after I got through that it seemed like I was ready to do something real and put the whole mess together and power it up to see what explodes first.
50 shades of paranoia.
I have had such drama with ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- smoking or having things not work at all that every time I get to this point it is terrible blend of anticipation and cringing.
I lost track of how many times I checked voltages and every connector.
I figured this freakshow merited having something close to an original spinner now (which I couldn't find anywhere for quite some time) so I kind of built one.
New ball bearing wearing frame from arcadeshop, original dial base, enocder, cap and shaft from Stephen of arcadefixit fame, and repro dial and a whole big pile of $$ later I have what should work for that.
And the moment of truth...
I flipped the switch, heard the fan on the Alan-1 transistor block fire up, watched the spot-killer LED on the deflection board go on- then off! and a few seconds later-
Holy ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- I have a functional 6100.
Well, mostly functional.
No frakkin red.
Of course I'm getting less scared of messing with things at this point since I'm getting comfortable with soldering out and in components that I have blown up through sophmoric decisions, so why not play a little?!
This was a lot less dramatic than that because only trying to adjust the individual color drive pots on the neck board led me to the diagnosis of a cracked trim pot, unsurprisingly on the red drive.
Not used to pots that look like these things but I happened to have a 500 ohm one of a style I could make fit so what the hell.
Why wait for one in the mail?!
A little time huffing solder fumes, reassemble and paranoia check everything again- twice- even though I hadn't touched anything but the neck board- and give it another go.
Hot damn!
Now, I have to say that the first setup I built for this, using what is now Barry S's Amplifone monitor project and just any old 19" tube with a properly rewound yoke, the now difficult/impossible to acquire USB-DVG, and Mario's brilliance with the Raspberry Pi AdvMame version and Chad's vector menu worked and looked great- it is still what happily resides in the horizontal cabinet I still have to finish.
But, this current monstrosity, using a fine dot pitch tube, rewound yoke, Franken6100, and ArcadeJason's multiboard...?
WOW is this image crisp.
Having not played Tempest on an original machine in decades I was MORE than satisfied with what I had put together first for this cabinet, but the current iteration here is next level repro from my seat.
Granted, the software for this board (which Jason's co-conspirator Ralf is developing) is still in beta but holy crap is it something to behold already.
Looking forward to when Ralf has time to work on updates (which hopefully will include Cosmic Chasm and Tac/Scan in their arcade form- maybe even Quantum?!) because this is outstanding.
Time to stuff all this into the cabinet it will reside in.
If nothing else with this project I can say that my eyes have been opened as regards putting together a vector capable machine.
For a good number of years after getting into this hobby I figured proper vector game play was unobtainable for me here.
Buying any original ones out here is pretty much out of the question (I know of ONE original vector machine in the islands) and with all the mystique surrounding "a true vector monitor" I had bought into the ---That which is odiferous and causeth plants to grow--- that outside of original parts you are TSOL.
Not true.
It is entirely possible to build your own vector monitor with an old consumer tube, a properly rewound yoke, and some occassionally available (but also soon to be more currently available) parts.
If you really do want to build one with new updated tech then keep an eye on the site vectorheadarcade.
The site appears to be getting rebuilt as I'm typing but at some point you can get in line for all the parts you need to build an Amplifone clone (but better!) monitor.
Except the tube of course.
Barry just bought an amazing assortment of machinery to be able to really fire up the production line so hopefully soon he gets time to get started.
In the meantime go find yourself an old consumer tube with as LOW a horizontal resistance/inductance value as you can find.
My experience here tells me that a measurement even up to 2.0 ohms for the inner windings works.
You need to rewind the outer vertical coils anyway so their original values are largely irrelevant, unless you can find one that is already between 0.6 and 1.0 because then you could leave it alone.
If you follow the 100-120 wraps recommendation for rewinding the vertical ferrites you will get there though.
Vector joy is within the grasp.