World Series: The Season SO CLOSE! Help!

[More Cowbell]

One of my favorite games growing up was World Series: The Season. I found someone relatively close by (55 miles) that had one in "as-is" condition for $150. It was complete with boards and everything looked in tact so I went for it. I got it home and found 4 of the 5 fuses blown so I replaced all of them and checked all the connections. I fired it up and SUCCESS, I have nice looking video of the attract screens. I coined it up and pressed 1P and the screen went blue. It doesn't play blind or anything and I can't get out of the blue screen without restarting. I reseated and cleaned the chips and tested the voltages. My 5v looks good all around now that I adjusted it a bit (up to 5.1v). My 12v is down around 10.8v. Any ideas what is causing this blue screen when the game actually goes to start? I tried getting into the diagnostic screens and can get there, but then it won't allow me to actually change or check anything.

[ChadTower]

First thing to do is figure out why that 12v is so low.  That's too low to drive the 12v circuit, and fixing the 12v may be the cure.

I love this game, BTW, I used to play Home Run Derby by them quite a bit.  Love that springy sideways stick for hitting.

[More Cowbell]

I'm guessing there's a bad chip on the board so I bit the bullet and ordered a "new" board from quarterarcade.com. It was only $52 shipped and I'll have my old board for parts if I ever need them. The other thing I needed was a cpo since the old one is trashed. I couldn't find one on any site and couldn't even find the artwork for it anywhere. I decided to email TNT to see if they had a way of getting one and the guy emailed me back in minutes (at 10p mind you) to say he had a NOS cpo for $10 + $6 shipping. Sweet! I should have a fully working and looking good World Series for just a little over $200 total. Better deals have been had, but I'm happy with that.

[ChadTower]

I'd go a step further and use the working board for proper example readings at various points to try and ID the problem on the old board.

[More Cowbell]

Good point. Swapping out chips should ID the culprit if it is indeed a bad chip.

[ChadTower]

Don't be too surprised if it's not on the board - a small voltage drop like that can be caused by a bad pin on an edge connector or something causing a small increase in resistance where there shouldn't be one.

[More Cowbell]

The 12v is mostly used for the speakers, isn't it? The sound seems to be working fine as I can hear the "Thank you, very much" when i coin up. Also, that's the only thing that works when the screen goes blue, I can keep coining up and hearing the voice.

[ChadTower]

I have no idea what that board is doing with the 12v.  I'm not familiar with that board at all.

[More Cowbell]

Well I received the cpo. It was packed well and arrived quickly, the only problem was that it was not World Series: The Season. It looked to be World Series II. Close but no cigar and dissapointing to say the least. I'm shipping it back and will need to get another somehow. I found the artwork through JoyMonkey (thank you very much) but it needs some cleaning up. Hopefully my Photoshop skillz are up to the challenge. My new board should be here any day as it was shipped out Friday.

[More Cowbell]

The new board showed up yesterday so I set it aside until I had the time to install it without kids and other chores to distract me. I had a bad feeling as I was disconnecting the old board and reconnecting the new board since nothing ever seems to be easy. I fired it up and it works great. I played two full games right away (won one and lost one dammit). I looked at the admin section and the board shows that it has earned around $2,300 in it's lifetime (that's only counting the coin mechs, not the credit button). I thought that was interesting to see. I'm considering wiping out all of the player stats since there are a lot but that somehow seems sacrelicious (like Homer's God waffle). I probably will end up doing it but not yet. Now to get the cpo fixed up.

[ChadTower]

Get a reading on the good board's 12v, trace it back a few steps and get readings from each spot.  Then do the same on the bad board.  Hopefully you'll find the point where they start to differ and that's your bad component.

[More Cowbell]

This cab is completely done now. I repainted all of the black areas and repainted the sides which were grey. They had some issues that needed to be fixed so I figured I would repaint black rather than try to match the grey or grab new paint. I wasn't too attached to the grey. I also installed the new cpo which was a pain because there are about 50 screws that go through it at some point. My only issue with the game now is that the volume is WAY TOO LOUD. There is a volume knob in the coin door area but I can't turn it. I need to really get in there with some pliers or something. The white parts on the cab are *shine*. 

[shardian]

There is one of these sitting in a pawn shop in my area in great condition for $200. I played it for a while, but baseball arcade games just don't do it for me. I already have a Relief Pitcher that, even with the annoying as hell buzzers, I like better. At least the situational relief option makes the game interesting, plus I can actually do some fielding/base running on my own.

[More Cowbell]

This one brings back some good memories for me and that's what it's really all about.

[ChadTower]

This one has a really unique CP, too, that adds a good amount to the game.