My New Asteroids has problems

[RetroACTIVE]

Cool Retro, I'd do the same but it's probably not much sense shipping it across the atlantic....

Retro, I'm looking for a couple 2114's do you sell them or is it personal stock ?

Yep it's my personal stock... I'm actually building up my personal stock so I can start offering more repair services to folks in the community...

[RetroACTIVE]

Well I've been working on quanlee's asteroids for a bit now... and have made some good progress...

RAM chip was bad so that was replaced and some more issues were then revealed.

1. Video was all mucked up, asteroids were not 'joined' and the ship, ufo's and text were all really really tiny
2. Fire sound is a high pitched beep, not the classic 'peeww' sound
3. Anything in the center of the screen is kind of jumbled up and distorted... I don't see this with my known good.

I've fixed video problem #1, bad mux in the vector timer circuit (E6, 74LS157)... see before and after pics.
I will be tackling the sound and the weirdness with the center of the screen next.

oh yeah... I also reconstructed the +5v terminal on the edge connector, it was fairly well cooked and beginning to come loose.

[mcfreak]

Very nice!

[Level42]

Looks very nice. RetroACTIVE, would you like a challenge ? Got a dead Meteor board that needs to be fixed

Basically it's the same as Asteroids, with some differences here and there, but not many....

[RetroACTIVE]

Looks very nice. RetroACTIVE, would you like a challenge ? Got a dead Meteor board that needs to be fixed

Basically it's the same as Asteroids, with some differences here and there, but not many....

Dead dead?  Do you have any docs for the board? 

[RetroACTIVE]

Fixed the sound issue... turns out it was the quad switch (M9, MC14016).  The fact that both the ufo and ship fire sound were both behaving in the same bad behavior was kind of a dead giveaway...


Here are a couple of pics of the reworked ics...

[RetroACTIVE]

The last issue I have is this squiggle along the y axis.... I noticed... I have the same issue with mine but its not so prevalent...

...may have something to do with the driver circuit...

to be continued.

[RetroACTIVE]

oops

[RayB]

Does it look like a "wave" moving through the vectors?

[RetroACTIVE]

Does it look like a "wave" moving through the vectors?

Sort of.... more like the line is getting pulled to the left and to the right... it doesn't have any movement... and its only down the y axis center line (x=0) 

[quanlee]

Does it look like a "wave" moving through the vectors?

Sort of.... more like the line is getting pulled to the left and to the right... it doesn't have any movement... and its only down the y axis center line (x=0) 

You mentioned that your board has the same problem, is it possible it's your monitor? (but what do I know...) 

[RetroACTIVE]

You mentioned that your board has the same problem, is it possible it's your monitor? (but what do I know...) 

Your absolutely right... it could  very well be... its just that your board shows the defect much more prominent... so the signal coming from the board must play a part in some way. 

[Level42]

Looks very nice. RetroACTIVE, would you like a challenge ? Got a dead Meteor board that needs to be fixed

Basically it's the same as Asteroids, with some differences here and there, but not many....

Dead dead?  Do you have any docs for the board? 

Yes I was blessed enough to find a "complete" set of docs inside the cab ! I never found anything about this game online so I mailed it to the Arcade Archive, but no-one seems to care a thing about it......at least I get 0 reply.

Anyway, one of the hardcore vector fans in Europe, Andreas from www.andysarcade.de has made a nice pdf from my  scans. You can find it here:
http://www.andysarcade.de/data/coinop/videogames/vectorgames/meteor_hoei/meteor_hoei_upright_um.pdf

The CPU seems to get reset all the time. I've forced it to a high for a second or two, to no avail. Also found the spot where I could jumper out the watchdog, no difference.

If needed I can provide the full sized scans....

[RayB]

The CPU seems to get reset all the time. I've forced it to a high for a second or two, to no avail. Also found the spot where I could jumper out the watchdog, no difference.

If it were an Asteroids I would say to replace the Big Blue cap. Does it have a big capacitor in the power supply?

[Level42]

Mmm, not that big. They solved it like most other desingers did, use a couple of not-so-big caps.

But I checked the voltages and they're OK. There's hardly any ripple.

Here's a pic of the PSU:


The lower left part (with 4 caps) is for the monitor, the upper right for the game PCB.


BTW, don't want to hog this thread, it's better to discuss this in my Meteor thread:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=79802.0