How hard is it to convert a Ms. Pac to a Mr. Pac?

[2PacMan]

I found an original Pacman cab in fairly decent condition, but someone stuck a Mrs Pacman in the cab.  I know the Mrs Pac is just a converted Pacman board, so my question is how hard would it be to change it back?

I know you have to unplug the 2nd board.  And i believe there are 2 character chips you have to remove from the main board....but then do you have to replace those 2 chips?  Or do you just pop them out?   Anyone have step by step instructions?

He wants 750.00 for it...does that seem like a good deal?  If i can convert it back easily, i might buy it.

[paigeoliver]

That is only a good deal if the sucker looks brand new. Pacs are not worth as much as Ms. Pacs are, and a pac has to be MINT these days to be worth $750.


If it is an arcade guy he can probably change it back for you, otherwise several guys here can talk you through it.

[2PacMan]

Just out of curiosity, what's a good price for a decent Mr. Pac??  The one i'm looking at has a decent cab, the graphics on one of the sides is fading, but not too bad.  The bottom is splintered some, but a little paint would fix that.  And the graphics on the bezel is chipped in a few areas.  And there's this really gaudy looking orange T-Molding on it...but that'd be easy to replace...what would you pay for something like that?

What are decent condition Ms. Pacs going for?? 

I have a good condition Ms. Pac that i want to leave as original as possible....but i thought it'd be cool to buy an orignal Mr. Pac and then put that 39N1 multipac in it.

[Dav]

I found an original Pacman cab in fairly decent condition, but someone stuck a Mrs Pacman in the cab.  I know the Mrs Pac is just a converted Pacman board, so my question is how hard would it be to change it back?

I know you have to unplug the 2nd board.  And i believe there are 2 character chips you have to remove from the main board....but then do you have to replace those 2 chips?  Or do you just pop them out?   Anyone have step by step instructions?

He wants 750.00 for it...does that seem like a good deal?  If i can convert it back easily, i might buy it.

You need to buy pacman.5e and pacman.5f and replace the 2 char chips.  If you buy a multipac you just need to follow the multipac instructions. 

$750 would be a little high around here, but probably would be considered a retail price.  I have trouble getting $500 with a multipac installed when I'm selling.

[romperwomb]

Haw!  Did anyone see the episode of Drawn Together (animated reality TV show spoof on Comedy Central) where it turns out that Pac-man IS actually also Mrs. Pac-man?!?  The old Queen!  Who'd of guessed...

You need to buy pacman.5e and pacman.5f and replace the 2 char chips.

Is there no way to flash the chips?

[Dav]

Is there no way to flash the chips?

Possibly, but from his simple question I assumed he didn't have a programmer.  A lot of the new programers don't do 2532's even if you do have one.

[paigeoliver]

You will probably be able to buy the chips for like $5. Most any game shops will have tons of the Pac-Man chips laying around, due to the much higher demand for Pac over Ms. Pac.

Although, I would skip that completely and get the 96 in 1 upgrade kit for the original Pac-Man board, it has every Pac you could imagine, initials, high score saves, Pengo and Space Invaders too!

[Dav]

Although, I would skip that completely and get the 96 in 1 upgrade kit for the original Pac-Man board, it has every Pac you could imagine, initials, high score saves, Pengo and Space Invaders too!

Couldn't agree more, and I'm not just saying that because I designed it. 

[paigeoliver]

I found an original Pacman cab in fairly decent condition, but someone stuck a Mrs Pacman in the cab.  I know the Mrs Pac is just a converted Pacman board, so my question is how hard would it be to change it back?

I know you have to unplug the 2nd board.  And i believe there are 2 character chips you have to remove from the main board....but then do you have to replace those 2 chips?  Or do you just pop them out?   Anyone have step by step instructions?

He wants 750.00 for it...does that seem like a good deal?  If i can convert it back easily, i might buy it.

You need to buy pacman.5e and pacman.5f and replace the 2 char chips.  If you buy a multipac you just need to follow the multipac instructions. 

$750 would be a little high around here, but probably would be considered a retail price.  I have trouble getting $500 with a multipac installed when I'm selling.

Didn't you have to buy one back for $500 at the last St. Louis auction? A mini IIRC? I had a game right next to it.

[Dav]

That was probably Mike.  He builds and sells the 96 in1 these days.  He still fixes and sells a lot of games.  I've kind of quit.  Mike really enjoys it, I was just doing it for the money  

[paigeoliver]

Yeah, it was Mike, I was having a heck of a time remembering his name. You now how you meet lots of people, but there are so many of them, well it can be hard to keep everyone's name straight. Tend to think of them as "That's the multipac guy", "Thats the op I bought that one machine from", "There's Doo Rag", etc, etc.

It doesn't help that I am super bad with names.

[Dav]

I have the opposite problem I don't do well on faces. 

If your ears were sore after talkiing to him then that was mike.   If I just nodded my head and didn't say anything to you that was me.   That's why Mike and I work together so well    Plus he's real good at talking noobs through the installation of the kit, where I just found that frustrating.   I'd rather spend my time on things like porting dig dug to pacman hardware.

Dave

[fredster]

One of the best tech pages on Pacman on the net is Kev's page. It has all the little tricks and tests on it.

Check out mowerman's page

[Pipercub]

  DAV, I am afraid I missed this 96 in one product. I am currently running a MAME machine in my PAC cabinet with the various versions of PacMan. I would love to replace it with a board solution on an actual arcade monitor. Can you tell me more about this 96 in one?  You can reach me at got22b@subarubrat.com

[Dav]

Goto this page:
http://home.everestkc.net/mdoyle/multipac.htm
and email Mike.  He will answer your questions.  It has some things you can't get in MAME like a top 10 score list for pacman etc.  But there are some disadvantages too. for example  Jr pacman and the real super pacman run on different hardware so they aren't included.

[MonitorGuru]

Dave,I love the 96-in-1.

[Dav]

Thanks, I'm glad you like it.

I'm not a big fan of galaxian and since Mike C.  already has something for that I'm not planning on doing anything with it at the moment.  When I run out of projects maybe.   I really want to do something for crossbow/chiller etc, then sega system 1.   I do have a circuit board that I think would work for galaxian I don't think it would be too difficult.  It's an extension of my universal hi score board,  it will work on any z80 game I just have to program the cpld to the memory map.  There could be enough games on galaxian hardware to warrant something special.  I have a Z80 to hard drive controller working, using a compact flash card.  I'm working on a colecovision project for it now,  I'm looking for an excuse to use it on arcade hardware.

I think super pac and pacnpal would work.  You never know until you try.  Unfortunately  it looks like you have to bank 4 proms but that's not insurmountable, just annoying.

[MonitorGuru]

It's just that there are so many things that run on the Galaxian hardware (that have very similar rom image duplications) that it seems like a perfect platform to do some multis on.. One could just have 2ways, while another could do all the 4 way/8 way games.

As far as SuperPac/PacnPal--I have access to an eprom burner and have done the do it yourself multi-galax and have played with circitry a bit. Swapping eproms and/or toggling address lines on a larger one are not a problem for me to hook up.

[Dav]

It's just that there are so many things that run on the Galaxian hardware (that have very similar rom image duplications) that it seems like a perfect platform to do some multis on.. One could just have 2ways, while another could do all the 4 way/8 way games.

As far as SuperPac/PacnPal--I have access to an eprom burner and have done the do it yourself multi-galax and have played with circitry a bit. Swapping eproms and/or toggling address lines on a larger one are not a problem for me to hook up.  However, I am admitted a big novice when it comes to proms.  What do I need to read up on, and can these small proms be converted to eproms or are they too slow or have other problems?  I really want to get at least on SuperPac board converted to PacnPal, either just by pure chip swap, or by doing as a multi.

Thanks.

If I were going for volume I'd probably do scramble.  If you look at the scramble and super cobra drivers in mame their are a _lot_ of games.

You can make an adapter and run eproms in place of proms, I've done it before.   However the speed can be a problem.   use the fastest eproms you have and it will probably be playable even if it doesn't look perfect.  I wouldn't worry about the proms first, see if the program roms will run.  Then burn gfx roms.    Then worry about proms and banking.

If you were willing to modify the code, and started with a mappy board you could probably add these games to it and some others as well but that would be a much larger project.