The original frankenpanel?

[jimmy2x2x]

"... remove any Atari arcade printed circuit board from its original cabinet and play it with the CTF I, which came equipped with dual joysticks, paddles, and everything else needed to test the function of the game."

http://technologizer.com/2012/02/12/atari-oddities/6/

[DaveMMR]

That article was pretty interesting.

[SavannahLion]

Interesting

[Howard_Casto]

You've got to wonder what the point to that thing was.  Wouldn't an atari service technician have access to all the atari arcade cabinets to test things on?

[SavannahLion]

You've got to wonder what the point to that thing was.  Wouldn't an atari service technician have access to all the atari arcade cabinets to test things on?

Uh..... Compactness? There's only so much room for everything. Not only that, the repair technician's job is to repair and fix the boards, not to play the games.

[Howard_Casto]

You've got to wonder what the point to that thing was.  Wouldn't an atari service technician have access to all the atari arcade cabinets to test things on?

Uh..... Compactness? There's only so much room for everything. Not only that, the repair technician's job is to repair and fix the boards, not to play the games.

Nah man... I'm still not seeing it.


Maybe I'm misunderstanding where this would be used, but boards go back to the factory to be repaired right?  At the time atari only had about 10-20 arcade games, and most of those shared the same cabinet or controls.  It might take up a little more room, but when you are working in a giant warehouse and they are churing cabs out every day it seems like it would be a lot easier to troubleshoot if you just pulled an empty cab off the line and plugged it in.  You'd be using the real wiring harness, monitor and controls afterall and in the days of mostly analog components on a board, those differences in hardware could bring up different issues. 

The device makes perfect sense on paper, I just don't know how practical it would be in real life.  The modern example I would give is a hard drive tester.  There is such a thing as a hard drive tester... it's much more portable than a pc, even a laptop and it efficiently reads a drive for bad sectors.  But it's totally worthless.  You'll be hard pressed to find a computer repair shop that has one.  Why?  Well you can also test a harddrive by plugging it into a pc and running a scan.  You can even use a usb adaptor which is even more convenient.  The reason this method is preferred is because even though the tester does it's job, people are going to want to try to recover their data anyway, and you need a ... (wait for it) computer to do that. 

I guess what I'm saying is even if you manage to get it fixed by using the ultra atari super gun, you are going to have to test it on a real machine anyway.  It just makes sense to me to keep testing it on the real machine and avoid a middle step. 

My guess is the arcade industry agrees with me because afaik this is the only device of it's type aside from a more sensible super gun.

[CheffoJeffo]

Boards typically did not go back to the factory for repair. That's why Atari (and other companies) wrote repair manuals and made test kits for ops. Bally did similar stuff, although I have only actually seen their pin test kits.

I would guess that if a game was out of circulation for as long as a HO repair would take, then it would make more economic sense to just buy a new board.

[SavannahLion]

Cheffo hit the nail on the head, boards did not go back to the factory for repair. Parts lists, schematics, "The Book" all point squarely towards field repair. I recall times I went with my father to repair shops where PCBs were racked floor to ceiling awaiting repair. Repair shops back in those days were not the pretty and expansive places that Best Buy would have you believe. Space was always tight and tools were usually multi-purposed. Having a handful of cabinets on hand for the express purpose of testing is just madness.

Your example for a hard drive tester is piss poor and misunderstood. I've used the hard drive tester myself. They're not used individually, they're used in clusters. I operated a bank of 100 drive testers for the express purpose of testing and "burning in" drives before putting them in PC's. The reason why full blown pc's weren't used is well.... We weren't in the business of recovery and start-up and shutdown cycles would've eaten too much time at that volume. A small repair shop has no need for one because, yes the pc pulls double duty and, unlike arcade cabs, don't take up an obscene amount of space.

[Xiaou2]

I agree with the masses.

 Its probably rare that board were sent back to the factory.

 However, as a company, you have to understand how a company works Logically.
A bunch of games are made in assembly lines, in a crowded and somewhat dangerous enviornment.

 Not only would it be difficult to get one of the cabs off the line for testing... but, what happens when all the cabs have finished their run, and are out of the factory?

 And even withstanding a lot of other related arguments... you also have to realize, that getting in and out of a cabinet isnt efficient at all.   Some board mountings are not easy to hook and unhook. First you have to unlock the cab, (wheres the keys? lost keys in the process?) then you have to unlock and unscrew areas to get access to boards.  TX-1 for example, has a custom metal crate that must be un-screwed in about 4 places, to open it up to get to the PCB.  You also risk bending and or breaking wires on cabinets from too much in-and-out use at the factory.  Also, you may make it look like the cabinet was used... when instead, it was supposed to be squeaky clean new.

 Some guy was probably given this, sat in a single room, running constant tests.  Either before, after, and or both.  And or as said, it was probably sold to Ops who had very large routes, game mechanics for hire, and or Atari's own remote testing requirements (such as on-site arcade prototype testing).

[Well Fed Games]

I want to MAME it. 

[Howard_Casto]

Your example for a hard drive tester is piss poor and misunderstood.

Watch your attitude..... misunderstood is valid critism... "piss poor" is not. 

I'm aware of the use you are talking about but I've never seen them used like that outside of a largish company that builds pcs.  The fact remains that they still try to sell the little paper weights  to service technicians.

I didn't realize that this product was intended for the local technician, if that's the case then it makes even less sense to me.  As Cheffo said, it seems like it would make more economic sense to just buy a new board and have the old one sent back for repair or as a trade in.    You know, like modern pcs today... you don't try to fix a motherboard when it goes bad... you buy a new one.

[Green Giant]

You've got to wonder what the point to that thing was.  Wouldn't an atari service technician have access to all the atari arcade cabinets to test things on?

Uh..... Compactness? There's only so much room for everything. Not only that, the repair technician's job is to repair and fix the boards, not to play the games.

Nah man... I'm still not seeing it.

Wasn't it obvious?


Do you know how much you could charge per hour when you roll in with that boy as your test bed?


"Yeah, it looks like your solenoids are running low so I will have to recharge your electrolytic capacitance gel to ensure your motion control shaft respondence will flux correctly.........that will be $400."

[paigeoliver]

I would venture to say a working one of those would probably be worth about $5000 today.

[drventure]

I want to MAME it. 

Oh Hell yeah!

[Le Chuck]

I am officially annoucing my sponsorship of the Atari X Prize.  $100 crisp American dollars to the first builder that creates a working to scale replica from scatch.  Start your engines. 

[SavannahLion]

Your example for a hard drive tester is piss poor and misunderstood.

Watch your attitude..... misunderstood is valid critism... "piss poor" is not.  

Coming from someone who was all gung-ho for a CrapMAME 2? Right, whatever. It's a poor comparison, period.

I'm aware of the use you are talking about but I've never seen them used like that outside of a largish company that builds pcs.  The fact remains that they still try to sell the little paper weights  to service technicians.

So what? If manufacturer A offers a product, why shouldn't they sell said product to any entity they choose? Not like any of these service shops are forced to buy their product.

I didn't realize that this product was intended for the local technician, if that's the case then it makes even less sense to me.  As Cheffo said, it seems like it would make more economic sense to just buy a new board and have the old one sent back for repair or as a trade in.    You know, like modern pcs today... you don't try to fix a motherboard when it goes bad... you buy a new one.

You're just cherry picking now. It's in the first sentence:

In 1976, Atari released one of its most obscure products, the CTF I (Computer Test Fixture). This bulky diagnostic tool specifically aided in the troubleshooting and repair of Atari coin-operated video games.

The CTF served as a universal Atari game machine; a service technician was able to remove any Atari arcade printed circuit board from its original cabinet and play it with the CTF I, which came equipped with dual joysticks, paddles, and everything else needed to test the function of the game.

This was sold to service technicians. This wasn't just an in-house service tool, it was a product that was specifically made, marketed (if ever) and sold outside the company. Everyone else (including Cheffo) supports this statement. No company releases in-house only tools.

You need to stop applying current modern economics to late 1970's through 1980's tech. This device hails from an era of solid DIYers. C.L. Stong kind of ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. The Book wasn't published just for Atari technicians, for $39.00, anybody could have gotten their hands on it. Ever wonder why a lot of those old arcade manuals also included schematics and full blown parts lists? C'mon Howard, you of all people should know this. Are you really comparing the economics of modern PC motherboard "repair" with the economics of 1976-era PCB repair? Seriously?

[paigeoliver]

A brief search showed no one seemed to have a working one. There are some collectors of Atari stuff out there with deep pockets who might be interested, and I could see any board repair shop being interested. The $5000 was a guesstimate, but I am pretty certain one of those would sell for thousands, not hundreds.

I would venture to say a working one of those would probably be worth about $5000 today.

Where exactly?

[BobA]

I would venture to say a working one of those would probably be worth about $5000 today.

You might even get more depending on how many still exit.  Even test panels have gotten bids in the thousands.

[javeryh]

I wasn't far off - I thought for sure this thread was going to be about the 5200 controller.

[paigeoliver]

A new motherboard is like $100 in todays dollars and so complex that repair is not feasible. While a replacement circuit board during the classic era could cost more than 10 times that (adjusted for inflation), but more importantly it was simple enough to repair.

Places did a lot of their own repairs because it was much cheaper than sending out the boards, even then they were probably not going back to the factory. Operators were already used to having to deal with pinball machines and EM arcade games (both of which broke all the time).

Some operators still have warehouses full of junk today because they did all their own repairs.