PCB Confusion

[scca01]

I just purchased a classic cocktail arcade game which I plan to restore.  However, I am a little confused about the actual game.  The underlay art is for a game called “Super Glob”, yet the game itself is simply a poker game.  When I opened the cabinet, the actually PCB has a sticker that indicates it is an original Galaxian game.

What is going on here?   

-Chris

[horseboy]

Pictures might help.

[Q*Bert_OP]

It sounds like a hack

[Kevin Mullins]

What does the sticker say to indicate that it is/was a Galaxian pcb?

Is there a "cabinet" manufacturer name anywhere?
(bold metal plate or something with a company name on it anywhere)

Super Glob was a conversion rom set add-on game, the poker game is probably also.

[Dav]

I just purchased a classic cocktail arcade game which I plan to restore.  However, I am a little confused about the actual game.  The underlay art is for a game called “Super Glob”, yet the game itself is simply a poker game.  When I opened the cabinet, the actually PCB has a sticker that indicates it is an original Galaxian game.

What is going on here?   

-Chris

There was a company called Epos that made add on kits to convert old games that no longer made money to something new and interesting.  Super Glob was a kit for pacman,  They also made kits to convert pacman to poker.  Atlantic City Action and Boardwalk Casino.  If they made a kit for galaxian I'd very much like to see it to dump for MAME.  Or if it is a pacman board and it's not one of those 2 games we need it for mame as well. 

If it's pacman I can help you convert it back to Pac.  If it really is a galaxian board, there may be some more serious mods to the board that are not as easily de-converted.

[scca01]

There is no doubt that this was originally a Galaxian game... there are a few hints:




In addition, here is a picture of the PCB.  Does everything look normal to you experts?  The little board held on with wire ties looks suspect to me.


Thanks!
-Chris

[Dav]

That little board is the normal way they converted a game.  It contains the z80 and the program roms and usually a simple encryption scheme to prevent people from converting it w/o buying their board.  However, it doesn't really look like the epos boards I've seen.   I'm a pacman expert not so much a galaxian expert but I don't know of any poker games on galaxian so your find is pretty cool.  What is the game called?

[scca01]

Not sure it even has a name.  It is simply a 2 player, 5 card draw poker game.

So how do I get this back to Galaxian (or something else classic)?  Pull the secondary borad off?  Buy a new Galaxian PCB?  Better yet, how hard would it be to turn this into a Pac Man or Class of '81 (Pac and Galaga) cocktail?

-Chris

[Dav]

You're missing the galaxian rom board, so you need that or a replacement.  Iirc there are 2 roms at the top of the board for graphics and I assume probably a graphics color prom has been swapped.

For pacman you need a pacman board.  You'll have to swap a couple of wires around.  Iirc the speaker is moved, check the pinouts, they're almost identical.  If you don't have a joystick you'll have to wire one in. 

For class of 81 you'll have to convert the cab to jamma so you'll need a DC power supply and a jamma harness.

[scca01]

So the quickest way to get up an running with something other than poker would be to buy a new Galaxian PCB, plug it in and go?

[Pac-Fan]

So the quickest way to get up an running with something other than poker would be to buy a new Galaxian PCB, plug it in and go?

The original daughter board with 5 roms was flakey (actually it was mainly the disintegrating legs on the masked rom chips, but I digress).

Your best bet it to single-chip hack the middle section (basically put a single larger eprom in ONE of the two middle row slots, just like that daughter board is in, move the Z80 off the daughter board and back into its socket (remove the ribbon cable).  IIRC, it takes a 4x larger (memory size) chip, an equiv. pin socket and 4 or 5 signal wires.

Or you can do a 4-game extension to play galaxian and 3 other games, with just 9 wires and 2 eproms, or there is also an 8-game extension that lets you play more games but requires about 20 wires and 3 roms and extra work.

Go here for all the info:
http://www.ionpool.net/arcade/galaxian_hacks/PCB-Hack.htm

[scca01]

Thanks for the help guys... but I am a noob to the arcade world.  While all this stuff my be simple for you guys, it may be over my head.
On that note... does anybody have an unhacked Galaxian PCB they would be willing to sell or trade?  Maybe somebody here wants to get their hands on this fine poker game for Mame purposes?

-Chris

[Pac-Fan]

The thing is that board isn't really "hacked" as far as I can see by the pics.

The only 2 changes that were done was:
1) Remove the original daughter board with game program code chips and replace with a new daughter board
2) remvoe the original processor chip and place on the new daughter board and then plug the ribbon cable where the daughter board was.

I dont even see any changes to the graphics roms or color roms (no wires running to them anyway).

You don't need a new galaxian board, you just need a new daughter board in high likelyhood.

However, I'm sure someone will be willing to swap you in order to disect what you have and dump the code and figure out how it worked and then add the code to mame.  Good luck!