Installed a switcher in the Pengo

That was over a week ago already, last weekend to be exact. I was talking with Richard, and looking inside the cabinet, and then I figured out how the switcher had to be wired. I had an extra two pronged plug that was some sort of AC power source. All I needed to do was snip that connector, tie that positive and negative into the switcher position and negative, and I knew the other voltages that I needed to supply for the PCB, so I went ahead and did it.

I was nervous about clipping connectors, but I kept telling myself that I could always put it back if I needed. I would have done this earlier, but I had it in my mind that the power was coming out from the linear power supply and going to the isolation transformer. But I wasn’t looking at the wiring. The power comes in from one main source and through the isolation transformer. the transformer then powers the monitor and the linear power supply. The linear power supply takes the AC voltages and changes them into DC voltages so the board and sound can use them.

Here are the photos of what I did. I even made a little harness out of different molex connectors for the power supply connection.

I double checked my pinouts before plugging everything in. At first, the game came up, but it did it’s typical thing. I put in a ton of credits, it started resetting, and then when I pressed player 1, I got one character on screen and everything froze. I heard some clicking noises in the coin box area, and that was it.

On Sunday, I stopped and got some clips to put on my wire connections just to make sure that I had good connections. I emailed Richard about what I did, everything sounded right to him, and I explained it with intricate little questions down to if it matter how many wires you had tied to one 5v connection head.

Well, the lesson I learned, you always have to test voltages coming from the power supply again. Come to find out, I was supplying around 5.83 V instead of 5V, so I probably just toasted my board. I didn’t have it on for long, but I know it doesn’t take much. But, the funny thing is, I thought with a switcher I would be able to get very exact voltages. But you only have one knob to adjust, and I am only able to get the same voltages to the Pengo PCB as I was with the linear power supply. I have to do about 5.1 V and that gives me about 11.9 V for the sound.

I don’t know. I am extremely frustrated, don’t know if my board works anymore, and out of options again.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• Troubleshooting Pengo Power Supply
• Some days I hate arcade games
• R-Type wiring diagram – Adding older monitor without isolation transformer
• Photos of Sega Pengo Isolation Transformer
• Amp connector on the way

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.