Arcade Projects

Sega Pengo finally working!

Posted December 1, 2007

Today a fellow Indianapolis coin-op collector came over to help me take a look at my Pengo. Sitting in my basement now for over a year, and not working for about 15 months, Pengo has been the bane of my existence. The last thing I did on my Pengo, was I installed a switching power supply. I made a rookie mistake, however, and forgot to check my voltages before plugging my Pengo PCB in. After I turned the game off because the game reset and went to a screen of yellow bars, only then did I find that my +5v was at +5.83.

Convinced I had friend my pcb, I was distraught at potentially costing myself more money and unsure how to check for sure if the board was the problem.

So, today, my friend Robert took a look at the game with his accumulated knowledge. He first looked over the pcb, to see if there was any visible damage, fried parts, etc. He didn’t see anything that seemed problematic on the Pengo pcb. He noted on the backside that there had been some touchup at one point, because there was a dark discoloration on some of the solder points. He said that was flux, which I didn’t know until today. He also reminded me that the components on the pcb were meant to withstand higher voltages, just not for any extent of time. So, he was thinking that since I had only powered up my Pengo with the high / wrong voltages for a couple of minutes or less, that the board might still be ok. The newer boards were a little less sensitive, he said, to being damaged by incorrect voltages.

He plugged the harness connection onto the board, unplugged the coin door, and powered Pengo up. It appeared to work fine. So, we powered Pengo down, plugged the coin door back in, and tried again. Still, no issues. I wasn’t seeing the yellow bars when I had last used the game or anything.

It was like Robert had magical powers. I drilled out the bottom coin door, because there were some wires that we assumed went to the counter. Sure enough, there was a counter in the coin door, with about 9,100 plays. Not too bad, but I think that this Pengo was Home User Only (HUO) for most of it’s life. Robert also messed with the sound, adjusting the sound control on the board and finding that it was the base control and that the sound control inside the coin door would adjust the sound louder or softer from there. Another thing, that I know I tried and it didn’t do anything.

Working Sega Pengo by Jr. Pac-man in Indianapolis, IN

So, I played Pengo. We both had some beer, played a number of games. The game had no issue. It was like it was never broken. The coin up didn’t reset the game like it had for me, nothing. I left the game on periodically played it over the next 10 hours, and there were no issues at all. Well, I noticed that Pengo wasn’t keeping high scores after a little while, but you know what? I was just so happy I had my third working game that I didn’t care.

Thanks so much Robert, what a great guy to come down and check things out. I feel bad that it seemed like the Pengo problems that plauged me didn’t exist at all, but I was just happy that it works. The most important part.

Wizard of Wor, Dig Dug and Tetris Sold!

Posted November 18, 2007

For a month or so I had been responding to the common Craigslist ad looking to “buy” games. Usually people put out these ads looking for freebies, but I knew it couldn’t harm me any to try to sell some of my non working games. I wanted to try to reduce as many distractions as possible to focus on studying, and fixing up the Midway Wizard of Wor, Atari Dig Dug, and Dynamo cabinet Tetris were time suckers to say the least.

The Tetris was the only one I was seriously considering keeping in my game room, but the black cabinet was so ugly. The original intention was to resell these once they were working to help pay for gas, or take down the paid cost on one of my other games. But the motivation for selling a game to make a small amount of money waned for me. I got my holy grail, the Jr. Pac-man. I had originally wanted to use the money I made to help pay for my trip out to PA to pick it up. But thanks to DanOfEarth, that wasn’t an issue anymore.

Finally, last Tuesday I found some people who weren’t looking for free games, and were interested in the three I had to sell. I just wanted my itemized costs back in total for the games, and the price was more than fair, great if you intended to keep one of the games. Dig Dug is too slow of a pace for me, Wizard of Wor holds no interest for me other than the fact that it is a two player game, and Tetris, again, ugly cabinet with no sideart.

Here are some photos of the games being taken away.

Sold the Dig Dug, Wizard of Wor and Tetris 1

Sold the Dig Dug, Wizard of Wor and Tetris 2

I made a whopping $10 on my sale after all of my costs were added up, but I learned a lot. I originally bought the Dig Dug as a Land Sea and Air Squad, painted solid black on the sides. It was my first game that I brought back from the brink of oblivion, and restored in some sense of the word. It was a lot of fun, bargaining for the deals, but it was a lot of work, and without knowing much about electronics, it was hard work for me to constantly figure out all of the problems I was having with any given game.

In the end things worked out great. I didn’t lose anything but time, and that is debatable when compared to what I learned and the contacts I made hunting down the arcade parts. The games found a good home where they should be reused in a family fun center, and I can park in my garage again:) Just in time for winter. Not to mention I can keep the other two cabs in case I need a fix, my empty Atari Food Fight and Atari Xevious.

Purchased a 96 in 1 Multi Pac Kit

Posted November 8, 2007

There was a reason, that I can’t disclose right now, that I wanted to get Mike Doyle’s 96 in 1 Multi Pac kit for my Ms. Pac-man. I have been wanting this for a number of months because although I love Ms. Pac-man, it was always been one of my favorite arcade games, I need to breathe some new life into the gameplay.

The 96 in 1 Multi Pac Kit is just the way to do it. A lot of collectors get multi-kits for their coin-op games because it gives you some variety in gameplay. Most arcade game collectors don’t seem to like MAME either, and this is a way to get around having a MAME machine.

This particular kit comes with every darn possible variety of the Pac-man maze style arcade game you can imagine. Most are variations on the originals, Ms. Pac-man, Pac-man, etc. etc. But there are some video games on the kit that you wouldn’t expect and are completely unrelated.

Ms Pac
Ms Pac Plus
Ms Pac Attack
Piranha
Mr. & Mrs. Pacman (new!)
Pengo
Pac Junior1-4
Pac Baby1-2

And the game list goes on and on. 96 total variations and games. But probably the coolest part are the features of the multi pac kit. I will list the kit features I am most interested in;

High Score save in NVRAM
Selectable Speed
Start on any level
Difficulty
Screen Saver

I love the high score feature, and I can’t wait to use the start on any level feature on some of the games, especially Jr. Pac-man. I have only beaten level 6 in my dedicated Jr. Pac-man once, and could use the practice on the last three levels.

Plus, I know a lot of people who play the games will want to set the difficulty and change the speed of gameplay.

The 96 in 1 Multi Pac kit should arrive hopefully sometime on Thursday or Friday and I hope to get it installed in my Ms. Pac-man right away. Thanks Mike Doyle.

Dynamo Cabinet 19″ Monitor Mount Board Dimensions

Posted October 31, 2007

Last Saturday I mounted a 19″ monitor in my Tetris Dynamo cabinet. The cabinet is 25.5″ wide, so I don’t think it was meant to fit a 25″ monitor originally, the monitor opening is 22.25″ x 22.25″ square. Maybe it was meant for a 21″ monitor?

Either way, the opening was way too large for me to mount my 19″ monitor without some customization. A JAMMA cabinet, they are meant to be universal cabinet for any game. Probably an easy job for most guys with power tools. But I didn’t have any, so I called in a friend.

The night before I measured out the board we were cutting, and I thought I would share those dimensions here in case someone else could use the information.

I had a 3/4″ thick piece of plywood scrap that I got for free that I worked with. I think the thicker the better since the monitor is so heavy.

Here are photos of the monitor mounted in the cabinet;

And here is the dimensions for cutting a board to fit your dynamo cabinet and mount a smaller monitor.

Notes: The holes that I drilled were 1/4″ for the mounting bolts. I made this drawing for a horizontally framed monitor. You will notice the slots to the side for the frame flaps to slide through.

The dimensions are as following (Converted to the decimal);

Total Board Size – 22.25″ x 22.25″
Inner Square Total Size – 14.5″ H x 18.25″ W
Monitor Flap Slots – 1″ H x 1.0625″ W
Space Horizontally around cutout – 1.875″
Space Vertically around cutout – 3.875″
Bolt Placement From The Left of Board (Top and Bottom) – 2.625″, 9″, 15.5″
Space to center of holes – 75″

Hope I described that clearly. Like I said above, I had to make the opening a little taller than 14.5″ to fit the 19″ Electrohome monitor screws.

Tetris PCB has arrived

Posted October 22, 2007

I won the Tetris arcade PCB over a week ago off ebay, so after having to wait to transfer paypal payment to my account (why does that take so stinking long?), I paid for it and it was waiting for me at home on my doorstep today.

It said JAMMA in the auction, and that it worked. I don’t see “JAMMA” by the edge connector, but maybe that isn’t on every board. Either way, hope to try it out this weekend when Paul comes over to help me finally saw that board and soon after, mount the monitor.

Figuring out OL, OH Dig Dug PCB error

Posted October 12, 2007

I have gotten a little motivation back, and took a little time to investigate this further.

I had been going back and forth with Bob Roberts on this chip, and without even looking at my board I was able to kind of figure out with his help that this chip was plug in play, which meant it should be socketed and no soldering necessary. Plus, since it was PnP, that meant I didn’t have to burn anything to it either. He said the chips are very sensitive and this is fairly common.

In the Dig Dug manuals, it says that a OL and/or OH error are due to a bad RAM. It just depends on what version of the Dig Dug PCB you have to find the location on the board. If you have Revision A, the position is 9M, and if you have Revision B of the PCB, then it is position 4K.

I thought for sure these positions would be printed in the manual, but they weren’t. I pulled the board out and did a comparison of component side elements on the board to the two drawings in the manuals. I have a Revision B Dig Dug PCB, so that meant my bad RAM was at 4k.

Here are some photos of the PCB. I circled the 4k labeling, it might be hard to see. Also a photo of the bent RAM and the RAM in the socket.

I took a look, and it was obvious. There my RAM set, with the front leg bent and barely in the socket. I was floored, how had it worked up until now? It might be as simple as taking that chip out, bending the leg back, and the game might work. Well, I did just that, and it didn’t work. So I am guessing that after so much time of it being almost bad corrupted the chip.

I am checking with Bob to see if he has that chip. The number on the top of the Chip says JAPAN 2E1 HM6116P-3. Would like to get a larger order of stuff to bring down the total cost for the one part, but if it means getting the game sold, I may not wait.