Ms. Pac-man

Installing the 96 in 1 Multi Pac – Part 2

One of the most popular and rich arcade game kits for most collectors is Dave Widel / Mike Doyle’s 96 in 1 Multi Pac-man kit. Easy to install, this kit adds a lot of depth and fun to your gameroom.

In the first part of this installation tutorial, we took a look at the multi-pac kit as it looks after it arrives at your house, as well as removing EPROMs at 6J, 6H, 6F, 6E and the Z-80 processor and resocketing it in the new 96 in 1 pcb.

In part two of Installing the 96 in 1 Multi Pac kit, we are going to look at removing EPROMs 5E and 5F as well as adjusting the dip switches to start setting your preferences for sweet, rich mapley Pac-man gameplay.

Back to the Multi Pac Instructions

Ok, we left off on “Step 3.” of the printed instructions you get for installing your Pac-man kit from Mike Doyle. Here is what step 3 says;

Step 3. Carefully remove your 5E and 5F ROMs. The small graphics board is plugged into 5E with the notch in the same direction as the other chips on the main PCB.

Here is a photo of the two ROMs in question on the Ms. Pac-man board, with a little 5E and 5F printed on the PCB just below them.

Again, from the first article, just use a very small flat head screwdriver to wiggle those chips out, and set them aside pressed into a piece of dense foam and store them in a static free electronics bag.

(Check out that hand writing. Think I’m one vowel away from rubber walls? Like I always say, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.)
The instructions say to plug the small graphics board with the Mr. Neato thumbs up Pac-man sticker into the 5E socket, making sure again to match up the direction of the half moon on the chip going in the same direction as the half moon on the socket. This is not a chip from the Ms. pac-man board, but it gives you of the “half moon” I have been talking about;

This is how the small graphics board should look after you’ve plugged it into 5E on the Ms. pac-man PCB.

Most kits with newer socketed chips developed by Dave Widel and other designers today have stronger, tubular pins vs. the old flat plate metal pins. It may feel like you are putting a lot of pressure on the chip to get it to press into the socket, but can push fairly hard and still be good.

Another awesome sidebar about the graphics board is that Dave and Mike added strain relief to the sub ribbon cable going to 5E which should prevent any pulled wires from rough handling. So if you gots the fat man digits with no real feel of how to work those things, the 96 in 1 Multi Pac kit is ready for you, just don’t go sky diving from the 16 ga. wires.

Ok, onto step 4, where we will check our work.

Step 4. Review your work to be sure that the Z-80 chip has its notch in the right orientation (it should match the other 3 small chips near the top of the Multi board). Check the sub-board at 5E to ensure its notch is oriented the same as the other chips on the main PCB. Check for any bent pins.

Mike’s telling you what you need to look for to make sure you have the Multi Pac kit installed without causing any damage or future errors. First, check the chip orientation on the boards. You can look at those half moons in the chips like I have been mentioning.

I will admit, other than looking at the profile of a chip, I don’t know how to check for bent pins once the chip is socketed. So, just look at the side of your mini graphics board that we put in 5E as well as the Z-80 processor that you re-socketed and make sure none of the pins are crooked or look bent in the socket. Your processor and other chips for your Pac multi kit should look something like this. (Not the Ms. Pac-man PCB, just a demonstration of straight pins.)

Configuring your Multi Pac settings

Looking back at Mike’s configuration instructions;

Once installed, the Multi-Pac is ready to configure to your favorite settings. The non-volatile RAM will save all settings and high scores even when the unit is unplugged. To do this:

1. Set all DIP-switches 1-8 to OFF.
2. Set DIP #6 to ON, this brings up the administrator menus when a game is selected.
3. After you’re done, power up game

Don’t power up your machine just yet, we’ll do that soon enough. In order to set your DIP switches take off the back door of your machine and let’s get access to the PCB. We are looking for the block of DIP switches to initially setup your Multi Pac configurations. Those DIP switches look something like this (This photo I took was after I had configured my Multi Pac kit. So you see all of the dip switches are “off”. Make sure to flip #6 the other direction to “on”, otherwise you wont’ see your config screen.);

Now, you have checked all of your chips and feel as confident as possible that you have everything installed correctly and have set your DIP switches, let’s get to powering up your Pac-man or Ms. Pac-man. Heck, it might even be your bum-fungled machine that is in a Firefox cabinet with a Midway harness with a Sly Spy marquee! Whatever works for ya.

I hope you know where your power switch is to your arcade game. If you don’t, you probably aren’t quite there padawan, to be even attempting this multi kit upgrade. Just to re-iterate, if you have having issues playing your Pac-man of choice before this kit, I can’t help you troubleshoot those problems in this tutorial. The upgrade may fix your problems since you removed 8 chips from your board, but like Mike Doyle said, there are no guarantees for a newly working Ms. Pac-man PCB.

Hit the power, and you should see this screen!

The welcome screen to the 96 in 1 kit says;

If you don’t see this screen when you power up, immediately shut the machine off and review step 4 and double check all of your connections. The kit is fairly forgiving, so if you didn’t fully press a chip down, you may be ok. If you get stuck, you will probably want to email Mike Doyle (Kilkeeslps@aol.com) with questions about why your Multi Pac kit isn’t working.

Installation Part 3 – Working with your settings

Mike provides a lot of instructions for configuring the settings for your Multi Pac. I am going to continue this installation of the kit in part there, where we get more in depth into all of those options. So make sure to tune back for part 3 of “Installing the 96 in 1 Multi Pac”

Ms. Pac-man Kickplate Dimensions

For awhile, I have been meaning to post about the three seriously long topic thread on BYOAC and KLOV about Joymonkey, and his quest to make licensed Ms. Pac-man stencils. He produced a set of Ms. Pac-man stencils, complete with videos, the whole works. There are a ton of images of the stencil development in the BYOAC thread which give a ton of great content and information.

For now, posting the Ms. Pac-man kickplate dimensions will have to suffice. Here they are. I could have measured my own Bally Ms. Pac-man, and drawn this diagram out, but why re-invent the wheel, and this is a nice kickplate diagram.

Any time you have a thread related to dimensions of Midway arcade cabinets you have talk about the “slope” of the Midway cabinets. (Ms. Pac-man, Pac-man, Galaga, Galaxian, etc. etc.) But in the case of the kickplate, there was some discussion of how accurate the Midway cabinet plans on Jakobud are, and this diagram puts all of those questions to rest.