Pengo
Happ Vision Pro 19″ Monitors – $130-$135 Sale
I heard this on the forums and decided to check into it for my Pengo at the local HAPP rep by my work. Well, as of June 30th, they shut down that location. Crap….
So I did get contact information for the sales rep who is now based out of their house in Greenfield. She said the sale is until the end of Sept. 30, ’07 and they are $135 a piece, or $130 if you buy four. Pretty good deal if you ask me. Shipping she estimated at around $20, so that would put a brand new monitor at my house, in 2-3 days for about $155. Tempting.
Rick Ford may try to help walk me through how to do a switcher in the Pengo, so I will try to exhaust my understanding of that route first since it should be cheaper. But I have until the end of Sept. to think about getting a new monitor for a great price.
Some days I hate arcade games
The Pengo board came today in the mail. I double checked my voltages, I was getting 5.12 V and 11.98 V from the Power Supply, and 5.01 V and 11.89 V on the traces on the board after the edge connector is attached.
I got in one game….sort of. The sound seems to be bearable, it doesn’t seem to be as loud so I may have fixed that. But putting it a whole bunch of coin ups will reset the game, and half way through my game when I lined up the diamond blocks, the game reset. I also noticed that I had unlimited guys in the lower left, but I did really only have three lives. Then once the game reset, I noticed some of the characters were messed up.
I thought I saw a ROM 1 error flash on the screen briefly. After I turned the game on and off again, I was getting garbage on the screen. So, sweet. Now what? Am I getting wrong voltages? The ones I read, are those wrong? I don’t think so.
I was toying with the idea to buy a brand new monitor to get rid of the old crappy G07 that is in there now, and getting rid of the isolation transformer in the Pengo machine too. Then I could easily put in a switcher for the Power Supply and see where that leaves me.
I am going to try to research what ROM 1 is in terms of Pengo and go from there. But, basically, the game still isn’t working and is taking up space in my basement.
Pengo board arriving today.
I am pretty pumped, I hope everything works just fine.
I took the time last night to do some more cleaning that somehow I missed when I brought it into the house. There was still some dry junk inside the coin door area up front that I vacuumed out. I also took a look back at previous emails with Bob Roberts about what to do about the sound issue.
He said it was probably just a bad connection, that the pot doesn’t usually go bad. Just check the wires back to the board. Well, it is a short trace, the connection goes right to the harness behind the separating board. I looked at the molex connector, and noticed that some of the pins were sunk back a little more.
I took a screwdriver and pushed the pins down so they should make a better connection. I also took that same small gauge screwdriver, and pushed it around in a circular fashion inside each of the female pin connections. This widened them just a little, not enough to make a bad connection, to make the molex connectors fit better and easier. I had such a problem with a tight fit with those Pengo molex connectors, and I felt like this was the best way to loosen them up.
I really hope that fixes my sound issue, and if my sale goes through this weekend on another machine as planned, I am going to immediately order that kit from Prok. I am so pumped to think about having Pengo working perfectly.
Pengo board shipped!
My pengo pcb is back on it’s way to me from Pittsburgh via ground. It should work from what I hear.
I need to double check my power supply. It was fine when I looked at it before, but it is always good to double check. If I felt more proficient I would probably look at a switcher instead.
Supposedly the board didn’t have a chip that was fully seated, or a leg was bent or something. I tried reseating them myself, and didn’t notice a change. I was also really careful about the legs, so I don’t doubt it was bent, I just wish I knew how it got that way.
How do I get the Pengo Sound Control Panel Out?
I took a short look inside my coin door today to see if I could figure out a front way to get the sound mount out of the cabinet. I know I should be checking for loose connections, maybe I just need to test continuity and that is it. But I can’t really get my hands inside the cabinet much.
I haven’t drilled out the bottom coin door yet, and am not liking that idea. But if I have to in order to get at the remaining screws that hold the whole door in, then that is what I need to do.
Pengo PCB arrived in Pittsburgh
Heard from Richard today. He got the PCB in the mail, and he was able to set it up on a test rig and check it out. He was getting the bars across the screen just like me, so I wasn’t crazy. He said one of the chips felt like it was getting hot and that probably means that it is bad. It may be just that simple to swap it out and have it work, so here’s hoping.
Once the holiday is done things should move fairly quick, and I could have my PCB back hopefully before I go on vacation. (Nearly one year after I got the silly game)
Pengo cabinet inside has a fun design
Got in back of the cab last night and tried to figure out how to get at the Sound Control. I want to be able to take it off so I can work on it, take photos as needed, but I can’t figure out how. It feels as though it is riveted to the back of the coin box inside, so I thought I might be able to get at it in back.
I loosed the four bolts holding the huge particle board “L” that contains the Power Supply and PCB. I pulled it out a little bit to see that there is still a board in my way of getting at it through there unless I remove that little board. Doesn’t seem like it has much of a purpose, but I hate to go ripping apart the game if I don’t have to.
