i want to have the game up and running for my birthday in 2 1/2 weeks, so i need to hurry a little bit. i'll be posting an update on the color issue in a short while, but for now my main goal is to get the game up and running. remember, after we had brought it upstairs, it kept resetting and eventually the +5V led on the power supply board went out, so there was cleary an issue with the voltages. i checked the connectors on the power supply and found that one of them was broken and even burnt. i've learned since then that this is a common issue an williams power supply boards and that this connector (amongst other stuff) needs to be replaced!
i got some friendly help from a KLOV guy ("dokert"
) who's going to assist me in the repairs, but in the meantime i wanted to make sure the game is working apart from the power supply issue, so i pulled out a switcher and one of those
bob roberts williams switching power supply kits and set up a temporary testing station
all the voltages checked out fine, so i anxiously turned on the game - here's what i got on the screen
as if the game wanted to play a round of hangman with me
!
anyway, it looked like some sort of vertical collapse to me, so i contacted dokert again and he told me to pull the chassis and check two white ceramic resistors. you can see them on the following picture in the top right corner
here's a closeup. they looked fine to me, but dokert also suggested reflowing the solder joints, ...
... so i turned the chassis around and immediately realized that one of the joints had cracked
! i removed the old solder and re-attached the capacitors with new one
after that, i put the chassis back in, discharged the monitor again (which was a good thing to do, because i still got sparks and some crackle), re-connected all the wires and turned the game on. to be honest, i wasn't expecting it to work, but see for yourself
another "YES, BABY!!!"
picture is crisp, need to work on the orientation though a little bit, but it's as good as it can get! so i plugged in the control panel and tested if everything was working (left, right, jump, fire) - BINGO!!!
now "all i need to do" is finish the paint job and be done with it! i'll be rebuilding the original power supply nevertheless (at least i'll be trying to), but for now i know that i can play the game once the cosmetic part is done!
YES, BABY
