It took five months -- and the guy apologize profusely -- but Tempest's monitor has been repaired and it works 100%.

I shall start another thread about the guy who grabbed the 13" monitor in my JAMMA cab and my Mr. Do! board (to put a ZIF socket in) and it's now been 6 months and the guy has promised over and over again to drop it off and has stopped responding to texts.

THAT guy is a piece of shit.

There is great Tempest news! A guy came to look at it today. He grabbed the monitor -- I can't believe how easy the monitor comes out. I maybe should take it out when I work on it myself. :(

Argh, so it's been a week and a half since I really decided to get all my arcade problems solved. A local company said that if I dropped Tempest's monitor off they'd look at it.

Even the people that have responded to me initially on craigslist stopped responding when I described the problems I've had.

Some of this is because I think guys who do this don't work with email or texts. But at the same time, the number of available techs, at least in Denver, is drying up.

I've got to think about the games I have and if they are gonna be too problematic to keep around or what. The three most troublesome games were Tempest, Zoo Keeper and Q*bert. Q*bert's been great since I put a jrok board in it, haha. The other two are down.

I am linking this, because this helps a newb understand what it means for a transistor to be shorted to the metal cage:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/archive/index.php/t-277043.html

The thing I noticed was that I had the transistors connected, and then their wires going to the deflection board. I was seeing a short on ONE of them. Well, you have to unplug the connectors and then test.

I got a little farther tonight, in so much as I have graphics in the lower-right corner of the game. Nnnngh. I had a wire come loose from one of the transistors, though. I corrected that and then came upstairs to read about the "testing a transistor for a short" thing.

[quote="Jizaboz"]Does shoving toothpicks into a screaming flyback while it's on to try make it stfu count? I wish I was joking.[/quote]

Haha, who did that with a toothpick?

Does shoving toothpicks into a screaming flyback while it's on to try make it stfu count? I wish I was joking.

More techs have died from tongue burns when diagnosing boards..... Isnt that why they called that one a ' suicide board'? Because so many disgruntled arcade techs have checked themselves out that way?


THE
GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD
AARDVARK

Unfortunately when working on arcade games, working on them "hot" is the only way to do it. Traditional tools like multimeters and solder suckers don't work on these things. Everybody just plugs them in and starts probing with their tongues, looking for short circuits and hoping not to get killed. If that doesn't work sometimes you can just spray water on the board with it plugged in and look for the sparks. When all else fails you can just hook everything to a few daisy chained batteries and then watch for where the fire starts.

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]I had one busted transistor, one cold solder joint, two dead fuses and one wire that had disconnected itself. [/quote]
"And a partridge in a pear tree."

Sounds like you're lucky it either didn't blow everything on the board, or worse, if you weren't super careful, electrocute you. I hope for your sake when you work on these things you make sure you are not touching anything hot - live - when not wearing gloves.

Would have been better if he had died by getting shocked by a monitor, or maybe if Polybius had fallen on him. The pneumonia angle is way too depressing.

Soooo Temp-- okay, strap in.

Tempest is dead again and that's not all. The tech that I talked about earlier in the thread? Yeah, well, he is technically on craigslist at the moment:

https://denver.craigslist.org/vgm/5324390546.html

Not gonna lie, teared up a little finding that tonight.

This does leave me in the spot of Tempest not working. Last time it was a good seven months before it was fixed. (By Eric, 100%) I would like to get it fixed in a month and then fix Zoo Keeper within a month from that and then get a cap kit on the GnG game.

Nothing works here!

Congrats on getting the Tempest fixed. It's like having a long lost friend come back from Outer Mongolia or something, isn't it.

Re: Electricity. I learned on a Radio Shack 200 in 1 project kit (and in high school) where the number one project was making shockers. Start with the easy fun stuff or you'll end up hating it is what I always say.


THE
DOUBLE A TASER
AARDVARK

I like Tempest. Actually, I like any game that you can play for a while even if you're not any good at it and it makes you feel like you're good at it. That's how Tempest is for me. Every time I play it I think, man, I'm kind of good at this game. And then I get to level two! </rimshot> Actually I get several levels in, far enough to think, wow, I might be kind of good at this game! And then I look up people's high scores and realize I have a better chance of tearing apart a Tempest cabinet with my bare hands and eating it in an hour than I do at obtaining a high score on it.

You know, I was thinking ... arcade repair is a lot like Qix. It's all about divide and conquer. Draw a line, make sure this section is good, and then move to the unknown section. And then eventually a spark will appear that will kill you.

[quote]I mean, the blueprints are right there in front of you, right? And they show where the electricity flows, and how much each component should receive. So in theory, you should be able to sit down with a multimeter like he said and just go "aha!" and, if not fix the problem, at least discover where the problem is. [/quote]

Yeah, I gotta take a two-month class on electricity. How the fuck did we get educated without this shit? An entire year on Earth Science (which nobody cares about... well, half of the US politically doesn't care about it) and, what, a few weeks on basic electronics?

So all I remember is stuff I picked up and somehow retained. I want to be able to read a schematic, take readings, and now if shit is good or bad. The completely broken wire that was going from the cage to the deflection PCB -- well, that one I probably could have solved. If I had noticed it.


[quote]I wish I saw arcade cabinets the way I see computers. I don't even see computers anymore, I just see plastic or metal cases with a bunch of random parts installed in them. I kind of see arcade games like that, like I see the power supply and the PCB and the control panel, but I never got to the point where I saw the parts that made up those parts. Like, to me, a board is a board. I wish I had got to the point where I could troubleshoot stuff the way you're doing it. "Repairing a cold trace" is code for "into the garbage chute, flyboy!" to me. [/quote]

Haha, the tech (Eric) said the same thing -- he sees arcade games like how you and I see computers. But he sees computers like how you and I see arcade games.


[quote]The other thing as you noted is that there were multiple problems, which made the troubleshooting that much more difficult. I'm glad he was able to solve the case. How long did it take him?[/quote]

The multiple problems is what tripped me up, ultimately. If a fuse blows and I identify it, I'm good -- as long as it wasn't something else, too. That's where I think I am running into trouble with Qix. I think there's multiple problems.

It took him maybe a half-hour to fix my Tempest. That includes the time it took me to wheel it out from the abandoned electroics room. (milkunits is coming for a 32" CRT television this weekend, and that room will finally be free of any unused or broken electronic equipment. Finally!!)

I played a game of Tempest today before work. It's such a great game. Now that it works I will never, ever turn it on again.

It all seems so easy, in theory.

I mean, the blueprints are right there in front of you, right? And they show where the electricity flows, and how much each component should receive. So in theory, you should be able to sit down with a multimeter like he said and just go "aha!" and, if not fix the problem, at least discover where the problem is.

At least that's how I imagined it would work. In reality all I ever did was stare into the back of a machines holding a flashlight and going "homina-homina-homina" and drooling on various parts (which actually made things worse). I can't tell you how many projects started with "just remove the chip and check the pins for corrosion" turned into "well here goes attempt #14 on straightening those GD pins I've ruined again ..."

I wish I saw arcade cabinets the way I see computers. I don't even see computers anymore, I just see plastic or metal cases with a bunch of random parts installed in them. I kind of see arcade games like that, like I see the power supply and the PCB and the control panel, but I never got to the point where I saw the parts that made up those parts. Like, to me, a board is a board. I wish I had got to the point where I could troubleshoot stuff the way you're doing it. "Repairing a cold trace" is code for "into the garbage chute, flyboy!" to me.

The other thing as you noted is that there were multiple problems, which made the troubleshooting that much more difficult. I'm glad he was able to solve the case. How long did it take him?

When jscott came to interview people for his arcade documentary, he got the following quote out of local home arcade owner "Exidy":

"The best tools in fixing a game is a screwdriver and a multimeter."

(Paraphrased.)

The guy who came to fix Tempest did it with a screwdriver and meter. Hee hee hee. I mean, it did take additional parts as noted above, but those were the main tools.

I did finally get a hold of a tech to come look at it. The guy is late 50s, early 60s -- he was a board tech for a while at some point. Came in and with a multimeter and screwdriver, he fixed my Tempest.

I had one busted transistor, one cold solder joint, two dead fuses and one wire that had disconnected itself. Luckily I am well-stocked on fuses.

Anyway, I have the guy's card. He was great -- nice guy, very personable, very reasonable rates. He also lives in the same town as me. Funnily enough, I was introduced to him thanks to the guy who drove my Funhouse pin to my place. It definitely helps to ask people involved in video games if they know people. I only wish I had more broken shit going on with games! (I don't wish that.)

All my games work at the moment, with one exception: a Qix that I got as a project to see if I could make it work myself.

I asked two dudes if they could fix it. One guy is setting up the 2UP in Denver and is busy till next month. I didn't hear back from the other dude.

So there is one other guy I might ask, otherwise I am going to throw myself onto the pity of KLOV and try to find a mentor. This is costing me $40 in transistors each time I try it.

Here's how it went: it's still fucking broken.

I don't fucking know.

Someone thought maybe the frame wasn't grounded, but then it was.

I bought an LV2000 board from vector-repair.com. It was only like $27 and it's supposed to bypass all that shit for 6100 monitors. It SEEMS to be within my range of soldering skills. I'm tired of being intimidated by this SHIT.