Zoo Keeper repair, 2015

by **Flack** » Wed May 16, 2018 10:16 am

It's going to cost me $120 to get a bolt removed from my lawnmower. $30 to fix anything electrical is a steal IMHO.

I got this cabinet years ago. It was sitting outside Cactus Jack's in the trash pile. Jeff and I were going to turn it into a MAME cabinet but the control panel was really too small for what we wanted to do. We ended up giving it away when he moved. Would have made a nice Taito-based emulation project.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed May 16, 2018 9:31 am

Haha, the "joystick pull up." Love it. What's with goddamn kids doing pull ups on joysticks? Would they ever do normal pull ups? Would I?

I think they made it so Qix is playable on the horizontal screen, it just stretches a bit. I will check tonight. I think I also need another button wired for Qix, right, for Slow Draw and Fast Draw. I regret selling my Qix, though I had to cut down on the number of them. Taito machines are the worst to work on. My Qix took 20 minutes for the monitor to warm up and it was a nightmare trying to get it to save scores.

jrok said he'd fix my damaged ZooQ for $30 plus return shipping. Score?

by **Flack** » Tue May 15, 2018 6:05 am

The first time I saw the "joystick pull-up" was at an auction. The crowd of bidders had moved to a new aisle when we heard a crash from the previous aisle. Everyone doubled back and we saw a kid sitting on his ass and a control panel flipped open with wires everywhere. This was a machine that had been sold just minutes before, so I'm sure the new owner wasn't too pleased.

I love Qix. It's one of those games that I thought I was good at until I watched someone good playing it on YouTube. There are a lot of techniques (like building walls and barriers of dozens of tiny little boxes) that I never knew as a kid.

by **Jizaboz** » Mon May 14, 2018 9:28 am

Jeez! Remind me to never buy anything from ArcadeShop. I remember when I was over at your place you telling me about the kid swinging from the joystick catastrophe. At a party over at my place a few months back a guy came over with his 2 daughters and literally did the exact same thing! WTF As soon as I glanced in the room and saw that the kids were standing on a chair to reach the joysticks I knew it wasn't good. Apparently Double Dragon is more sturdy than ZK though because it survived fine.

You've been dealing with this game a long time. At least it's a good one! Qix is also very cool but man is it challenging. I guess from now on you're gonna start locking the coin doors and hiding the keys when you are out of town?

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun May 13, 2018 2:47 pm

Oh, haha, is that the last time I bumped this thread? This is great.

So, there WAS a problem with the JAMMA adapter I got from Arcadeshop for my jrok ZooQ board. (And to catch everyone up - the ZooQ board emulates a few games like Qix and Zoo Keeper flawlessly. I was tired of my real Zoo Keeper boards not working so I went that route.)

I needed to SOLDER A PIN TO A WIRE to get the arcadeshop adapter working, which means they made dozens of not hundreds of the things and never tested them. A guy on KLOV detailed the work necessary to fix it here:

https://forums.arcade-museum.com/showth ... p?t=381354

So that was awesome.

I got things going pretty well, I just needed to bolt everything down and then a friend came over with his daughter, who did the classic kid classic arcade maneuver of trying to dangle herself from the joystick. That split almost every connection from the control panel to the wiring harness.

I fixed that. Then at some point saw that all the control panel buttons were "on" all the time. Long story short, at some point when I hooked it back up, I hooked it back up and ran a spare power connector into the coin door pins. That kills the ZooQ board.

Put the replacement board I bought in, hooked the wires up correctly this time and turned it on and everything works. I still have to bolt everything down, or make sure no kids touch it until I do. This started in January of 2015 when we went to Costa Rica and the people house sitting for us left the coin door open on Zoo Keeper and the cats got inside. It ended May of 2018. Not good.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Jun 27, 2016 10:57 pm

I bought the Taito to JAMMA adapter from Arcadeshop. Loving the fact that it comes with zero information or instructions or anything. Right now I suspect that there's a problem with that adapter because red was working just fine when the real ZK boards were in.

I guess what I need to do next is what some people have said - try sending red to a different pin on the monitor to eliminate the adapter as the problem.

by **Flack** » Mon Jun 27, 2016 3:22 pm

The No-Reddo v1.0.

by **Jizaboz** » Mon Jun 27, 2016 10:30 am

Yeah that does sound like perhaps something wonky with the adapter. Which adapter did you buy?

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun Jun 26, 2016 8:04 am

So I got the jrok board, it's great.

I got the Taito to JAMMA adapter, so I can put it in my Zoo Keeper.

I turn it on.... no red on the (new, well, from, 2007) Wells monitor. Jesus Fackin' Christ.

The monitor WILL display red when I use the menus. I asked if this means there's a problem with the board or game and nobody on KLOV deigned that question worthy of a reply yet.

(I did plug Ghosts n' Goblins into the monitor and I didn't get red. What I need to do is eliminate the Taito adapter from the equation and see what is going on.)

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sat Jun 18, 2016 9:44 am

It was really frustrating that the boards worked perfectly when Mike from Virginia fixed them, but I couldn't get them working in my ZK here in Denver. I am pretty sure that I am missing the 12v line for some reason, but what I really needed was a tech to come over and tell me "yes" or "no" to the stuff I was trying.

I may try to do that anyway. An hour of a tech's time would help me learn how to troubleshoot it.

But the thing is, there is big news. jrok, the kickass engineer that made the multi-Williams JAMMA board and the mulit-Berzerk board and the multi-Q*bert board has released one that does the following games:

Zoo Keeper
Qix
Qix II
Kram
Electric YoYo
Space Dungeon
Complex-X

(I had not heard of Kram or the others besides Qix and ZK before jrok told me the boards were shipping.)

So until I can get ZK working, this will be a solution. It would be nice to have Qix again as well.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Dec 07, 2015 12:12 am

This is approaching a year. It's bullshit that it's not working.

Mike, the guy who got the boards working on his system, offered to repin my harness if I sent the boards and the harness to him. Then we got going with house stuff and I didn't send them.

I am going to hook up the boards one last time, test every chip to ensure it's getting the right amount of power and if that doesn't work, send them off. I really am going to try to fix the final issue myself first. This is my mission in life, no longer playing Fallout 4.

by **Flack** » Tue Mar 31, 2015 7:32 pm

Two of my games (Centipede and Karate Champ) had issues I could not troubleshoot. In both cases I simply bought new PCBs to replace the old ones and sold the old ones as needing fixing (er, "untested"). I totally respect those guys that can dig in and actually troubleshoot boards like that. I wish I had taken a basic electronics course in high school.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Tue Mar 31, 2015 12:02 pm

Mike is gonna replace some caps and then ship it back. Very psyched!

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Tue Mar 31, 2015 12:01 pm

I received the cables on Thursday. Fired up the game and it was still giving the 00 0101 error. However, the signals from the video processor and data processor were crystal clear and did not cut in and out when moving the cable.

I back tracked the communications ram signals to a transceiver (LS245) @ U1. Logic probe was showing all signals present. However the scope showed trashy data going out but the input data was good. I replaced the LS245 @ U1 and the game fired right up.

So, for the past couple of days the game has been running. Ive checked all boards and found some other chips with ugly outputs BUT! the board was working. I did replace all of those chips. They were:

LS138 on the video processor

LS245 @ U2

A total of 4 4116 ram chips with ugly outputs

Installed two new sockets for the CMOS ram

Checked and verified all ROMS and one failed verification. This does NOT mean the checksum is bad. It means that the chip failed programming voltage and is internally damaged but still able to run the code properly. I did replace this rom however ZA12.

I cleaned up the one mod that turns on the LS138 @ U17 on the data processor.

Reflowed a ton of solder joints and checked the amp draw on the +5, +12 and -5 rails.

So far the game has been running flawlessly for three days.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Tue Mar 31, 2015 12:00 pm

We will need a ribbon cable set. Checking data lines from the Data Processor back to the Video Processor show the signals intensify and weaken when touching the long cable. One signal is barely visible on the oscilloscope.

This is in direct correlation with the 00 0101 error since it halts after completing the ram test. The next test checks communications between the Data Processor and Video Processor via the long ribbon cable.

Here is one set: http://www.twistywristarcade.com/wir...cable-set.html

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Tue Mar 31, 2015 12:00 pm

I sent the three ZK boards out to a man in Virginia. I wanted to record what he found and did, in case KLOV ever goes down or I delete my PMs there.

Video Processor: CMOS ram Vcc (supply) wire was not hooked up to +5 vdc, found a dead output on a LS04 that drives a clock signal to the communications ram flip flop (LS74).

Amazingly, the 4116 ram all passed after fixing the previously mentioned items.

Data Processor board: I found a mod and what used to be a mod on the board. I have no earthly idea why they were there. One made absolutely no sense so I removed it. Then I found a LS138 that had one output stuck high.

What remains: Now we have a 00 00101 code. This is good. This means that the video processor is working (unless communications ram is an issue, which its not at this point) and the Data Processor is saying that either it has a problem OR the Rom I/O has a problem.

Today, I will replace another LS138 MUX on the ROM I/O board because all the roms are missing their Select signal (no signal at all) and that signal comes from the LS138. This chip has a bunch of rusty legs too. Ill bet this will fix the board set completely since the roms have no idea what info to send to the Data Processor. So, most likely the board set will be done today.

Zoo Keeper repair, 2015

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