I bought a Time Pilot PCB.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 7:35 pm

It will run in my Gyruss game, so I can at least play it.

I need to raise some capital fast, though. I am selling:

- My Tetris PCB
- My broken Q*bert PCB (powers up, but then freezes up)
- Probably my extra Mr. Do! PCB (has a fast-drill mod on it, and was the board used to dump ROMs for MAME)
- An arcadeshop Pac-Man-style Midway control panel

I'm debating whether or not it is retarded to keep my Warlords PCB. I could get $300 for it. I don't have any of the other parts I need to make a Warlords cocktail machine, *and* I have an Atari 800 running Castle Crashers that works perfectly downstairs. Fuck. Probably need to sell that, too.

Agggh.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:31 am

Sounds like the Warlords PCB would be worth more than all the other things combined.

Susan asked me the other day how many PCBs I have not in cabinets* and I told her three or four. Then I went and counted and I have like 14. I am a bad estimator.

(*She did not use that terminology. It was more like, "how much crap like that do you have stashed around here?")

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 6:58 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Fuck. Probably need to sell that, too.

Agggh.

Do you think there are that many women (or men) willing to pay for that from you? Yo' da man, Jonsey!

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 8:01 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:It will run in my Gyruss game, so I can at least play it.

I didn't know they could still sell PCBs, my understanding is they're an EPA prohibited carcinogen. There are better lubricants available now.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 8:56 am

You are truly the Internet's roadblock.

Paul Robinson · Post by **Paul Robinson** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 10:18 am

Let me dismiss that annoying troll TBARFOS and get to some serious questions.

1. Are the PCBs in these video games interchangeable, similar to the way the motherboard (if it's the same) can generally be moved from one PC to another.?

2. Are there dangers with these PCBs such as the "suicide battery" problem some manufacturers used?

3. I'm not a hardware person but I do know a little about how batteries are used, would it have been possible to connect a second battery, either in series or parallel (whichever one doesn't raise the voltage but just increases available current) so that the device would remain charged and thus the bad or failing battery could be replaced?

Question 3 is the one I'm kind of interested in because I'm not sure if you can do a live battery intercept.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 11:12 am

Paul Robinson wrote:1. Are the PCBs in these video games interchangeable, similar to the way the motherboard (if it's the same) can generally be moved from one PC to another.?

2. Are there dangers with these PCBs such as the "suicide battery" problem some manufacturers used?

3. I'm not a hardware person but I do know a little about how batteries are used, would it have been possible to connect a second battery, either in series or parallel (whichever one doesn't raise the voltage but just increases available current) so that the device would remain charged and thus the bad or failing battery could be replaced?

Question 3 is the one I'm kind of interested in because I'm not sure if you can do a live battery intercept.

01. Some are. The industry moved to a semi-interchangable wiring standard referred to as JAMMA in 1985. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Amus ... ssociation

02. There are dangers with suicide batteries, yes. I mentioned them in ICJ's Tetris PCB thread. Sega used them throughout the mid-1980s. Capcom has been using them for years, and I believe still uses them in their CPS hardware. You can read more about them here: http://www.arcadecollecting.com/dead/dead.html

03. Yes you can change out a suicide battery. You can read more about the process here, which includes both pictures and a video: http://pineconeattack.com/2009/02/06/ho ... ade-board/

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 12:59 pm

Great questions!

RetroRomper · Post by **RetroRomper** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 2:14 pm

Flack wrote: 01. Some are. The industry moved to a semi-interchangable wiring standard referred to as JAMMA in 1985.

One thing I didn't expect, was that there are voltage differences between Japanese JAMMA wiring enclosures and ones made for international sale that make a Japanese JAMMA board problematic for an enclosure designed for international games. I've had quite a few issues getting the Japanese version of Xexex running on a cabinet retrofitted for US Voltages, but for some odd reason the system will take the International board without issue.

Similar problems occurred with both Gradius and R-Type, otherwise I would have assumed the boards themselves were at fault. The intent here, was to have a dedicated cabinet to Xexex but right now I'll probably just push ahead with building either a dedicated MAME cabinet, or convert my PC to a dedicated MAME / Hyperspin set up and buy a bit of wall art for my favorite games.

"sigh"

Paul Robinson · Post by **Paul Robinson** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 5:28 pm

Flack wrote:03. Yes you can change out a suicide battery. You can read more about the process here

What surprised me was the guy who did the video (same guy who wrote the article you referenced) pointed out that once the old battery was removed you still have an hour before the board does go bad. (His time to restore was on the order of about 45 seconds, and that was while he was explaining what he was doing.) I had the general impression it would have been more like a computer system is now or a flashlight, if the power ever stops, it dies, so the replacement has to be simultaneous.

Now, I know these games have setup modes, such as determining what point value you have to have before you get a free game, how many quarters to start the game, how many quarters to add a game, and so on. Is this something you have to activate (like a toggle switch to go into Maintenance Mode) or does it go into that mode if you unlock the door? Or can you get to it without having to open the door?

Also, what does the maintenance mode allow you to do?

I have my own story. Back around 1977 or so, I was watching a guy in an arcade at Lakewood Center in Lakewood, California, program the attract-mode welcome message, and I was saying a few things, because the method he was using to set the display to say something like "Welcome to Lakewood Arcade" reminded me of trying to program something. So I recognized what he was doing in that way, plus I could tell from the look on his face when he missed a letter and had to go through the whole thing all over again, because I had done that sort of thing myself, and probably more than once.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 11:56 am

Paul Robinson wrote:Now, I know these games have setup modes, such as determining what point value you have to have before you get a free game, how many quarters to start the game, how many quarters to add a game, and so on. Is this something you have to activate (like a toggle switch to go into Maintenance Mode) or does it go into that mode if you unlock the door? Or can you get to it without having to open the door?

Most arcade games require you to flip a dip switch on the circuit board to put the game into maintenance mode. This is to prevent customers from walking up to the machines and, with a little knowledge, making changes to the machine.

Incidentally, many arcade machines had "kill" switches that would kill the power to the machine if either the rear door or coin doors were opened. This was to prevent careless repair men from getting shocked.

Paul Robinson wrote:Also, what does the maintenance mode allow you to do?

Generally speaking, the things you mentioned -- how many coins per play (one or two), how many points are required for an extra life, and so on. Note that in most older games, these options were typically just set using dip switches. Another common dip switch is "monitor/cabinet orientation". Most cocktail cabinets flip the screen upside down in between players (since they are sitting head-to-head), while an upright cabinet does not.

Check out some of the arcade manuals Jason Scott has been uploading to the Internet Archive and you can see what the maintenance/dip settings for each game do (Link)

Paul Robinson wrote:I have my own story. Back around 1977 or so, I was watching a guy in an arcade at Lakewood Center in Lakewood, California, program the attract-mode welcome message, and I was saying a few things, because the method he was using to set the display to say something like "Welcome to Lakewood Arcade" reminded me of trying to program something. So I recognized what he was doing in that way, plus I could tell from the look on his face when he missed a letter and had to go through the whole thing all over again, because I had done that sort of thing myself, and probably more than once.

I would love to find out what game that was. I've never seen one that does that, although I'm not an expert on 70s games. This sounds like a feature that was probably dropped in later machines.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 12:33 pm

Zoo Keeper lets you specify the name of your arcade in the same arduous process the Commander describes. When I saw that I could do that, I panicked. I had no name ready. So I went with my go-to battle cry, Fuck AdultSwim.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 1:17 pm

Does it store the name when the machine loses power? That's a really cool feature.

I remember our first VCR camera allowed you to put text on the screen using a similar process. It was all upper caps and, even back then, it seemed like people were screaming at you from the television. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROBBIE!

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 7:48 pm

It does! Zoo Keeper stores it and something else.

It has a permanent high score save, and then high scores of the last "day." It somehow keeps track of the last 24 hours it's been powered on, and lets go of scores on the "day" table as they fall off.

I don't like these things knowing what day it is. :/

I bought a Time Pilot PCB.

I bought a Time Pilot PCB.

Re: I bought a Time Pilot PCB.

Re: I bought a Time Pilot PCB.