Archive for June, 2007

Talked with Rick last night, told him the only artwork piece I told have for a Jr. Pac-man machine is the original oversize, or small sized version, marquee. Hopefully he can take some photos of that with the flash off and I can see if I can trace it.

During the last month I have been debating about tracking down the original creators of the Jr. Pac-man artwork who would have worked for Bally. Joe said that after about 1984, most games had credits, so that is a great place to start. However, in the limited searching I have done so far, I haven’t been able to find credits for the Jr. Pac-man game. I don’t know if there is an arcade site out there that collects this information or not, it would be a good site for sure, but if anyone has any information about this please shoot me an email.

Dug around in the bottom of the cabinet tonight a little more, found some more trash, but found a lot of labels including one that I hope goes to this monitor. I knew it was a Wells Gardner, but the label says 19K4635. I emailed Bob Roberts to see if he could help me identify the monitor and make sure that is correct.

Brought my work home with me tonight, I was working (minus a short break to eat and mow the front) until 12:30 pm on making a brochure. So, tomorrow I will be taking a half day at work.

After talking to Rick the other night, I decided to just send him my Pengo PCB to have his tech friend take a look at it. I think Rick is really smart and knowledgeable and really trust him and anyone in his network. So, hopefully he can easily figure out what it is, if it is a RAM or processor issue or what. Hopefully it is an easy fix and I can get it working really soon with that high score save kit.

But since the Pengo PCB is now in the mail, I thought it might be time to look also into getting the volume pot replaced. Thinking I might need to place an order this week with Bob Roberts, might as well combine it all. Here are some photos of the front and a crappy one of the back of the pot I think I need to replace.

(Around page 37 of the Pengo operator’s manual it says I need a 10K pot Car Pnlmt, part no. 475-0007. I don’t know what “Car Pnlmt” means, but I think all Bob needs is the 10k portion. I don’t actually know what part in this assembly is the pot, I will have to take it out and take a closer look I guess. It looks like from the manual that the gold piece on the right is a little AMP, so the pot must be back in that wiring somewhere.)

I think I have mentioned it here, but from talking with Tim in MI, who also has this same problem, and Bob it sounds like all of the static we are getting from moving the coin door is from a bad Pot on the sound. I also turn the knob when I played the game and it wouldn’t adjust anything, just leaving the sound at the deafening high level it was at.

Figured out which pads I need, just basically those green scrubby pads that you can buy any off brand for. Supposedly they are great for these edge connectors, I tried it briefly last night and my jury is still out. Seems like it would be damaging, but everyone says “it seems it would be bad, but it isn’t”. What do I know?

I figured out how to get the little door open at the base of the front of the machine last night. I took out the first board I saw and lo and behold, there were some things going on. Looks like one small capacitor is blown, one resistor has a broken leg, and it almost looks like one resistor was purposefully clipped off, but should be there.

I looked at the schematic, not nearly as nice as Dig Dug from Atari, with a parts list. I don’t know yet how to identify what exact parts I need from the schematic. I am debating on just taking the board into the electronics store and having them loook and tell me based on similar looking parts on the board. But that seems like a best guess scenario.

Rick and I finally caught up last night, and he got to see the kickplate art for the first time. He was really impressed, which is great. I talked to him about the circles at the top and how they were right at the dimension edge for the top. He said he didn’t feel like it was that big of a detail to sweat about. He originally said to leave them and depending on sizing they may not be cut at all. He asked what I would do, and to me, even if you lined up this art side by side with the original you might notice the circle placement off a little, I would just move them down a hair so you knew they would fit within the dimensions.

He trusted my judgement and told me to go ahead. That is what I like, when someone trusts my opinion, because I do a good job and I try to make the best decision for the person who wants it. But he also made a good point that every cab could vary in size, placement, etc. etc., so not every cab is alike anyway even in color because of fading and whatnot.

So, next step, he is sending over a sample of the Cloak and Dagger art so I can color match and we’ll go from there.

Wanted to try the game again tonight to see if I had any problems with it resetting. Well, after turning it on, that is all it did, every second it reset and the game just kept flashing, so there is something wrong with it. Some information is turning up on the Google Groups, it may not be too complicated to get working again.

I also spoke with Rick tonight, and he was fairly familiar with the hardware in these Wizard of Wor machines. Made by Midway / Bally, the hardware is very similar (which I already read) to Gorf, and apparently Professor Pac-man. He said it sounded like a Z-80 processor possibly going bad since there is already a switching power supply installed. He said it can never hurt to clean the edge connectors, all sorts of weird problems can happen there. As I had read before, and he suggested again, to use Scotch Brite pads. I have to figure out which ones. I have heard about using the magic eraser ones, but apparently that isn’t what you use for edge connectors.

I went today, on what ended up being a hot day, to get the game. I took a look at it briefly when I got there. The previous owner showed me that the game had problems with resetting. He started to play his game, was a minute into it, and the game reset. When I took a look at the back of the game, I noticed that the back door was loose. The top wood had splintered, so it didn’t really sit in place. So my thought is, maybe the movement of the game play moves that door just enough to hit the switch in back and reset the game occasionally.

I played the game when I got home, and it didn’t reset on me at all. I had taken the back door off and pulled out the switch, so I thought my theory seemed to be valid. There are still lines through the screen, and I am having problems locating the monitor model. It is some sort of Wells Gardener with an RCA tube. I have a number, but it doesn’t look right. It will need a cap kit, and that is an easy fix if that is all I need to do. The chassis is just caked with dust, so although whoever restored this game with a brand new control panel didn’t do much to the monitor. He did put in a switching power supply to switch out the linear one in the game.