Archive for July, 2007
Found another email for Mark Deroller
Got the bug today, and decided to dig a little deeper.
I thought I remembered Mark DeRoller (who’s white Mr. Do started my whole search) posting a work phone number to call him back in 2001 on some of his inquiries. I looked back, but couldn’t find it right away, I didn’t have time to look through 67 posts. But, I did figure out that he has yet a third email address at a Yahoo account. The first two emails he had listed failed for me, but I see he also has a photo gallery through Yahoo from ’06, so he may still use that email.
Here’s hoping. I almost get the impression he might have stopped collecting and sold everything off, but who knows, maybe he hasn’t!!!
Replacement Capacitors for Wizard of Wor PCB
Got my order from Bob Roberts tonight as planned. I did end up getting some sort of replacement for the original glass caps used on the Wizard Of Wor PCB, here are what they look like.
What I had been reading on the original ones on the board was a little off. On these caps you’ll see printed AVX 104 M5J 911. I don’t know what most of that means, other than 104 is synonomous with the .1 on the schematic. However, they don’t have the typical signs for polarity, and since they are caps and caps have always had polarity in my experience I will have to figure that out before putting it on the board.
Bob emailed me back right away, he is so great like that, and let me know that these caps don’t have a polarity on them, so either way is fine. I did just that and soldered the cap onto the board.
I powered up the game, and it seems to be working fine. It didn’t reset on me when I played, so that is great news. However, it does still have the lines through the screen so the next step will be a cap kit. I also thought that the one and two player buttons were a bit sticky, and the game voice seemed a little weird, like it was repeating. I have to test the Mame version and see what that does, hopefully that will give me a good indication. Otherwise I can go to Robert’s and test his Wizard of Wor to see how the voice piece works in his.
Photo Galleries from Picasa!
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July 11, 2007
Last week we worked almost every night with Nokes on his different training exercises. The trainer had said that she felt like we should repeat puppy training class, and we weren’t too thrilled with the idea. I want my dog to be very obedient, but how much do I want to pay for it? I am sure five years down the line, I may say “Why didn’t I just pay the extra money and do it over again?”, but right now I don’t feel that way. We signed him up for the intro class which we will probably start around the beginning of school.
He is funny, when he knows you have food, he does pretty good. But there are times when it is like you have never taught him anything. Two class periods ago we thought he was going to mop the floor with the other dogs. It was sitting and staying, which he has done since he was really small. Well, there were some issues with him being the “dominant” puppy, or so the trainer claims. She says he was a strong one in the litter, which I don’t really get from him. A lot of that she is basis on his posture, and not how he acts. I don’t think he is overly dominant, not at least compared to other dogs I have seen. But, I do have to give her some credit for whatever training she does have.
On Friday he will go to be neutered. We weren’t sure when to have it done, we have heard contradictory things. The trainer says that it is ok to have it really young, it is better in some instances because it is less of a process when they are young. But others have told us it is too hard on them at such a young age. One thing is for sure, if we get lucky and he chills out some among other dogs after he has it done then it will be worth it to have it done now.
Last Saturday Lady was over for the day, and it was a really long day. He didn’t leave her alone all day, biting at her ears, barking at her, climbing on her, and making some humping gestures. We had experienced this in their short one hour meetings before, but it never went away, unless they both laid down and slept. It was ridiculous and really tested both Sarah and I. We had to separate them quite a bit. Lady was really good about it, most of the time she would just take it, sometimes she’d play back, and sometimes she’d just bite Nokes’ face, shoulders, or take out his legs with her head, pin him dog and bite his legs.
We’re going to try to get him over to Christine’s soon, because time is ticking away for time to get them accustomed to each other. We’ll get the surgery done, and then see if anything changes over there for a night.
Nokes is still losing teeth, we can always tell when he does because he keeps licking his mouth presumably where the blood is coming out. We know to look for a tooth floating around in there somewhere. I was trying to get something away from him that he was eating on the 4th of July, and when I pressed on his mouth with my thumb his front tooth just gave and fell out. It was gross. Kind of funny too, because he’ll have two teeth growing out of one place, looking kind of like a mutant.
He has got some sizeably larger back teeth, they look like mini mountains. I mean feakishly huge like the other dogs would make fun of him in the yard asking why his other teeth hadn’t caught up to his molars yet.
We have gotten him one of those hard Nyla bones, full size, and he just loves that. He’ll spend a ton of time chewing it, quite often we find it bloody. I assume that he is towards the end of his teething period. But he’ll still managed to mangle the one end of the bone pretty good , schredded is more like it. But it keeps him busy, and that is what we care about most.
Sorting out Wizard of Wor Caps
Well, stopped in at Menuier today and the microfarad cap I had described to her on the phone wasn’t what I needed. Based on what I told her I needed
in person, she pulled out these capacitors that were more radial than axial, tiny in size, and not a glass / ceramic combo like the capacitor I had on the board. I took a couple just in case I needed them, this is what they look like.
So I stopped at King’s electronics, and they couldn’t help me with my Wizard of Wor PCB either. I was able to see with a magnifying glass that the other caps had a label of 50V on them, and what looks like an underlined U and a 561.
So, I came home, frustrated, and emailed Bob Roberts because I knew he knew. I just didn’t want to have to send away for one tiny part like this. I also emailed the collector who had helped me before and he sent me a link to a thread about these glass ceramic caps on the KLOV group.
A couple of things I did take away from the thread was that these caps were generally associated with the power of a game, and they were unreliable to some extent, so that is good news for me and fixing the game. More than likely the exploded charred one I have is the problem. Also, the thread said they haven’t been made in over ten years, which is also why I can’t find them now. Supposedly searching “glass encapsulated ceramics capacitors” in Google will give you some good background information, but I will wait on that to see if the game works first.
Bob got back to me right away. He called what I needed a .1UF 50V Axial Ceramic / Mylar Cap. I trust him, he knows his stuff, so I just did a combo order and had them sent to me. Hopefully I’ll get it on Thursday or Friday. In that thread, the contributors also think you should replace them with something different and more reliable. I don’t know why Bob didn’t suggest something else, I asked about appropriate replacements, but since I am selling it and it was free, I am not going to worry about it.
Where I got the Wizard of Wor
Kind of an interesting story. Back in November of 2006 there was a post for a free Wizard Of Wor machine on craigslist Bloomington, IN. I emailed the guy to see if it was available, because I think I saw the post a few days after it was online. He said it was already spoken for, and apologized. Well, that was the end of that. Or so I thought. Then, in late March I get an email from him saying that the other guy never came to get it, was I still interested. I told him I was, so I emailed him asking him when he was free.
Well, we kept missing each other. He would get back with me very sparatic, so we sent something like 20 emails back and forth over the course of the next three months trying to make arrangements. Usually he was only free for a couple hours on a Saturday and that was it. But finally, June 24th, I made arrangements and went down to Bloomington to get the game.
Wizard of Wor .1 microfarad capacitor
Called over to Menuier with my new found information. Once I said my Wizard of Wor PCB needed a “.1 microfarad ceramic cap” she knew right away what that is. She said they did have them. So hopefully I can make it over there on Monday to get a couple.
