Ms. Pac-man
Purchased a 96 in 1 Multi Pac Kit
There was a reason, that I can’t disclose right now, that I wanted to get Mike Doyle’s 96 in 1 Multi Pac kit for my Ms. Pac-man. I have been wanting this for a number of months because although I love Ms. Pac-man, it was always been one of my favorite arcade games, I need to breathe some new life into the gameplay.
The 96 in 1 Multi Pac Kit is just the way to do it. A lot of collectors get multi-kits for their coin-op games because it gives you some variety in gameplay. Most arcade game collectors don’t seem to like MAME either, and this is a way to get around having a MAME machine.
This particular kit comes with every darn possible variety of the Pac-man maze style arcade game you can imagine. Most are variations on the originals, Ms. Pac-man, Pac-man, etc. etc. But there are some video games on the kit that you wouldn’t expect and are completely unrelated.
- Ms Pac
- Ms Pac Plus
- Ms Pac Attack
- Piranha
- Mr. & Mrs. Pacman (new!)
- Pengo
- Pac Junior1-4
- Pac Baby1-2
And the game list goes on and on. 96 total variations and games. But probably the coolest part are the features of the multi pac kit. I will list the kit features I am most interested in;
- High Score save in NVRAM
- Selectable Speed
- Start on any level
- Difficulty
- Screen Saver
I love the high score feature, and I can’t wait to use the start on any level feature on some of the games, especially Jr. Pac-man. I have only beaten level 6 in my dedicated Jr. Pac-man once, and could use the practice on the last three levels.
Plus, I know a lot of people who play the games will want to set the difficulty and change the speed of gameplay.
The 96 in 1 Multi Pac kit should arrive hopefully sometime on Thursday or Friday and I hope to get it installed in my Ms. Pac-man right away. Thanks Mike Doyle.
Ms. Pac-man Marquee Light Working.
Kenny was over this weekend, and he took a look at my connection behind my Ms. Pac-man marquee. He changed out the starter with the one that was in the Pengo, as well as the bulb, and found that both the Pengo starter and bulb worked fine.
So looked back at the light fixture and figured out that it was just that the connection needed a little push and on the marquee came! Exciting to have that lit up.
Unfortunately, I now realize why the operator in Ohio was selling this marquee. Although there is great color, there are some significant scratches. I don’t think I got a bad deal per say, I just know that deep scratches on the artwork of a marquee, which would have to come from behind, wouldn’t happen naturally. So to say, “Hey, that’s just the age of the game” doesn’t exactly work.
But getting another one isn’t high on my priority list with what else I have to do with my other games. Maybe sometime I’ll just come across one when talking with people.
Ms. Pac-man is alive!
Last night, a miracle happened! I got the game up and working, and it is a beautiful thing. I will try to get photos of it working here pretty soon, but first, how did I do it?
Two weekends back I had been talking with Robert at the Arcade auction here in Indy. I was asking him if he knew anybody that would be willing to help me get some of my machines working, which I have been asking of people for a year or so now. He asked specifically what my Ms. Pac-man was doing, and I explained to him that the power supply was bad, and was dropping amps off one of the leads. So then he tells me that Bob Roberts makes a kit to repair those old power supplys, replacing some capacitors and whatnot.
So, I checked it out. I didn’t see the actual part about the capacitors, but Bob Roberts puts together what he calls a “Pacpower” kit. It is a way to power the PCB with a switching power supply and some custom wiring, all while keeping the original wiring in tact. This answered my biggest questions, because I read you had to hack the wiring all apart if you just wanted to switch in a new switching power supply for the old transformer.
The kit was more expensive than I anticipated, if I wanted to get a new switcher. I knew I had a couple of switchers, but wanted to make sure that I did it right, and I didn’t get to the point of powering on the game with the kit and have the switcher be bad and leave me to test to figure that out. I had looked at Bob Roberts Pacpower kit instructions online, and kind of assumed that it came ready to go, plug and play, but I was disappointed to find out that wasn’t the case. You got all of the parts and you did some assembly.
I got it on Monday, but not figuring that it would work, I didn’t do anything with it right away. I still figured that even if I did the kit, the monitor and PCB both were unknowns on whether or not they were in working condition. Last night I set aside some time to put the Pacpower kit together. It took me awhile, probably about 2 hours, to put together. I am not an expert, and someone who has more experience and didn’t have to read and re-read things carefully on Bob Roberts website, probably could have done it in an hour or less. I made some mistakes, which I will get into later, and had to correct those and figure some other things out, but finally I got everything made and screwed up inside the cabinet.
I crossed my fingers, plugged the game in, and I heard a pop from the monitor, which was knew. I rushed around to the other side, and my game was on! It was already set on freeplay, which I thought was interesting, so I pressed the player one button and away I went. I also had the speedup chip already installed! I was so pumped about all of this. The weirdest thing, the immediate thought I had after I started to play was, “I wonder if I should install a 96-1 kit on here and get all of the games.”
I took a look at a couple of other things, I looked at the manuals and figured out which one was the sound pot, and got that turned down. It was arcade style volume, and it no longer needed to be so loud in my basement. The marquee light doesn’t seem to be working, and I thought it did before I did this, so I will have to do some testing on that to make sure I didn’t mess it up. The monitor has some pretty solid screen burn, but you know what, I don’t really care right now. I can be picky later.
But after hearing the original story of this game, and how it sat in a storage unit, I was suprised about the “freeplay” being set and the speed up chip installed. It must not have sit in that storage that long is my thought, that maybe the last user had it in a personal non-commercial setting.
Either way, all I know is that my game works, I got it to work, and I am pumped that my ratio of non working games is now less than those that I have that do work or are at least close. Sarah was confused at how I was acting, but happy for me that I got it up and running.
Note: Back to the Bob Roberts Pacpower kit. The instructions online are very good for a newbie to install this kit in their Ms. Pac-man. However, towards the end he trails off on some small details that he takes for granted that most people know, and I had no idea because I am so slow at this type of stuff. I hope to take his tutorial and make an little addendum section and post that here in case anyone needs further explanation of some things.
Trimming down the new Ms. Pac-man back door.
Today I went over to Kenny’s and he helped me cut down the back door to the Pac-man that I have in the garage to fit in my Ms. Pac-man.The backdoor I had was so broken and waterdamaged that there was no salvaging it. I still don’t know what to do with the Mr. Pac, and since it is already painted a very similar blue, I thought it only made sense. We got the hole drilled in the back for the lock at approximately the same size, I haven’t tried it yet. If I want to be thorough, and I probably will since there is no rush with the game no working, I need to put the vent holes at the top of the board too just like the old one.
Testing Ms. Pac-man Power Supply
Today Kenny came over to work on all of the machines, including the Ms. Pac. We are going to start with testing the transformer, and probably all of the fuses.
We did determine that the marquee light is getting power, so the bulb, which doesn’t come on, is probably burned out.
He also figured out that the line coming off the power supply, an orange line that eventually ran to the PCB and powers that, seems to have a short. It was only outputting less than a volt, like .3. He did some testing with a jumper, but we blew some fuses, so for now he is going to take back what he learned and talk to other people and see what they think. But I think that is worthwhile discovery. It would explain why I was getting a white screen with a known working monitor, the PCB wasn’t getting power so hence nothing. But, I don’t really know, that is just a guess.
Starting to test Ms. Pac-man Power Supply
Kenny and Lori were over tonight, and Kenny and I got to talking about electronics, and the games I have and me ended up making it downstairs. He started to do some testing on the different fuses in the power supply to see if that was the issue with the game. It has been established that there is some sort of power problem, but figuring out exactly what that is, is the problem.
Picked up my first Ms. Pac-man
Exciting day, very short and tiring night, but it was worth it.
There were a number of arcade cabinets in Marion, as I mentioned, and I was looking to buy one of the Midway’s that has the same shape as a Ms. Pacman so I could build my own.
But this week I had been watching a local auction on eBay for someone selling a Ms. Pacman that wasn’t working. I looked at the photos, the cabinet appeared to be in good condition, artwork was good and the problem sounded like a simple fix. The Ms. Pac-man was in Columbus, which was the closest one I had seen to this point and for the amount of money he was wanting as an opening bid I decided to see if he would sell it offline. I made the guy an offer, and a couple of hours later he took it! That was the first time I had did that, and it worked, and now I had my favorite game!
So I took the van down to Columbus and picked the machine up and brought it back. I was so pumped, when I first started collecting a Ms. Pac-man was what I really wanted, and I didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg to get it like I had anticipated I might. This Ms. Pac-man has a little bit of a cool back story.
The guy I met was involved with the youth ministry at a church in Columbus. When I pulled up with the van he opened a large freestanding garage that was fairly empty except for this Ms. Pac-man and a Tron (also on eBay, also not working). He started to tell me that these were the last two. He had liked both Tron and Ms. Pac-man growing up and since he had some electrical knowledge the plan was to try to fix them up.
But he could never find the time (shocker!) so it was time to sell them off. He said that the church has purchased an abandoned storage unit in the area of an old operator. Apparently this huge freestanding garage was at one time full of classic games that they had ebayed a number of years back! So at one time he had about 20-30 games, all classics just waiting to make their way into collectors hands.
Obviously I would have liked to have been looking for a Ms. Pac at that time, but it wasn’t in the cards and he didn’t really have any other information about that old operator for me. He just kind of vanished and defaulted on his storage payments.
What to do about the faded sideart?
As I researched and researched, I didn’t feel great about making my own with reproduced artwork, it would just never be the same, but I couldn’t pay the outrageous price that the machines go for, they just were too high. This kind of fell into my lap, and I was glad I didn’t go to Marion, it would have been a ton more work. Check out photos in the Photo Diary section of the machine, and keep posted here and I will try to mention when I get it running.
