Archive for November, 2007
Baby Pac-man Battery on MPU
Yesterday I had the opportunity to go and play a nice Baby Pac-man here in Indianapolis. I had been trying for a number of months now to coordinate an opportunity to play a Baby Pac-man either here locally, or on one of my trips this year to Milwaukee or to Michigan, but with little success. I had never played Baby Pac, and was particularly curious about how in depth the pinball portion of the game was and equally what the video maze game portion was like.
Part of the problem was finding a working Baby Pac-man. Of the 7,000 units made by Bally Midway in the early 80’s, a lot of the Baby Pac’s are arcade collectors “Project Games”. I don’t know enough about the game to know if there are a lot of non-working Baby Pac arcade games because of the unique game itself with the pinball / video combination, but I do know that the battery on the MPU board causes problems.
The Baby Pac-man I played last night was in decent condition. The playfield had some wear, the control panel was beat up but nothing a new Baby Pac control panel overlay wouldn’t fix, and the sideart was missing from the right facing side. But this Baby Pac had been HUO for at least 10 years, if not up to 15 and beyond. The cabinet was in solid shape, and the most important fact, the game worked.
This Baby was out of my price range, (1K!) but I still wanted to investigate it as best I could. Knowing that these were general home owners who had used the arcade game without ever having issue, I was betting that the original battery was on the MPU board and had never been replaced. Being the less technical person I am, I didn’t want to assume what the battery might look like, so I did a little research.
I emailed one friend, and looked online. I asked about the color of the battery on the Baby Pac-man MPU board, the only experience I had was with my Frenzy, which had that blue battery. Here is what the friend said;
Very easy to see..it will either be white or sometimes yellow…wrapped in plastic cover like the rechargable batteries you see…
I found multiple Baby Pac-man PCB images of the group of board, and found an image of the battery still mounted. (I believe the order of the Baby Pac boards left to right and down is, the solenoid board, the MPU board and the Vidiot Board. The MPU battery that causes the acid corrosion is circled.)
When I got to the owners house and asked if they had ever done any work on the Baby Pac-man, they said no. They had mounted some clips when the control panel wouldn’t stay fastened, putting holes in the side of the cabinet 🙁 But they didn’t even know about the power button, and had never been in the back of the arcade game, let alone done any replacement work of any pcb components.
I took some photos through the Baby Pac-man coindoor, and saw that the battery was still mounted. But I couldn’t recommend to the owners what to do exactly. Should they get in back and remove / replace the battery even though the game worked? Especially since they didn’t care about collecting and only wanted to sell the game at this point.
I haven’t read enough on the subject, my understanding is that batteries on PCB’s usually are for operator settings on how they want the game to play. But, the Baby Pac-man MPU battery also saves high scores, which isn’t a big deal, but if it prevents battery acid damage on the MPU or Vidiot board, it is probably wise to record those game high scores by hand.
So what is the solution? From Marvin3m.com, a great Baby Pac-man repair and troubleshooting resource;
MPU Board Battery Corrosion.
There is a rechargeable nicad battery on the MPU board which often leaks. This can cause all kinds of problems with the MPU board, and even the Vidiot board (which is mounted right below the the MPU board and the battery).Remove this battery ASAP and discard. Aside from ruining the MPU board, it can also spread its corrosion down the center section of the Vidiot board, all the way to the lower sound section of the board! Of course the .100″ connector pins will be ruined in the process, not to mention the Vidiot board traces and its components.
A remote mounted three “AA” battery pack with a blocking diode is suggested as a good MPU board battery replacement (Show Above).
This is what I learned about the Baby-Pacman MPU battery and acid damage in less than an hour of research. Have any feedback? Need to correct me? Leave a comment below, would love to hear from you.
Nokes’ 20 Minutes around the block
I got the dreaded yell down into the basement later yesterday afternoon. “Jeff! Nokes is gone!”.
Apparently the gate got left open from the Friday night party and Nokes was gone. We didn’t know how long, at least 20 minutes, and both of us started to race around. Sarah was shaking.
She got in her car and started to drive and call his name. I followed behind her a ways, yelling as loud as I could. It only took us about five minutes and there he came, sprinting out of the backyard from two or three houses down. I know there are some dogs down there.
I figured he wouldn’t go far, he seems a little bit like a homebody dog, but at the same time there is always the fear of the unknown. We know how much we love our dog, and it was scary from the beginning that he was running loose around Indianapolis.
I remember when Jonah, our family’s first dog, made it out in Dearborn. We started at a house I had never been to and walked back to my grandparents house, over a mile, maybe two away. Where did the dog go? He was sitting on the doorstep of the house that we started, having only been there for 15 minutes. Pretty amazing. I was putting all my chips into that idea. Nokes is smart, he’ll come home. We’ve tried to train him to wait for an open road with cars when crossing. Who knows if that sunk in. It makes you wonder, do you take more time to walk him into some people’s yards so it isn’t something so exciting, so appealing? Or maybe doing that would make it worse.
All I know is that I was glad he came home. With substantially busy roads on three sides of us, it is a frightening idea of Nokes running loose.
World’s Largest Arcade Machine
The World’s Largest Arcade Machine, verified supposedly by the Guinness Book of World Records, was a video I came across on the Klov forums tonight.
More ludicrous than anything else, I think that building the largest coin-operated machine in theory is pretty cool, but in reality it just looks stupid. You have to stand on a stool to play it, with hand sized buttons and a screen so large your retnas are fried before you can say “Sammy Davis Junior only got one eye.”
The World’s Largest Arcade Machine measures 14 feet tall, has a 75 inch screen, weighs 1300 pounds and I think in the video they say it’s 9 feet wide. What a colossal waste of space. They have a tiny little motherboard in it that plays 150 games and the style arcade game makes most of us collectors, with a taste for true art, die a little inside. The World’s Largest Arcade Machine is fashioned after the popular Mame machines of today, with the artless sides, and the generic lightning bolt, fire storm, or other combination of black veneer details that makes us think, “Big black waste of space anyone?”
It’s like all of the entertainment value of a season of American Idol, 1 minute stretched out to make a year of shows and you wonder where the time went. My favorite part was the real “Coins”, and the fact that although the largest game ever takes up more space than your guest room, the machine isn’t capable of freeplay.
Baby Pac-man, Productivity and Colts lose again
After yesterday’s stink bomb of a day, I wanted today to be particularly focused.
I got up early and studied an hour before church. We went to late church because Sarah’s kids were singing, so we didn’t get to see anyone after church other than Lori and Kenny who were at the same service. Oh, and Kim and Brian were still there.
We came home, had some lunch and relaxed. About 2:30 Jessica called and we talked for an hour or so.
Then an hour more studying. I was having some people come over who were interested in buying the Dig Dug, Wizard of Wor, and Tetris in a bulk buy. I was praying that things would work out, I don’t need to worry about those games as I am trying to stay focused on studying. Not to mention, when I bought a house, I swore I would never park outside. Well, I broke that rule over summer months, but not over the winter. I never want to have to scrap again. They were interested, but they didn’t buy tonight. Their son was going to fix them up, so they wanted him to come by and see them, sometime early this week. That was fine, it wasn’t a no.
Right after they left, I headed out to Eagle Creek area. Someone had contacted me through my Craigslist ad here in Indianapolis. They had a working Baby Pac-man that I went out to check out. I wanted to see if the game was one I wanted to have, since I am such a Pac fanatic. They were looking for a bit much for it, but finding a working one can be difficult at times. The little gameplay I got, though, wasn’t enough to evaluate it. All I know if that it seems to be better than the Mr. & Mrs. Pac-man pinball machine.
I got home, studied for a half hour before the game came on, Indianapolis vs. The Chargers.
Not a good outcome. The Chargers were up 20-0 through to the end of the third quarter. Somehow Peyton Manning brought Indianapolis all the way back from a loss, setting up Indianapolis for a win. Then Adam Viniteri missed the field goal. Crazy, embarrassing, heartbreaking game. Manning was without Harrison and Clark, and we lost Freeney during the game. It showed, he threw six picks. Not a great way to go into the week.
Circus Charlie Sideart on ebay
A friend brought this post on the klov forums to my attention. He knew that I had started to do some vector work on some Circus Charlie sideart. What the hell though, seriously! Why did this guy destroy multiple machines to scrap off old sideart?
This is original side art set off the video game Circus Charlie. It is fairly good condition. It was peeled off the cabinet and still has some adhesive backing.
The one side could probably still be scanned in and used as great reference. But I know that I am not paying much for this sideart, already the initial bid with shipping is a little high for my tastes. The Circus Charlie sideart project is a fun one, but not for a coin-op machine of my own. I’ll just have to watch it. If the sideart doesn’t sell, maybe the seller will come down in initial price.
Thift Sale and Getting Sick
Wes and Kate stayed over, so we had breakfast together, egg mcmuffins. Sarah and Kate went up almost to the northside for a large thift type sale at a church. Since it was so close to the northside, we knew there would be awesome sales on stuff from the upper crust cast offs.
Soon after breakfast, I didn’t feel so good. I got some sort of 6 hour flu. Until the early afternoon I felt dizzy and weak, all I could do was sleep and watch tv.
Sarah got back just about the time I started to feel better. They made out like bandits, I also got some really nice suits for $20. Sarah got some shirts for me, some jeans, an awesome Pineapple slicer for a couple of bucks (regular $20 on QVC) and a cheap paraffin bath ($5, regulary $50).
Now that I was moving around, I continued the plans I had for the rest of the afternoon. I headed up to Robert’s to pick up that switching power supply for the Tetris and we hung out and chatted for a couple of hours.
When I got home, we had a quick dinner and then took Nokes out for a walk.
I don’t remember what I did for the rest of the night. I know I relaxed, watched some tv, messed around on the computer and played some arcade games. I know I never did get to my studying which stunk. But tomorrow I will be better.
The surprise birthday party!
Like a number of days lately, I have been off from work. I had a productive day. I started the morning off by working on my blog for an hour. Then I had a rigid schedule of alternating studying and following up on different tasks. I followed up on some freelance work, and I also checked in on my stupid laptop with HP. They didn’t pick up:(
Not a week ago, the chair on my nice office chair broke off. I called and emailed the company, they are on the west coast, so the phone call didn’t work. Hopefully the email will.
Later on I ran an errand to the vacuum store just up the road to drop ours off to be looked at. Turns out I didn’t something with it I shouldn’t have that may have not damaged it permanently, but it will need a tweak. That’s fine, we’ve never even had this hand me down looked at, and it looks like a hunk of junk. They are going to fix the bag door, and work on a better system for storing the cord.
By the time I got back, I had a little bit of time to study and then I went and lifted with Dave.
Onto the big event for the night. This is the story. The three girls(Sarah, Kim and Kate) originally had this big scheme. Brian turned 30, Wes will turn 30 in a month, and I was right in the middle, not turning 30:)
The idea was, throw the two of them off, by giving them a surprise birthday party at the Rothe’s. Or, that is what I heard the plan was. I wasn’t supposed to hear that at all, actually. Sarah said Kate sort of let it slip, it was supposed to be for all of us. Naturally, I was pretty bummed about that. In my mind, the party wasn’t at all for me anymore.
Wes and Kate got to our house after work, and from what I was told, Brian was supposed to show up, and the three guys were supposed to leave and have drinks or something. (The girls cover was a “jewelry party”, the whole story had quite a few holes, but it all ended well.) Brian never came, and I just assumed that the girls wanted us to leave, so Wes and I headed just down the road to try out some of the “local” bars.
We stayed at the first one for about 5 minutes, with country music blaring, a guy and what looked like another guy making out, and some other interesting characters it was a little too much “local” flavor for the both of us. The second bar / restaurant was better and we stayed there until about 7:45.
I figured Wes had it all worked out before we left, and when we got back I thought it would be obvious, but he was still surprised. We had a good crowd, 20 or so people, the usual folks from church and another 6-8 of Brian’s high school friends and Wes and Kate’s neighbors. Brian ended up having to work late, and was under the impression the surprise was for me, so he was waiting for us to come back when he saw some of his buddies show up, and then he was surprised. Just not in the overwhelming instantaneous fashion.
Party was great, people stayed a long time. The people we didn’t know as well stayed until probably 11, and the core group hung out and chatted until after midnight. The guys were outside, joking and laughing by the rip-roaring fire, the girls inside on the couches laughing at the guys.
It was a great party, and the arcade games got some good use, maybe 45 minutes or so I got to show off the Jr. Pac-man and people played Pengo on the new 96 in 1 Pac-man kit that I installed last night.
Great night. Wish I could have been part of the surprise…but maybe next year.
