Arcade Resources
Dig Dug PCB went to garbage
Well. It has been another month.
Last month right after my brother in law and I looked at the Dig Dug, I listed it on ebay. I did some small final touches, screwed the audio board into the inside of the cabinet to secure it and glued the broken cone button back together.
Someone local to Indy won the game, and was going to pick it up on a Saturday. It worked fine on Thursday, but then about a half hour before the guy was to come by to pickup the game, I turned it on to get it warmed up to show him. Well, I got garbage on the screen. I about crapped my pants. So, I had to tell the guy how sorry I was, and that it really did work a couple of days ago, but hoped he would understand that I couldn’t sell it to him.
So, finally last night, after a long frustrating month, I decided to take a look again at the RAM error I was getting on the Dig Dug PCB to start researching the problem. I get garbage on the monitor, and then after a while it flashes RAM OL & OH.
I am hoping that there is something wrong with the audio board / power supply that is something easy to fix, or maybe it is this legendary big blue cap on the power supply that always causes weird problems. I don’t know yet, but I just know that if I have to get this board repaired, or find a new one, I might have this game until the end of the year.
Fortunately, the guy was really great about it all. He said he would still be interested if I got it working again.
Image of the frog from “The Glob” artwork
As I had written already, I finished The Glob enemy – Frog last weekend, but I wanted to post a progress pic here.
Jr. Pac-man truck progress update
The Jr. Pac-man truck is now in Pittsburgh. I was blown away, it was like they totally skipped the last leg of the course up the coast.
Rick met with Troy last night, and they were talking about how to pack up the Jr. Pac. But, come to find out, Troy is going to be going to NY and NJ and then he will come back through PA to pick up the other games. So, I think I have another 4-5 days before he is back in PA. Maybe not that long…
They did have some space issues, and are renting temporary storage units. What a costly, amazing trip for this truck. But the time is nearing, a week from today I may have my Jr. Pac-man in the basement.
R-Type monitor mounted and working!
I got news on the Jr. Pac-man progress yesterday, and it lit a fire under me to get back at the R-Type again.
This whole hooking up the monitor to an isolation transformer inside the cab would have been something easy for just about anyone. But I was paranoid. I didn’t want to ruin a working monitor, and worse yet, I didn’t want to have something happen to the tube, or something else exploding if something was hooked up wrong.
All that was left when I got home from work yesterday was to put wire nuts on the power lines for the R-Type monitor and power it up.
I got power, the neck glowed, but I got no image on screen. I figured it had to do with the weird RGB configuration and that I would have to make a new connector.
Later, when I got home, I had some time. Sarah needed to use the computer so time to finish the R-Type monitor task. I found a molex connector in my bag of connectors that would work. I took a look at the older connector that I left on the Mr. Do! machine, wired the new one up, and on the first power up I had a picture!
I was pumped. It was flipped so one dip switch fixed that. The image was a little stretched too, so a little pot adjustment and that was taken care of took. I put the WG4700 series monitor in the R-Type and got everything wired back up correctly and played a game.
I feel proud I figured it out, and I took the time to research everything. Hopefully tomorrow I can finally list it on ebay.
This Old Game has started Agent X artwork kit
After a month of not hearing anything on how this project was going for Rick, over the past week Rich at This Old Game posted on both KLOV and BYOAC with an announcement about producing an Agent X kit.
Here is Rich’s post along with the included image;
ThisOldGame.com is pleased to announce are Biggest and rarest project.A Full art package for Atari’s Agent X and Cloak & Dagger!
Special thanks to *removed* @ KLOV for bring this to light and to Scott Evans for providing the orginal Atari Art films for the screenprinting. Only 25 original dedicated cabinets were mfg by Atari with the rest being conversions.
I will also be posting up cnc router files and cab plans for this orginal cabinet. There will also be art ran designed by Atari but never released – the agent X marquee and an alt speaker overlay, that was most likly changed for the Cloak & Dagger release. I will be posting the entire production run with pics of the orginal art, pantone color matching, and the screenprinting process.
Anyone interrested in this art package should PM *removed* on KLOV for more info as this is a private, onetime limited run.
The colors are off from my kickplate from the original films, but they said they were going to take care of the color matching process and I didn’t have to worry about it.
Watching the threads is pretty exciting, Rich is going to keep an online blog of progress. There is going to be a ton in this kit, and I am sure that everyone is really excited. I was happy to be a part of the Agent X project, and excited that it will actually be produced. I got an acknowledgement from Rich, so that was great too.
It took a lot of time to do the kickplate, and I am glad he has the art for everything else. It was worthwhile this time around.
Wizard of Wor RAM boards in the mail
I have been talking with Mark Spaeth for a month or so now. He said that he could easily, and for an affordable price, fix my RAM boards for the Wizard Of Wor. I was pretty pumped, and finally got those WOW boards in the mail on Saturday.
I still don’t know if the sound is having issues or not. That will be the next piece of the arcade game to troubleshoot.
Space Invaders Deluxe works again!
I got the boards back in the game last night, powered up the game, and it worked like a champ. I was pretty pumped, played a couple of games…I wish that I was into it. It is pretty challenging, and a really cool design on the inside, but there is something about the gameplay that I don’t think I would ever play it a ton.
Here is a photo of it working.
