Ms. Pac-Man Moves In!

Three and a half years between posts?  That's gotta be an internet record or something.

So the Pac-Man machine ran into some trouble, and is actually now stored somewhere I no longer have access to, so let's pretend I'll never see it again.

But good news!  I scored a non-working Ms. Pac-Man at a garage sale for $40!  Some people would call that awesome.  Some people (like my wife) would call that stupid.  I totally get it.  But we all have our quirks.  Occasionally coming home with a large non-functioning piece of crap is mine.

Since sneaking it home, I replaced the power plug (which had been completely mangled) and replaced the fuses in the power supply.  One of the old ones was blown, some were the wrong values.  Replaced them all with their proper values.

Turned the machine on and waited for the fuses to explode into fireworks...  but they didn't.  Checked the AC voltages at the fuses and they were still good.  Checked the DC voltage power on the game board, and it was good.  But still no image on the monitor.

I didn't hear anything, either, but I figured maybe in attract mode, it didn't have any audio.  I couldn't remember.  So I pressed the credit test switch, and was rewarded with the classic coin-drop sound!  Player One Start, and I was off playing a game of Ms. Pac-Man!  Only I couldn't see anything.  The sounds were a little fast, but according to a label on the motherboard, this machine had the speedup modification, so it makes sense.

So I guess the monitor's hosed.  I did check that the monitor was getting 120VAC from the power supply, but I also know enough about monitors to know I shouldn't go poking around in there all willy-nilly.  I didn't hear the high-pitched whine that CRT monitors all make, which is either because this monitor wasn't working, or because I have grown old enough not to be able to hear it anymore.  I'm going to assume it's the former.

Time to dig around the web and see if I can find any easy tests for the monitor that's in there.  The tube is a Samsung A48KRD82X02, but I guess I need to take another look at the driver PCB.  Otherwise, I might just have to suck it up and buy a new monitor.  (Or find a way to get back to that old Pac Man machine and see if that monitor is good.  I suspect it was.  I still have the old main board that was in that machine, and that board doesn't do anything when I plug it into this cabinet, so that other monitor might have been good.)

Ms PacMan and Jr PacMan PCBs arrive

So because the PacMan machine most likely has logic board problems, (weird stuff flashes

around on the screen -- I'll have to post a video of it when I get a chance to make one) I cruised ebay looking to see if I could find a known good PacMan board for cheap. Anything guaranteed to be good was too pricey, but someone was selling a set of Ms. PacMan and Jr PacMan boards that were working in their machine when they were pulled. The Ms PacMan board has clearly had some repairs or modifications made to it as evidenced by the over-sized EPROM and extra wiring. Both boards should be drop-in replacements for the existing dead PacMan logic board in the machine, so hopefully, one or both of these boards work and we can assess the rest of the machine (screen, controls, etc).

Also, I'm going to work on getting together the components to "consolize" one of these boards in order to set up a convenient test bench to work on repairing the dead board. The linked article describes a JAMMA setup, but the PacMan boards use different pinouts. Having a known good PCB will let me verify that my test bench is set up correctly.

And away we go

Here is a little corner of the web for me to track my progress in several inadvisable pursuits that make my wife crazy. Like bringing a 1978 Bally Strikes and Spares Pinball machine back from the dead - it's back in the world of the booting at least - now I just have to fix some solenoids, some switches, the displays, and replace all the rubber... And the latest project additions - my brother and I picked up two non-working arcade machines courtesy of Craisglist -- PacMan and Space Invaders Deluxe.

More to come on these and other bad ideas.