Thursday, March 25, 2010

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.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

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.