Almost got myself in trouble by being nice...Tempest PCB swap

ifkz

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Almost got myself in trouble by being nice...Tempest PCB swap

An arcade buddy of mine needed to borrow my Tempest to test his spare PCB set. I had just finished the final rebuild of the game only an hour earlier, with a full cap kit installed on my Tempest PCB set and a final cleaning of all monitor side mounted transistors.

Anyhow, I stupidly leave my monitor plugged in and we boot his PCB set only to find that both start buttons are solid and the spot killer is active. The bad part about it is that I noticed a burning electrical smell...very bad news for me! Thankfully the game was fine when I booted to my PCB set and it ran well for about 45 minutes before I had stop playing in the arcade. I think it might have been smoke coming off of the degausse circuit, but I'm not sure. Remember, always unplug the monitor when testing unknown PCBs, learn from my mistake!

All of this brings back bad memories of my old Centipede PCB that used to eat monitors for breakfast until I replaced it. Whew, too close!
 
The burning smell could have been his boardset, I don't think it would have hurt the monitor at all.

In fact I can tell you from experience that the TL082s can burn if the linearity pots are broken off the x-y section and it's powered up.
 
I don't think I would ever let anyone use my Tempest to test anything. We've been through too much together!
 
Yes, but I've got to help out my local friends as much as I can. I will do it again when they ask. The next time, though, the monitor cable will be off until I can see signs of life with their boardset.
 
Chris Rhoades did this for me too. It was a good thing because we found out it WAS a board issue that way. I was about to go back to the guy that repaired/rebuilt my 6100.
 
I've tested many dead, partially dead, etc Tempest boards in my cab with the monitor attached and never had an issue that hurt the monitor. That's what the spotkiller circuitry is for.

Now, testing a bad deflection board on my monitor that took out one of my frame transistors is another story (happened this past weekend)...
 
Trust me I'd help others w Tempest issues if I was like Spaeth with 10 extra Tempests in my house. But with just one, and it's a grail of mine, I have serious paranoia..
 
I've tested many dead, partially dead, etc Tempest boards in my cab with the monitor attached and never had an issue that hurt the monitor. That's what the spotkiller circuitry is for.

Now, testing a bad deflection board on my monitor that took out one of my frame transistors is another story (happened this past weekend)...

I've personally killed my Tempest's monitor twice....from testing "bad" boardsets.

Edward
 
I've personally killed my Tempest's monitor twice....from testing "bad" boardsets.

Edward

wow, no kidding. I am glad I saw this thread. I sold a guy a tempest a year ago, and it hasn't been working in quite awhile. I was going to test it out with one of my wg6100's.
Guess I should think twice about that huh?
 
I've personally killed my Tempest's monitor twice....from testing "bad" boardsets.

Edward

What specifically went bad? I've seen low-voltage sections go on "good" monitors during board tests, but not on monitors that have that area upgraded...
 
What specifically went bad? I've seen low-voltage sections go on "good" monitors during board tests, but not on monitors that have that area upgraded...

Both times it took out various parts of the X deflection (or, maybe the Y side...I can't remember). I will say....it's uncommon (from my experience), but it can happen. Tempest is the only game to do this too me......I've never had another vector game motherboard take out a monitor except for Tempest. Now, it wouldn't surprise me if someone's had Sega vectors or Cinematronics vectors do it also!

Edward
 
I've got a new set of Tempest boards coming for my game, which hasn't been working right in a long time but I'm 99% sure that it's because of a bad boardset. Are you suggesting that I shouldn't just swap out the boards and power it up?
 
I've got a new set of Tempest boards coming for my game, which hasn't been working right in a long time but I'm 99% sure that it's because of a bad boardset. Are you suggesting that I shouldn't just swap out the boards and power it up?

Not suggesting that, especially if you bought a working set. Unless you have a full bench-testing setup for these, there's no other way for you to find out...
 
I've got a new set of Tempest boards coming for my game, which hasn't been working right in a long time but I'm 99% sure that it's because of a bad boardset. Are you suggesting that I shouldn't just swap out the boards and power it up?

My advise, when testing an "unknown condition" board.....unplug the monitor and see if the game plays blind. If it doesn't play blind....you know something's wrong. If it does play blind.....check the X and Y output lugs. If there's activity on these lugs....plug the monitor in and see what you get. If you don't have activity on one (or both) lugs.....somethings wrong in that paticular axsis' video output circuit. Once you fix the output circuit and get activity on the output lugs......plug the monitor in and see what you get.

Edward
 
This isn't a monitor issue. The game has been cycling through the power-up sequence over and over and over. The condition originally was to simply halt play in the middle of a game by going to that sequence. The monitor appears to be just fine.
 
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