Anyone live in Maine and love fixing Robotrons?

turkeybones

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Hi All,

This always happens around this time of year after I get back from the Classic Video Game Tournament at Funspot in New Hampshire. I've been into the video game collecting hobby for quite a while, on and off again, and it's time to go back to the "on" part of that, but bear with me because I don't have a lot of technical knowledge about this stuff. I'm more in the category of someone who loves classic games because I grew up in arcades, but I don't have much disposable income or repair skills :)

I live in Bangor, Maine and I've had a Robotron since around 1997. It was the very first thing that I ever bought on ebay and I think it was originally from somewhere in Canada (it takes Canadian quarters), and I ended up picking it up from someone in Rhode Island. It originally worked ok, but over the years it has had its share of problems. I've had people work on it who turned out to be less than trustworthy, but that's another story. It main problem is that it gets lots of various RAM errors and keeps resetting all the time. The last "upgrade" I did to it was to change the RAM to 4164, which I originally got from some dude on ebay and it came with that fancy new power supply, but a lot of people have told me to stick with the original power supply and use an adapter thingy (probably not the technical term). So right now I'm using the 4164 with original power supply and adapter, and it keeps resetting. I'm thinking of trying to find a rebuilt power supply, but finding someone who knows what the heck they're doing to take a look at all the boards and everything would be super awesome.

I've poked around on the New England area community group, but it doesn't look like that is very active. Anyway, sorry for being long winded, and any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 

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There are a couple of us that rebuild Williams power supplies (look in the "who repairs what" sticky at the top of the topics). I also repair most of the classic Williams boardsets. PM me for rates.

ken
 
If it were me, I would have someone re-wire the cabinet for jamma and buy a jrok board when the new ones become available....It will solve your robotron board problems once and for all...This is what I did with my machine...

Only downside though is cost....However, if you have to send your boards off for repair, that will cost you a fair bit as well....
 
Which new England forum did you check? NEACF.com is quite active, and it's new England!

Sounds like a ps issue to me. If you already have a new ps with adapter, try installing it. Hell, at least you'll be able to play the game again! There's nothing wrong with using a new ps, only drawback is you'll prolly loose your high scores.. Is the original battery holder still there? Or has it been modified to a watch battery?

I run switching ps in all my Williams and taito games.. They work well.

By the way, when you installed the new ram, did you just plug it in? Or did you modify the sockets at all? As the new upgraded ram can't be just installed without a little bit of handy work.
 
Thanks for all the responses! I actually got a PM from someone that lives less than a mile from my house! Weird! It's times like this that the Internet is fairly amazing. He's going to come take a look at it next week and hopefully be able to find out what's up. I'm still kind of amazed that my random forum posting actually worked!

I didn't modify the board when I installed the RAM, but I did get an adapter from someone on this forum for using the upgraded RAM with the original power supply. From what I remember, it worked alright when I tried the new switching supply, and it's never kept my high scores anyway, so that's not really a problem. I believe it has the original battery holder, but I should probably get that modified at some point.

Once the boards are all working properly, I'm going to see about maybe upgrading joysticks and a few other cosmetic things. I'm sure I'll be posting more threads for advice on everything :)

Also, I just discovered the NEACF forum and I'm waiting to hear back about my account being activated. Hopefully I can get back to working on my Robotron high scores soon!

Thanks again!
 
save yourself further headaches and get a rebuilt linear PS from Dokert or yellowdog.
when the 5 volts going into your Ram is stabilized you'll see the resets disappear/diminish.

You might note that Yellowdog worked for Williams as a developer in the 80s. You are getting responses from ground zero of William's board repair. ;)
 
That's racist! ;)

No, seriously though, I actually don't like lobster at all. Cockroach of the sea. It's only good if you saturate it with butter, but so are rocks.

Send me your ration then. All citizens of Maine get free lobster right?

I feel like I've really opened myself up to Texas jokes here.

Anyway, thread derail over, good luck.
 
As a previous poster stated, check your power supply voltages 1st. Your power supply should be putting out at least +5v to the memory chips, if you're not getting at least that, you'll likely have problems.
 
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