arctic thunder pc based hardware

ixtlann

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So I picked up this arctic thunder for a decent price.
But it runs really choppy, drops a lot of frames etc.
I looked up the specs and its supposed to be a 733 mhz pentium p3. 128 mb ram.

When it boots up it says 550 mhz

Checked out the cpu its a 550 mhz cpu.

It doesn't look original its the style where the cpu has a slot to go into, instead of normal socket on the board.
Any who works pretty much 100% minus the fact that it runs choppy as all hell dropping frames like crazy.

So im thinking I need to get a faster pc setup in there.
The challenge being it needs to not have a built in video card, I think.......
The os is uses is like windows 2000 or ce or wn 98 or some crap which is all win 95 based iirc....

What have you heard about this kinda stuff? What's your experiences? What have you heard?
 
Arctic Thunder computers suck to work on. The OS is Windows 2000. You can't ghost the HD, or get the HD from the usual ebay suspects because it writes itself to the hardware, so if it craps out, you pretty much have to reload through the system disk (if you have it), or take it to Betson and bend over.

Matter of fact, I'm quickly becoming an anti- computer in an arcade game kind of guy. They just get too finicky on location due to abuse. Now, the Raw Thrills stuff has started to hold up better once they went a step up with the Dell stuff. Before that, games like original F+F, Target Terror, Buck Hunter PRO, they used the cheapest ass hardware on the planet. Caps prematurely fail, CMOS chips go bad, all mobo problems. Don't EVEN let me get into how every game that Global VR/Ultracade ever came out with is a cheap P.O.S.

I knew a guy who had an Arctic Thunder mobo go bad on him. It sat in his warehouse for over a year until he could find a guy who could get it running again. Now, if you understand all the stuff that goes into the computer, YMMV. Chances are that you will have to find the EXACT mobo that Midway used in the Arctic Thunder. Same speed, specs, model, and maufacturer. Prepare to shop the surplus stores for a 9 year old mobo.

-Mike
 
In addition, I have 2 Arctics left. Occassionally, I have to reseat everything in the one unit because it won't boot. Usually have to do this once every 2 weeks at this point.

-Mike
 
How Would the way it writes itself to the harware prevent me from replacing my incorrect 550 mhz pentium 3 cpu with the correct cpu if at all? Right now it was the wrong cpu.
What part of the hardware does it get written to? Just to the ram every time it powers on? Ram drive styles?
 
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I have no clue. All I know is that you can't just ghost the drive like you can for a game like California Speed or Rush. Somehow the HD links itself to the computer.

As far as the mobo clock speed, you can try something different, but most of these game syatems are particular to what mobo is used. An example would be a Pinball 2000 , like revenge From Mars, can only use a Cyrix Media GX 233 mHz mobo. It will not work with anything older or newer. Why, I don't know.

-Mike
 
How Would the way it writes itself to the harware prevent me from replacing my incorrect 550 mhz pentium 3 cpu with the correct cpu if at all? Right now it was the wrong cpu.
What part of the hardware does it get written to? Just to the ram every time it powers on? Ram drive styles?

The motherboards serial number and the drive's serial number are combined to make a "key" of sorts which is written to the drive and links the two of them. You should be able to change CPU's, memory and video cards without any issues. I have two Off Road Thunder CPU's in my shop. I'm "pretty sure" that they were the same configs as Arctic so Imight have parts if you need them. Try looking on eBay for a faster CPU.

Matt
 
How Would the way it writes itself to the harware prevent me from replacing my incorrect 550 mhz pentium 3 cpu with the correct cpu if at all? Right now it was the wrong cpu.
What part of the hardware does it get written to? Just to the ram every time it powers on? Ram drive styles?

You can swap the CPU and not have to worry about the hard drive
crapping out. The only thing that is permanently written is the hard drive
physical serial number. You can also use Winhex to clone the drive and
rewrite the image to the same drive if the image ever becomes corrupt,
however it must be the same physical hard drive so if the drive dies you
are SOL.

I've had PIII 700mhz running the game fine. Don't know why someone would
have thrown a 550 in.

BTW - I've gotten as far as narrowing down the copy protection to the
GOOSE.DLL file on the drive. Everything between the game, drive and IO
board goes through here. You can actually run the game on just about any
computer with a 3DFX card installed, however the GOOSE.DLL is needed to
allow the game to be playable through the IO board.

I think the immortal Dave Foley had something to do with the development
of this machine's protection.

JD
 
Arctic Thunder computers suck to work on. The OS is Windows 2000. You can't ghost the HD, or get the HD from the usual ebay suspects because it writes itself to the hardware, so if it craps out, you pretty much have to reload through the system disk (if you have it), or take it to Betson and bend over.

Matter of fact, I'm quickly becoming an anti- computer in an arcade game kind of guy. They just get too finicky on location due to abuse. Now, the Raw Thrills stuff has started to hold up better once they went a step up with the Dell stuff. Before that, games like original F+F, Target Terror, Buck Hunter PRO, they used the cheapest ass hardware on the planet. Caps prematurely fail, CMOS chips go bad, all mobo problems. Don't EVEN let me get into how every game that Global VR/Ultracade ever came out with is a cheap P.O.S.

I knew a guy who had an Arctic Thunder mobo go bad on him. It sat in his warehouse for over a year until he could find a guy who could get it running again. Now, if you understand all the stuff that goes into the computer, YMMV. Chances are that you will have to find the EXACT mobo that Midway used in the Arctic Thunder. Same speed, specs, model, and maufacturer. Prepare to shop the surplus stores for a 9 year old mobo.

-Mike

I too despise these cheapo computers in arcade machines, however if you do
your homework you can find substitutes that will work.

The Mobo's in the Arctics were actually pretty good. Most problems I see are usually
in the hard drives. For a machine that's over 10 years old, there are still a good number
of them still running on the original computers. I'd like to see how many Need for Speeds
or Vorteks are still running in 10 years ! I also found the Ultracades running on the
Dell computers to have been pretty reliable but you're in big trouble if you have
one of the kits with the Sumicon bricks installed.

For awhile even these Mobos were plentiful, they were the only
sub that I could find to work with an Arctic Thunder:

http://gameroomservice.com/arctic.html
 
i have been trying to get a vortex v3 going for the last month with 2 of there computers and the restore disk , still get constant rebooting ,so ya they are a big POS lol ron
 
dont know if this will help but i got mine going, i recapped the motherboard and it fixed the speed of the pc, reinstalled everthing played it for a hour cut it of and on for half the day playing it about 1/2 hour at a time Ron
 
my cpu even says it is 500 mhz p3 right on it, so i think some one just put it in when the original died. it plays just doestn run smooth at all. my 550 mhz cpu runs at 2.0v everything fater then 550 mhz runs at 1.65/ 1.7 v
not sure if there meant to go onto my mobo?
 
great now the monitor is dead lol i could hear it zapping when i first turn it on bleh.
only reason i powered it on was i was gonna try and over clock the cpu in the bios from 500 to 600 or so
 
I've gone an arctic Thunder on location that is giving me trouble. Power supply has been recapped and tests fine on an MCM Electronics power supply tester.

I found 3 bad 1000 uf @ 10 volt electrolytics on the mother board and 2 bad 470 uf @ 10 volt caps also. It would not boot and the 12 volt large fan would not spin. Now I get the floppy drive led come on and a single beep from the motherboard. Still no picture at all. Monitor is tested good with a pattern generator.

This computer has the 3DFX model # 210-0364-003 video card.
 
Got the computer running. Had found that not only did the motherboard need recapping, but so did the video card. The 3DFX "Voodoo3 3000" (AGP2X) 210-0364-003 had ALL the surface mount electrolytic capacitors bad. Even though the capacitors were not bulged or leaking, they tested bad out of the circuit with my ESR meter. On this board, you want to remove the capacitors to test them as you will get false readings if tested in-circuit. The caps tested ok in-circuit, but I had my suspicions anyway since this board acted like bad capacitors were there. Since these capacitors are cheap, I used common radial ones instead of surface mount. It was fairly easy to unsolder the surface mount ones and replace them with standard radials. I just tack-soldered the new ones in after trimming the leads down to about a quarter inch long.

I had recapped the motherboard which then got the computer to show signs of life, but I still was not getting any video output of any kind. The motherboard did it's usual single Award BIOS beep, just no picture.

Once I got the video card recapped and re-installed, the computer booted up fine on the bench. So, I took the whole shebang back to the theater and popped it back into the Arctic Thunder and powered it up. Computer came right up and game loaded fine. Game is now operational.

I had all the capacitors in my normal stock. The video card uses six 10 uf @ 50 volt radials and two 22 uf @ 50 volt radials. Once I got these surface mount ones out of the circuit, the ESR meter showed that two of the 10 uf ones were open and all the rest were way way off value.

Thank goodness that both the motherboard and the video card were old enough that they were still soldered with normal solder and not that lead-free crap.
 
Thank goodness that both the motherboard and the video card were old enough that they were still soldered with normal solder and not that lead-free crap.

If they were newer boards there would have been a chain reaction melt down and woulld have fried something else! Those old Intel boards are pretty tough and so are the VooDoo cards.

Nice going getting that "no longer repairable" game back up and running!
 
I was surprised at how easy it was to change the caps on this motherboard. When I did a Merit Megatouch Unicorn motherboard recap a couple of years ago, it was a nightmare because it had been soldered with lead-free solder at the factory.
 
Awesome! glad my issues got this info out there for other ppl!
Had to let mine go out to pastor, to much space for a project like that! Worked on my haunted house pinball instead lol!
Maybe When my buddy I traded it to fixes it all up i can buy it back lol!
 
Unrelated to the OP initial question but sort of related to the thread fork on the drives.

Has anyone tried resetting the volume serial number on the partition after imaging (ghosting, etc) a new drive? I had some software at work that was tied to the random SN generated on the root partition. I had to provide it when I registered the software to get a key generated. It was then married to the drive. On your PC (Windows) open a CMD prompt and run a dir. At the top you will see it spit out the volume SN. My issue was fast disaster recovery. This was long ago before I could run on redundant drives. I found a quick and dirty tool that would re-assign the SN to a number of my choosing. Bingo. Drive failed, reload OS to new drive, use the tool to renumber the drive, install SW with the same key, life is good. This "protection" may be based on the same design. You just have to know the partition SN before the drive dies for this to be of help. Worse case grab an image from another known good unit along with its SN and dup it all. Of course, if its based on like a SN buried in the drive controller HW or something that's another story. I doubt that...it would seem very cost ineffective to produce literally millions of the on board drive controllers each with their own specific hard coded SN. Especially at the price point at which I am sure these drives were produced. I bet its the random SW generated partition SN.

brent
 
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