Asteroids Board Mod by Avery Petty question...

BberryArcade

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Here is an Asteroids I acquired recently. It plays blind but my question isn't about how to fix it (yet!) it is about a modification that has been done to the PCB and I have no idea what it does or accomplishes. The games bezel is not orig. and is impressed with a name in the top left hand corner, it reads "Modifications By Avery Petty Santa Ana, Ca". I have posted photos of the game and PCB below.....
 

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If it helps anyone in Googling, a quick search found that Avery Petty was also known as A.P. Engineering.

An absolute guess is that it looks like a speed modification. Why else would you have a potentiometer connected to the logic that way? I can't think what else they'd be trying to modify in that fashion.
 
I believe thats a speed up mod...not 100% certain but pretty sure nontheless. Looks like it may be a push-on push-off switch to me, too small to be a pot.
 
Thanks for looking and posting about this. It's a flip switch and of course accomplishes the same task (whatever that may be).

So its probably a speed mod. Makes sense. Of course I have not played it yet as it plays blind. I did the google thing and I did found one reference to Avery Petty. He wrote at length about XY monitor trouble shooting and repair and as luck would have it, that is where I need to go with this Asteroids. I thought it was interesting that he made a replacement Plexi panel with his name impressed into it. he must have been pretty involved in the hobby at one point and I wonder how far he took it.

Anyways this game plays blind, the red LED stays lit on the deflection board and the monitor tube glows and chatters. I visually checked fuses and tried adj. the brightness and contrast but had no success.
 
It is a speed hack - there are a dozen variations on the theme out there, all the way up to adding a daughter board.

Check the X and Y outputs on the game board with a scope or logic probe before digging into the monitor
 
It is a speed hack - there are a dozen variations on the theme out there, all the way up to adding a daughter board.

Check the X and Y outputs on the game board with a scope or logic probe before digging into the monitor

Thanks roadrunner, I will check the game's PCB first.

I'm glad this is a speed hack and that it appears to be switchable. Pretty cool that an operator did this to keep the same game interesting and more profitable.
 
Resurrecting this old thread to say I just did this hack. It is a speedup hack but it really doesn't speed it up much. Really wouldn't say it's twice as fast or even 1.5 times as fast. Just slightly faster.
 
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