Atari .156 interconnect parts availability?

KYPinGuy

Member
Joined
Jan 22, 2009
Messages
41
Reaction score
10
Location
Coxs Creek, Kentucky
Hey guys,

I'm nearly finished with an Atari Star Wars upright and fighting the common voltage issue on the AR2. The interconnect connectors are original and seem to be the issue, but I'm having a time finding parts, since it seems that the .156 bifurcated pins are getting tough to find.

What are people doing to rebuild their Atari interconnects? Is there a modern replacement that is readily available, or are people modding the boards to avoid running power through the old and failing pins?

I see that there are a few places that have a handful of pins, but once those are gone, it seems like there will have to be a workaround of some type.
 
I've been thinking about this myself. It appears your only options at the present time is purchase as many Bifurcated pins as you can find for future use. But the other problem is if you need to replace the 22/44 Molex edge connector housing those are as hard or even harder to find. It appears the future of edge connectors is definitely the solder eyelet ones.
 
What common voltage issue on the AR are you referring to?

And when you say interconnect, do you mean? Which connector?

Sorry, I neglected to be specific. After rebuilding my AR2, I smoked R29. The game had been flaky prior to the rebuild and has original 15/30 pin and 22/44 pin connectors on the interconnect board. Before rebuilding, just futzing with the interconnect cable was enough to get it back up. I should have rebuilt them right away after that, but shelved it until the boards were rebuilt.

It's entirely possible that I have a different issue, but given the age of the original interconnect connectors and the fact that I had seemingly pinpointed an issue to them, I wanted to rule them out as a possibility before moving forward.

I don't have a philosophical problem with re-pinning the connectors or replacing with solder eyelet connectors, but the 15/30 pin connector in particular seems tougher to find, and the split-face pins are .50 each and rising fast. I avoid permanent mods if at all possible, but a clean solution that fixes the issue without causing other problems is fine when the original parts are long gone.

I'm a pinball collector as well, and since the same style connectors are common in earlier Gottlieb solid state games, it seems that there will have to be some type of solution going forward. Otherwise, we may end up with a bunch of games with simple problems that keep them from playing.
 
Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.

Some people shotgun things and repin their entire edge connectors, however my personal opinion is that this is overkill, and not necessary. (Not to mention the potential risk involved in messing something up in the process, and causing bigger problems.)

I've never repinned an Atari edge connector, but the worst I'd recommend if you wanted to do it is only repinning the +5V and ground pins, as these are the ones that take the most current, heat up, get corroded, and lose their spring.

When R29 or R30 on the AR burns up, it's because either the 5V or ground connection between the AR and game board is broken somewhere. It can be a broken wire, or even a broken pin in the AR connector (which I've seen, though it's rare), but most often it's the edge connnector pins losing their tension.

In these cases, I've fixed them by just carefully removing the pin from the edge connector (with an extraction tool), cleaning the contact, and just bending the pin out a bit, to restore some of the spring.

Then the important part is to clean the game board edge connector finger, to remove any oxidation, which is ultimately the root of the issue. I use a fiberglass 'scratch brush', which you can get on eBay for $8, and then clean it with Goof Off, to remove any residue, let dry, then treat with DeOxit. This restores the voltage to the board, and if you measure the actual voltage drop across the edge connector, you'll see it will be a lot less (which means the edge connector won't be heating up and fatiguing).
 
Back
Top Bottom