Atari Canyon Bomber Restoration

The side art was \ is in pretty good shape. It could use a refresh but that will have to wait. Edges and broken areas are fixed but I retained the original laminate and its age marks as much as possible. The Black areas were very lightly stained to overcome the dust and grime that was never going to come out. Everything polished up after.

10.jpg11.jpg


12.jpg13.jpg
14.jpg
 
Last edited:
Skills I (kinda) learned for the first time with this restore

Atari power brick type B specs & rebuilds
Atari Owl Eye coin door wiring
Basics of PCB troubleshooting
Basics of TTL design
Built a test bench for PCBs, built test harnesses
B&W monitor models
Tube testing
Monitor repair, tube & yoke swap ('kinda' kinda)

What's left to do on Canyon Bomber? The big issue is the audio. Both TDA1004 amps are dead which seems a common issue with this chip, they overheat. They're no longer available but I have a few donor boards, status unknown. I want to rebuild this PCB 'as original' so I can learn the audio section but going forward I may have to resort to add-on amplifier boards o_O Or figure a way to swap in TDA-1004A chips which it seems can still be had. They seem to be slightly different though and I havent devoted brain power to determining what changes would need to be made to the board.

1720289988957.png

And, I'd love to repaint the control panel and side art but that's just OCD. Will have to wait. I have one more bronze age cab to get done this year.
 
Last edited:
Absolutely love the sideart on this one. Those guys getting bombed at the bottom remind me of the big nose guy on the Pink Panther.

Great work, love all the pics.
 
Nice job and congrats on finishing! So many get started and never get done. 👏👏👏

This is my summer of getting these done. I feel I'm a couple of weeks behind and CAX is at the end of this month but Im pushing for at least one more major cabinet restore this season.

I still feel PCB troubleshooting is my weak spot, that'll be the wildcard for a completion date but I'll start a new thread soon.
 
Paging @Gibby who picked one up in nice condition this year.
Thanks for tagging me. Love the work @greedycrisp has done here. I was so happy to find one of these a few months ago. I need to do some touch ups on mine, but it is working and not in to bad of shape for being all original. Love me some B&W games!
 
There looks to be enough room to make a PCB with two amps on it that could be plugged into sockets installed in place of the 1004s. How tall are the original heatsinks? Is the Drag race PCB the same spacing?
I would need a CB board for development.
 
Or figure a way to swap in TDA-1004A chips which it seems can still be had. They seem to be slightly different though and I havent devoted brain power to determining what changes would need to be made to the board.

Glory halellujah!!!!!
I found the TDA1004A datasheet!

1720804874138.png

If you can get a legit TDA1004A just drop it in.
Woot!
 
Looks like it is.

Game PCB: Canyon Bomber

Symptom:Just garbage on the screen. later found one sound channel dead

<deletia> using my audio tracer I picked up sound before the TDA1004 amp but nothing on the output. amp voltage was good so I replaced C11 (TDA1004) which brought audio 1 back. <deletia> Repair:New 6502 CPU. new 74174 @ C6. new 2102 RAM @ L2. new TDA1004A @ C11 and replaced R38 with a 2.2M resistor

Im going to look for mofo big heatsinks though
 
Any update? Stoked for this. I kinda wonder if a fan might be needed on those amp chips since they are both blown. Those early Atari cabs were just notorious for overheating chips. That being said, I doubt yours will be on for 12+ hour/day so with some solid heat sink compound between the chips and the heat sinks, you're probably good to go.
 
Back
Top Bottom