Battlezone!!!

Artisan2084

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Got me a complete but dead Battlezone from Nocashvalue from the warehouse raid. Thanks Bro... you're awesome!!! Just got it to my house today to start tinkering with it.

Plugged up... nothing.

Drill out locks, pull out the interrupt switches, and we have power and neck glow, PCB LEDs... but no image, and no coin up.

Just about to measure +5VDC when R29 starts to smoke. Try a spare ARII board, R29 starts to smoke again...

Do the 5V sense mod and re-install. No smoke, but still no coin up or image. Measure 5VDC and only getting 4.60 VDC... now it's bedtime... that's all I can do tonight even though I want to keep going...

To be continued...
 

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Usually leaving the monitor unplugged and powering on the game causes R29 to burn. Check the monitor connection. Most likely you have some cold solder joints on the deflection PCB causing the power to be directed back toward the AR board. Pull the deflection board and resolder all the connections on the board.
 
Usually leaving the monitor unplugged and powering on the game causes R29 to burn. Check the monitor connection. Most likely you have some cold solder joints on the deflection PCB causing the power to be directed back toward the AR board. Pull the deflection board and resolder all the connections on the board.

How would that make any difference? I don't have any vector games at my house yet (my battlezone is awaiting pickup), so I don't know how different they are from rasters. I was under the impression that, like raster monitors, vector monitors were powered by AC voltage. If that is the case, having the monitor unplugged with the game on should have no effect on any DC circuitry.
 
Smoking R29 and/or R30 means you have a bad +5V and/or GND connection between the AR-II and the main cpu board. Most of the +5V current is being forced throught the SENSE lines and the poor little resistors can't handle it. You need to clean or replace your edge connectors and do a rebuild kit on the AR-II. Or at the very least replace R29 and R30.
 
How would that make any difference? I don't have any vector games at my house yet (my battlezone is awaiting pickup), so I don't know how different they are from rasters. I was under the impression that, like raster monitors, vector monitors were powered by AC voltage. If that is the case, having the monitor unplugged with the game on should have no effect on any DC circuitry.

Was told by an old operator that when I troubleshoot vector games, not to leave the monitor unconnected, because voltage will bounce back down the line and goto the AR board. Which I saw when I was working on my Battlezone.
 
Smoking R29 and/or R30 means you have a bad +5V and/or GND connection between the AR-II and the main cpu board. Most of the +5V current is being forced throught the SENSE lines and the poor little resistors can't handle it. You need to clean or replace your edge connectors and do a rebuild kit on the AR-II. Or at the very least replace R29 and R30.


What about taking a switching power supply and putting the 5VDC onto the +5V test point on the CPU board, and ground to GND test point?

I have an Asteroids Deluxe that had a switching power supply installed (bought it that way) as described above. It seemed to work fine. I took off the switcher and just ran it with the ARII, and nothing... no 5VDC on the CPU. Re-installed the switcher and it worked fine.

I tried this on another unmodified AD that I had, and it did not seem to hurt anything, took it off and it works fine...

Could I do this to the BZ just to see if the CPU boards are even functional? The CPU boards are not in great condition. There is a lot of whitish build-up on a lot of the traces...

As far as I can tell, this BZ had never been serviced. The operator probably had it on location until it died, then just put it in a warehouse for ??? years till Nocashvalue and I extracted it along with a bunch of other machines.

Anyway, I will keep tinkering with it...
 
You could do that. I recommend unplugging J7 from the AR-II just so you're not back-driving the AR with +5V. It should work fine though. Just monitor the +5V on the main board and keep it within 10%.

What about taking a switching power supply and putting the 5VDC onto the +5V test point on the CPU board, and ground to GND test point?

I have an Asteroids Deluxe that had a switching power supply installed (bought it that way) as described above. It seemed to work fine. I took off the switcher and just ran it with the ARII, and nothing... no 5VDC on the CPU. Re-installed the switcher and it worked fine.

I tried this on another unmodified AD that I had, and it did not seem to hurt anything, took it off and it works fine...

Could I do this to the BZ just to see if the CPU boards are even functional? The CPU boards are not in great condition. There is a lot of whitish build-up on a lot of the traces...

As far as I can tell, this BZ had never been serviced. The operator probably had it on location until it died, then just put it in a warehouse for ??? years till Nocashvalue and I extracted it along with a bunch of other machines.

Anyway, I will keep tinkering with it...
 
You could do that. I recommend unplugging J7 from the AR-II just so you're not back-driving the AR with +5V. It should work fine though. Just monitor the +5V on the main board and keep it within 10%.

Thanks for the tip Bro... I will try that when I get home.

BTW, I did swing by Melbourne last month but could only stay for a couple of hours since I was chauffering my in-laws all over the Treasure Coast, then up the Space Coast. We had lunch at Chicago Uno's with my Bro and his wife, then had to bolt. Sorry I could not stop by, maybe next time when I can be there longer...
 
Sounds good. Next time you're down I'll take you to our local mom & pop joint Amici's where they have real pizza. ;)


Thanks for the tip Bro... I will try that when I get home.

BTW, I did swing by Melbourne last month but could only stay for a couple of hours since I was chauffering my in-laws all over the Treasure Coast, then up the Space Coast. We had lunch at Chicago Uno's with my Bro and his wife, then had to bolt. Sorry I could not stop by, maybe next time when I can be there longer...
 
You could do that. I recommend unplugging J7 from the AR-II just so you're not back-driving the AR with +5V. It should work fine though. Just monitor the +5V on the main board and keep it within 10%.

Well, tried the switching power supply to feed +5VDC to the main board. Board LEDs light up as always but still no coin up. Player button stays lit no matter what I do. No sounds at all.

I did notice that the top 4 of the 5 large ICs on the smaller board were getting HOT.

There is a lot of whitish corrosion on the traces everywhere...

Haven't pulled the monitor yet, but I will try that next when I have time.
 
While you are cleaning stuff, don't forget about the top of the monitor and the mirror. I was going to send my monitor out a year or so ago because if was really really faint. Cleaned the mirror and got the 1/2" of dust off the top of the monitor and it looked like brand new. :)

ken
 
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