Cinematronics quality! & getting back into working on games...

ifkz

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Cinematronics quality! & getting back into working on games...

After going six months without using my iron, I finally got motivated to take a look at the electronics in the Star Castle project I picked up a couple of months ago. I had already tackled the cosmetics and swollen side over spring break. Or I should say an entire can of Bondo tackled the swollen side. Anyhow...

I noticed two factory mistakes on the game PCB right away: one of the logic chips was soldered in at a 45 degree angle and the end pins were not making contact with the board. I also noticed one disc cap leg was not soldered into the board. Pretty big problems, I guess they really didn't care when these were assembled. I corrected all of the problems and lowered the +5V going into the boards. This should hopefully fix the stability issues I've been seeing as it would crash randomly.

I corrected a few other issues as well. I noticed two wires were hanging loose near the coin door. After comparing them with my Armor Attack, I found that they were for the coin counter. Anyhow, pretty easy fix, my coin counter is now working.

The last issue was a dead coin input. I first thought it might be a board issue, so I swapped my spare boardset in and the problem remained. I then thought it might be a bad switch, but a new switch failed to fix the problem. I finally figured out that it was a bad ground wire on the switch and some other flaky QDs on the other switch.

Nice to finally do a little arcade work after a long period of inactivity on my part.
 
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