Cinematronics Trio Repair Thread

64B1T

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I'm working on a trio of Cinematronics games for a friend of mine. They've been sitting in a warehouse for a long time, and all arrived truly untested.

I'm going to try to document a bit of what's going on with them.

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Here we are: An Armor Attack, and Two Space Wars cabinets. They're all complete except Space Wars #2 is missing its #7 modifier key (anyone have one?)

Initial Triage was this:

Armor Attack:
- Good Power
- No Boot (Continuous Explosion Sound Effect)
- Monitor Untested

Space Wars #1:
- Power Supply Visibly Damaged - Unable to test

Space Wars #2:
- Good power until I plugged in boards - Something, somewhere, (keyboard? psu?) started smoking and burned out. Now 4.3V.
 
Some initial debugging

Armor Attack:
- Pulled all socketed chips. Cleaned corrosion off of a bad ALU. Found one bad ROM, reburned the ROM.
- Now playing blind, responsive to controls.
- I attempted to plug in the monitor. I get neck glow, and the board stack starts resetting.

Space Wars #1:
- I put in a Xentec PSU and got good power. Game plays blind. The original PSU is a Micro Power A-10
- Connecting the monitor indicated a short on the monitor chassis. Killed it for further poking later. Blew a fuse and a tantalum.

Space Wars #2
- With a good 5V, it will coin up and increment the coin counter, but does not appear to make recognizable sounds and/or respond to input.
- No further testing
 
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Here are a couple shots of the Micro Power A-10. Haven't seen this one before. But it's definitely visibly damaged. The white/yellow wire is hanging loose, and it looks like there's a missing component (diode?) between the white wires in the following image.

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This doesn't seem like the standard Space Wars power supply, so I wonder are there schematics for this thing somewhere?
 
Update on this. I got Armor Attack Working

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Lots of issues.
PCB - Bad ROM, Corroded ALU
Power Supply - Initially was ok, but failed. Completely rebuilt.
Monitor chassis - multiple failures, looks like it caught fire at some point. The tube was also gassed or otherwise irreparably damaged, which I didn't realize at first, which is unfortunate. Luckily I had a replacement tube. I also needed to replace a DAC.

While I was at it, I replaced all diodes, electrolytics and some tantalums on the chassis, bypassed the burnt areas, and replaced all heat stressed parts.

Now only cosmetic work remains.
 
Turned my attention today to Space Wars #1 Monitor. When last I tried to power this thing, it sparked and blew a fuse.

I gave it a rebuild (all diodes, electrolytics, frame transistors, and the output resistors). I also added in a detachable yoke connector, because on the early cinematronics monitors, the yoke was soldered directly to the board.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to have resolved the issue. Without the yoke, neck board, or frame transistors plugged in, the system INSTANTLY blows a fuse/breaker. So something else is amiss here.

Sidenote - I really don't like that the early monitors have no silkscreen whatsoever. I don't get what the point of providing a schematic is in the manual if there's no accompanying silkscreen *or* location map....
 
Turned my attention today to Space Wars #1 Monitor. When last I tried to power this thing, it sparked and blew a fuse.

I gave it a rebuild (all diodes, electrolytics, frame transistors, and the output resistors). I also added in a detachable yoke connector, because on the early cinematronics monitors, the yoke was soldered directly to the board.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to have resolved the issue. Without the yoke, neck board, or frame transistors plugged in, the system INSTANTLY blows a fuse/breaker. So something else is amiss here.

Sidenote - I really don't like that the early monitors have no silkscreen whatsoever. I don't get what the point of providing a schematic is in the manual if there's no accompanying silkscreen *or* location map....
I think it was to protect their IP.

Those are unique to Cinematronics games.

I could be dead wrong.
 
I think it was to protect their IP.

Those are unique to Cinematronics games.

I could be dead wrong.
The later revisions (i.e Armor Attack) have wonderfully detailed silkscreens with not only a corresponding parts list and ID, but the part values printed on the PCB.

The earlier versions have Nothing
 
The later revisions (i.e Armor Attack) have wonderfully detailed silkscreens with not only a corresponding parts list and ID, but the part values printed on the PCB.

The earlier versions have Nothing
So it was more of a rush to production to make $$$ and capture the interest of video game players.
 
Got another one going. Mostly. The only issue here seems to be that the picture is steadily expanding, and then abruptly contracting repeatedly. The rhythm isn't exactly the same every time. I am wondering for people's gut feeling. Is this a monitor issue or a board issue? If it's a board issue, I'm thinking counter somehow. But what would affect both axes? If it was a monitor issue, HV drift?

 
Definitely a monitor issue. Should be getting 18kv in these older discrete monitors is what I'm reading, but I'm only actually reading 10-11. Anyone know much about these circuits? Any usual suspects?
 
Rebuilt another one of the monitors, this one the HV unit looked particularly toasty.

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Needless to say, when I got the whole thing rebuilt, this did not work, at all. It's no longer blowing any fuses, but it also is producing no HV whatsoever. Are these discrete HVs fixable? Or is it better to just hack a keltron in (if I can find one)

Definitely a monitor issue. Should be getting 18kv in these older discrete monitors is what I'm reading, but I'm only actually reading 10-11. Anyone know much about these circuits? Any usual suspects?
Also, same question on this. Still haven't resolved this issue.
 
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