Did Faulty Power Supply Take Out My PCB?

CubeSnake

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....on my Tapper? Power supply board is toast-problem is do these tend to take out the main PCB when they go south? Is there an easy test other than swapping my board into someone else's Tapper? 1 last question- is the replacement kit from Arcadeshop a viable alternative for this machine? I'm talking about the wired up kt for a switcher. TIA
Jay
 
....on my Tapper? Power supply board is toast-problem is do these tend to take out the main PCB when they go south? Is there an easy test other than swapping my board into someone else's Tapper? 1 last question- is the replacement kit from Arcadeshop a viable alternative for this machine? I'm talking about the wired up kt for a switcher. TIA
Jay

well my power board went out and it did NOT take out my main board. I certainly cannot speak expertly on that particular topic, but I don't think so.

next the replacement kit from arcadeshop is an outstanding option.

when I installed the AS power supply kit, I was getting graphics glitches until I made sure I had +5 at the chips on the ssio board, vs. +5 at the power supply. Once I got the +5 right I was golden

I think dj dns has a couple of these for sale. look up his for sale threads. It's the one that says 2011 stuff for sale I think.
 
I can't directly speak from experience with games with power supply "boards" (or linear power supplies vs. the switching units I'm used to with JAMMA games) but about the only event where any power supply would destroy a game board is if the +5 voltage goes extremely high, and I can't see that happening with a linear unit.

if anything, your situation would merely involve the +5 not being high enough to power the game board, and you'll just be looking at a blank screen.

I don't know if you can just rebuild yours or if you want to go the route of just replacing the whole thing. but I think you should be fine.

believe me, from the old days when my family had their arcade, I never saw a game where even if the switcher died that it took out the game board. and now, in my journeys as a tech in our new arcade, the worst case scenario I've seen was maybe the power supply's +5 skyrocketed to like 5.6V, but none of the games were ever damaged by this. switchers I have found you can get extra life out of them just by cleaning the +5 adjustment pot, or in other cases they were just bad and I had to replace them with new ones. they still fire up every day.

good luck, and I would maybe check Bob Roberts for a rebuild kit, unless it's very bad. I can't see these being that difficult to fix... caps, and maybe some transistors. transistors will be the most difficult part, and that's only cause you have to throw some thermal grease on them. :p
 
....on my Tapper? Power supply board is toast-problem is do these tend to take out the main PCB when they go south? Is there an easy test other than swapping my board into someone else's Tapper? 1 last question- is the replacement kit from Arcadeshop a viable alternative for this machine? I'm talking about the wired up kt for a switcher. TIA
Jay

No personal experience with Tapper but most of the faulty swtich mode power supplies I've had were noisy or just shut down but didn't seem t kill anything. The linears (as I say, only through personal experience) can die by the regulators shorting or in an extreme case the transformer could put mains voltages through the PSU board(I guess fairly rare).
Nonetheless I've had an Atari ARII putting 7+ volts through my tempest, a Discs of Tron that the linear fried putting the most shocking sound through the power amps/speakers and the gameboard had several faults on it after that. I also had a Mad Planets where the 5v supply could be cleanly adjusted to 5v with no load but as soon as the PCB was attached the voltage read about 6.5 and the game didn't seem too happy with that although it didn't stop it working once I rebuilt the PSU. So in answer to Q1 yes it could damage the boards. As for Q2, testing, the easiest way would be to test in another cab or find someone with a test rig to hook it up to (I'm assuming you have no other cabs/test facilities) Q3 I've seen switcher kits on Tron/EDOT they seem to work okay, I did a homebrew switcher on my DOT and it added a little mains hum to the sound amps and I had to manually reset the sound board before play but apart from that it was fine.

Karl.
 
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