Extra caps on Atari AR-II-02 ??

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I don't remember to have seen these on an AR-II-02:

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I mean the green caps that are mounted vertically and look to be totally hacked in (notice the extra soldering on the wire on top).

The PCB positions are C20 and C21 and I checked the SW manual and it does list caps there but it looks to me like they should be something like 1 uF tantalum caps (like those used on game PCBs at about every TTL chip for filtering the +5V.

These are 630V (!) and I think they are something like polyester or polypropylene ....

Anyone ever seen these before ??
 
Just checked the parts list of the AR-II in the SW manual and caps C20 and C21 are listed as 0,1 uF 25V Ceramic-Disc Axial-Lead Capacitor.

Question: can I leave them in ? I think so....they don't seem overly important to me... ?
 
Yeah, I'd just leave them. They'll be fine, just overkill. Someone probably broke the ceramics and used whatever was at hand. Those appear to be European style paper or plastic type capacitors, as used in vacuum tube type hardware. In this application, it totally doesn't matter. If you feel like it, you can replace them with ceramics, but I'd just leave them.

Edit: And yes, I have seen those types of capacitors before. In very old German radios (Grundig, Telefunken, etc). They're generally reliable.

-Ian
 
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Thanks Ian !

Yeah, this one is "from" Europe. At Q2 position it had a TI TIP32 made in Italy and I think TIP transistors are more common in Europe, where 2N transistors are more found in the US...

I think this AR II worked before I started working on it, but since it's for a friend I shot-gunned it with a BR kit I still had around, incl. the bottle cap, R30 and Q2. It was sense-modded and since I don't like that I returned that to it's factory state.

My friend will have to do the right thing and replace the edge connector of the game :)

Someone posted a table with values of unloaded test voltages of AR's but I forgot where.....anybody still has the link ?
 
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