Game which is the toughest to keep running and repair

[sosage]

There is one at the local mall arcade. It has to be rebooted frequently as it seems to lock up whenever it wants to. Its a terrible game, too. About the suckiest gun game I have ever played.

The Metreon in SF has (had?) one. When I saw it in June-ish, it was rebooting about every minute. Not exaggerating. It never made it through a full attract mode. I wouldn't be surprised if absolutely no one has noticed it for months...or cares.

 

[aesop]

Star Trek! G08!

 

[bjk7382]

Cinematronics Vector

For me it has been 2 Solar Quests. I have had them for about 2 years and still haven't got them going. They use the same ccpu board that all the early cinematronics vectors used. The complex ttl main board with no processor is unrepairable by many, so I sent them off to Mark at Cinelabs and even he is having a hard time getting the boards to run reliably. Once I get them back I can finally test the monitors (need a working board to see if the monitor works)

That is what I hate the most about them, you have to have a working boardset in order to test anything, and it is unrepairable by most people when it does eventually fail again.

Edit- forgot to add that I actually found 3 more boardsets for this game, so now I am up to 5 non-working sets, and there are 2 people that I know of that can fix them.

 

[MaximRecoil]

Better make sure everything is actually bolted down/connected snugly. Or your machine has a soul and doesn't like being touched.

There's a good chance that a game that has problems when you move it has one or more flaky solder joints. There are so many solder joints in an arcade machine that it is hard to track down.

 

[jawhn]

Cinematronics Vector ...

Maaaaaannnn... Why you gotta post something like this just 2 days before I drive up to Colorado to pick up my most expensive game yet - my first vector - A Cinematronics Vectorbeam Space Wars???

Ack.

 

[Steverd]

I wish I could put pinballs on this list =P for video #1 for us is Defender. That thing has always been the devil.

That was my first thought: PINBALL.

ANY of my pinball machines break 10X more than any of my arcade games.

Steverd

 

[ComputerSpace]

Can't believe this was not mentioned until this morning...

Sega G08 Vector games

followed by...

Cinematronics / Vectorbeam CCPU games

followed by...

Stern Berzerk - not had issues with mine but if I ever did I would not know where to start with all of it's boards.

...currently the game you're working on. In my case...my Joust / Williams Multigame.

YMMV
Tom

 

[HudsonArcade]

I think it would be easier to mention that ones that ARE reliable

That's easy... everything in my collection, since they're all repaired properly and bulletproofed.

 

[ixtlann]

Pole position!

 

[chas010]

That's easy... everything in my collection, since they're all repaired properly and bulletproofed.

No one likes a show off

 

[landsteam]

baby pac, pole position, and tempest. and i got all three!!!

Funny I was going to say the same thing as you.
I also have baby pac and pole position, I sold my Tempest because as soon as I had it working it would break down a week later.

 

[landsteam]

Zoo Keeper also is very hard to keep running. I had a broken one for 1 year and tried everything, then gave up.
I bought a ulitmate arcade just to have Zoo Keeper in arcade version.

 

[cdjump]

pole positions, baby pacs, and spy hunters are all tricky. Spy hunter and baby pac due to all the boards and crappy connectors, and acid problems. Pole position because its pole position....
Any vector is always tougher for me, just because i can't just whip out an adapter and plug it into my bench.... Well, i guess i could by using my O-scope as a display, but still, i hope i don't have to.

 

[spacebaby]

battlezone

a1+++++++++ that bastard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Braido]

Q*Bert *#$&($^!^$%

 

[OregonPacman]

Pole Position would be way better if they had built a serperate connector for the power, one that was capable of handling the current required by the boards.

Off topic slightly:

Data East pinball power supplies. The header pins for the input from the transformer (IIRC) like to burn up and people like to solder the wires directly to the PCB, making it a bitch to remove for repair and replace afterwards.

WPC/WPC95 based Williams/Bally pins. The power driver board has reset problems when the solder connections in one of the rectifier sections go bad. I refer to it as the "Double Flipper Reset" as the game seems to work fine unless both flipper coils are engaged at the same time. If that happens, the whole game resets. The bitch part of it comes in removing the 10,472 connectors (its much closer to 20 but seems like a lot more) and taking the board out of the head, not to mention putting it back in later.

Back on topic.

Atari's Big Blue Cap. While relatively easy to replace, it seems to be the cause of a large number of problems. You can't really blame it, though. Caps just go bad, especially after 28 years, just a PITA.

 

[GaryMcT]

This thread should be inspiration for anyone working on fpga implementations of the ones where the PCB is the problem!