Gorf/WOW/Space Zap/Roto sound amp tantalums!

Yoeddy

Yoeddy

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Hey guys,

While cruising around KLOV the other night, I was reading @Charles Kline's thread about replacing the exploding 15uf 25v tantalum caps with 22uf 50v axial caps. For grins, I decided to check my WOW and Gorf sound amps and sure enough they still had tants installed. Two on WOW, and one on Gorf. I agree with Charles on this, rid your games of any and all of these types of capacitors on Astrocade hardware. Your game will love you for it.

IMG_4421.jpeg

IMG_4423.jpeg

Thanks,
Jason
 
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And since I had the things taken apart, it's also a good time to reflow the solder and check the condition of the mica/thermal compound of the tip31 transistors. Mine were actually disintegrating and dried up. I cleaned and replaced with silpads.

Everything's running like a champ!

Jason
 
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joemagiera said:
Jason, can you please link the thread you mentioned?
Click to expand...
Here you go, Joe:

Midway Space Zap Technical info

Space Zap is a Black and White 'twitch' style game and is part of the Bally Midway "Astrocade" Card Rack system of games. (GORF, Wizard of Wor, Robby Rotto, 10-Pin Deluxe) Most of the Midway Card Rack games have 6 cards. Space Zap has 5; Two RAM cards, a Pattern card, a CPU card, and a Game...
forums.arcade-museum.com

Thanks,
Jason
 
My wizard has all the card rack tantrum caps replaced, I should pull the amp board out and give those a look too.
 
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the tantalums unless your power supply is fucked up.

If your '16V' goes over 20 the tants will blow -- who cares.

If you feel the need to replace them, MLCC caps would be a better choice than electrolytics.
 
Yoeddy said:
Hey guys,

While cruising around KLOV the other night, I was reading @Charles Kline's thread about replacing the exploding 15uf 25v tantalum caps with 22uf 50v axial caps. For grins, I decided to check my WOW and Gorf sound amps and sure enough they still had tants installed. Two on WOW, and one on Gorf. I agree with Charles on this, rid your games of any and all of these types of capacitors on Astrocade hardware. Your game will love you for it.

View attachment 854971

View attachment 854972

Thanks,
Jason
Click to expand...
Uh oh, those a tantalums? I thought they looked like little blue teardrops.
 
HudsonArcade said:
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the tantalums unless your power supply is fucked up.

If your '16V' goes over 20 the tants will blow -- who cares.

If you feel the need to replace them, MLCC caps would be a better choice than electrolytics.
Click to expand...
you are wrong. these tantalums have a long track record of going bad on everything bally put them on (even if the voltage is correct)
 
I've always called those "torpedoes". :)

That said, I think there is something to be said about newer TANT "technology" which is less prone to failure due to over-voltage, high ripple, temperature and other stress. Needless, these old OG caps have "aged" and that's what I believe makes them fail more often and more catastrophically than other dielectrics. Electrolytics, on the other hand, just dry out, leak or sometimes explode. Mostly they seem to lose capacitance and increase in ESR causing functional degradation typically in a power supply or monitor. Old TANTS. mainly found on a logic board or sound board, always fail short - and then explode.

As always, YMMV.
 
ArcadeJason said:
you are wrong. these tantalums have a long track record of going bad on everything bally put them on (even if the voltage is correct)
Click to expand...

Yay! Let's replace all dcap with something with a shitty frequency response because 40 year old components aren't as good as new ones!

They went bad because their linear power supplies were utter trash.
 
HudsonArcade said:
Yay! Let's replace all dcap with something with a shitty frequency response because 40 year old components aren't as good as new ones!

They went bad because their linear power supplies were utter trash.
Click to expand...
I don't care what people put back in but we both know electros are fine here you are still wrong. They go bad because that specific part was flawed. Hell many well known examples of tants from the 80s are ticking time bombs.
 
ArcadeJason said:
I don't care what people put back in but we both know electros are fine here you are still wrong.
Click to expand...
If you don't care about having functional dcap, why even put an electrolytic in?
If you were clueful enough to suggest a parallel ceramic, we might be in agreement, but that's not what you're claiming.

ArcadeJason said:
They go bad because that specific part was flawed. Hell many well known examples of tants from the 80s are ticking time bombs.
Click to expand...
Sure, kiddo... maybe you can sell clueless people a "fix" for that.
 
HudsonArcade said:
If you don't care about having functional dcap, why even put an electrolytic in?
If you were clueful enough to suggest a parallel ceramic, we might be in agreement, but that's not what you're claiming.


Sure, kiddo... maybe you can sell clueless people a "fix" for that.
Click to expand...
maybe you have a fix on your coffee table
 
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