I will pay you $150 +shipping to fix my Return of the Jedi Board

Jedidentist

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Donor 3 years: 2011-2013
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I will pay you $150 +shipping to fix my Return of the Jedi Board

Okay, I've fiddled with this this enough. This board will work one day and then be weird the next. I'm getting 5.02V at the board's test points, so I don't believe it's a power issue. I've repaired the edge connector as well. Occasionally, I will get garbage on the screen, but now I'm getting a rolling picture that cannot be stabilized with the vertical or horizontal hold pots on the monitor chassis. I'm also getting "clipping" sound as well. I have wiggled and jiggled all of my wires and can't isolate the cause of the clipping. It's not present when the monitor is on, but the board isn't plugged in. El Dorado says they'll repair it for $150+cost to ship back to me (which they said is about $16-20). I will happily pay the same to a KLOVer if anyone is proficient in diagnosing and repairing it, whether it be a solder problem, prom/eprom issue, crystal or whatever. I really would like to get this done before the end of the year so I have it for my New Year's party. If I don't get any bites today, I'm probably going to ship it off tomorrow because I want to get this going. Thanks.

Derek
 
Just spoke with her on the phone. Got a few more things I'm going to look at...reflow the solder on my ARII connectors and check for any A/C flow in my 5V lines, which might account for my clipping sound. The only thing that I never did was replace the Big Blue...I guess I should've done that as I was rebuilding everything else. I may need to give that a try too.
 
Try:


Bills Video Service
508-695-8891


Bill is awesome. Tell him I gave you his info. He repaired my SW board a year ago. GREAT guy, very reasonable.
 
Gave him a quick shout...would love it because he's local. However, ROTJ isn't one he's worked on...he probably just does older vectors and such. Both he and Sarah gave me a couple of things to check, which I'll do tonight. Sarah has a ROTJ, so she would have something to check it in, but she's booked up until after the holidays. I may go that route over El Dorado just to give some local people the business if nobody chimes in here.
 
Arii

Don't even tell me you don't have a rebuilt AR in that cab! Just because it has good voltage when tested doesn't mean it won't dip here and there..

Knock out the easy stuff first: rebuild the AR, make sure your connections are clean and working, replace the big blue if you want. But! The most important thing is to replace your fuse holders.. Those get weak and you'll have the above issues..

Then look for pcb repair.
 
Nope...ARII is rebuilt. That's why I paid you to do my other two...one took me long enough ;) I haven't replaced the fuse holders. I replaced all of the fuses and cleaned the contacts of the fuse holders with steel wool, but didn't actually replace the holders. I knew I was probably going to kick myself for not replacing the Big Blue when I had it all apart...you'd think I'd learn after doing this 5 or 6 times!
 
Ok

I doubt the big blue is the issue.. But it doesn't hurt to replace it, while your there replace the fuse holders.. Clean is good, but if they are weak then it doesn't matter.. Glad to hear the ar is rebuilt.

Rolling picture could be a loose sync wire or the monitor itself needs attention.. Try hooking up a different monitor.
 
Here's a vid of the issue:



I checked some more voltages. I'm getting 5.02V at the board test points, even though the harness seems to only be putting out 4.8V...I don't get that, but whatever. The ARII is also measuring 5.02V at the test points, 22.15V at the 22V, 9.6V at the 10.3V, and 17.2 at the 32? Don't know what much of that means, adds any insight to anything, or how to fix it?

Derek
 
The more I think about it, the more I think this is a Big Blue issue. I already placed my order with Bob Roberts and I'll find out wednesday.
 
Damn. I really thought I had a fix, but it didn't work. Replaced the Big Blue, fuse holder, connectors, and that little square thingamajiggie as well...but I'm still getting the same thing. Even with the rolling screen and the clipping sound, I started up the game and realized that I'm missing the voices too. It seems to play okay, but its just missing the voices. I tried reseating all the socketed chips again...to no avail. Ugh...
 
Damn. I really thought I had a fix, but it didn't work. Replaced the Big Blue, fuse holder, connectors, and that little square thingamajiggie as well...but I'm still getting the same thing. Even with the rolling screen and the clipping sound, I started up the game and realized that I'm missing the voices too. It seems to play okay, but its just missing the voices. I tried reseating all the socketed chips again...to no avail. Ugh...

try to locate the "clipping noise" problem. I have a strong felling that is at or near the problem.
 
Well, when I unplug the speaker outputs from the ARII, I lose the clipping sound...but that's just because I'm cutting them out altogether. If I can get a minute to look at the schematics, I might actually get to pinpoint this to somewhere, but right now I've got an email out to a local repair source, so I'm hoping they'll get back to me.
 
Well, when I unplug the speaker outputs from the ARII, I lose the clipping sound...but that's just because I'm cutting them out altogether. If I can get a minute to look at the schematics, I might actually get to pinpoint this to somewhere, but right now I've got an email out to a local repair source, so I'm hoping they'll get back to me.

I think you have a bad cap in there. check the can type caps (electrolytic). I had a similar problem with a power supply. The problem there was a cap blew apart, nothing left but white pulp, and an inductor.
 
I'd agree with you if I hadn't already rebuilt the ARII with one of BR's kits. I even reflowed the solder on the molex connectors the other day. That being said, im desperate right now, so I'll recheck the solder on the ARII caps tomorrow. I still can't figure out the monitor roll though...
 
I'm working on another ROTJ right now so if you want a checkout of your board, send me a pm.

I built a jamma adapter for ROTJ including pots to simulate the yoke several years ago to help out a friend to repair his board and have worked on several since.

Bill
 
Thanks for the offer! I'm going to mess with the ARII and then send another email to Sarah St. John of http://www.myarcaderepair.com/ to see what's up. My concern is that maybe it's not just the board alone. I'd hate to send it off, only to find out that it's a wiring harness or something. She's only 34 miles from me and I'd love for her to do a house call and check everything out. The board worked fine in 88mph's game for a few minutes, so that adds to some of the confusion. I may be sending you a PM though...
 
...The board worked fine in 88mph's game for a few minutes, so that adds to some of the confusion...

Actually it doesn't. It narrows down your problem. it indicates that the issue is not with the game board itself. I'm assuming that you have checked all of your connections. (Especially your sync lead). I think it's the Audio Regulator. (I guess a cap tester would be mighty handy in this situation).

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
 
Yeah, a cap tester would be nice. The only reason I said it was a little confusing was because it would occasionally work fine in mine, and actually worked fine in mine for a day after checking in 88mph's. Previously, when it had issues in my game, I would just wiggle the connector and that would sometimes fix it. The test points on my ARII measure fine. Any hints on how I can test any other parts of I with just a multimeter? How about testing the big blue? Could I have gotten a dud as a replacement?
 
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