Coin Doors have received an enamel coating and have been reinstalled and wired up. I realize I need to get some locks for them though. D'oh! At least the test/advance switches are working as intended. It's funny, none of my other Williams cabs aside Sinistar actually had the coin vault advance switch installed, as they were total deconversions, so I was at first unsure of what that switch was, or how to wire it up, but I figured it out, lol. Very cool feature from Williams, that.
At the moment: Here are the remaining todos and blockers:
Cabinet
- Install Marquee Light Fixture (Waiting on a new Ballast to Arrive)
- Install Marquee (Need to get it)
- Need to buy some coin door tubes. Both are missing. Are these just standard pipe available at Home Depot or something?
- Finish Wiring Harness (As per usual, waiting on good ole USPS)
- Install Cabinet Locking Feature for upper coin door.
Control Panel
- Final Assembly of plate/CPO/Wooden panel is pending another USPS package (for foam). Sensing a theme here?
- For the moment, I will just use 4x Wicos to run the game, until I am able to secure Blaster style optical sticks.
- I need to get a couple more of the countersunk screws that secure the plate to the panel. I was missing a few. I assume I can just take some of the existing ones to TrueValue and find new ones... Hopefully.
PCB
Even before the game is finished, I'm still fighting demons here (ha). I suspect that the problem causing the noise is on the video board somewhere, rather than the CPU board, as if I touch the three graphics ROMs, it actually seems to affect the noise in noticeable ways. This is really weird.
Ordinarily, I would suspect
- Bad Roms - But these were NOS Roms and fresh burned, and I cleaned them for good measure.
- Bad Voltage - But the board is doing the same thing when on my switcher-powered bench setup
- Bad GND - I have tested continuity from the PCB to the wall ok.
- Cold Solder - But I reflowed the solder and it's still doing the same thing.
- Bad Sockets - I have some new sockets on order... (USPS Please) but I am not 100% this is the issue either because...
As a test, I did try removing the ROMs entirely, hoping I would get a black background, or vertical lines, but I still got some noise (though the center noise I was experiencing was gone) so I'm really not sure what to think here. I
do think that whatever this is, is confined on the video board. At least I'm hoping...
I reinserted the ROMs one at a time, and the nicest it ever looked was when I had put IC41 back in only. There was no noise in the center of the screen, and it looked very close to what I had in mame when I left IC41 in and replaced IC57 and 58 with empty files.
Here's what it looked like in mame:
Noticeably, while there wasn't any fuckery in the center of the map... On either side of the Grand Lizard's visible stripes, there was still noise/garbage. So I'm really not 100% sure.