Joust - Controls not responding at all.

Madaracs

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I've been working on my joust for the last few days.

I just replaced the CPO and did a rebuild on the joysticks. They were working great.

I've been having intermittent problems that seemed power related so I decided to install the Arcadeshop relacement Williams Power Supply kit. I had great success with one of these on my Robotron so I thought why not?

Well, I measured the voltage at the supply and on the pins to make sure everything was good (5.06/12.20) before plugging in the harness and then I plugged it in.

To my dismay the game didn't boot.

I re-seated all of the connectors on the main board and the connection cables between the boards.

Powered up. It booted. And it reports "INITIAL CHECKS INDICATE ALL SYSTEMS GO"

However, there are credits in the machine and neither player one nor player two buttons do anything so I decide to go into self test.

RAM tests are OK, ROMS OK, and then I get to the screen where you can test the controls... ALL OF THEM ARE ON. It's as if every actuator, button, joystick movement are simultaneously being pushed. I also disconnected the harness to make sure there wasn't a problem with the wiring on the control panel... same results.

Then advancing to the next screen it goes down the list of defaults and automatically jacks up every setting finally landing me at the :Setting Attract Mode Message" where I'm unable to exit test mode. So I turn the machine off.

Switching between the new switching power supply and back to the old one has no effect, the same madness plagues me.

Could my PIA have given up?
 
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I just replaced a bunch of IDC connectors in my joust because the sound would come and go. My next step to bulletproof this thing is to replace all the sockets on the boards. I have had issues with the rom sockets a couple times.
 
Spoke to soon:

8314352639_8d5aac05d5_c.jpg


Any suggestions? PIA flaking out when it gets warm?

Interesting that it doesn't show the player 2 button actuated.
 
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Do you have another PIA chip to try in there if so try that.

I just ordered it. It is no longer "heat related" it is just plain not working.

I have a few boards laying around but I don't think any of them have a spare PIA on them. Are there any equivalents in the same package?
 
That's pretty much every button that the widget board reads... I'd think more likely a bad ground connection between the PCB and widget than a bad PIA. Try wiggling the wiring, and doing the "vice trick"... or better yet replace the connector entirely.
 
That's pretty much every button that the widget board reads... I'd think more likely a bad ground connection between the PCB and widget than a bad PIA. Try wiggling the wiring, and doing the "vice trick"... or better yet replace the connector entirely.

Don't know the vice trick. Is that where I take a Vice Grip and attempt to tighten the connection on the harness somewhere?

If you have more specific instructions, I'm game. (no pun intended.)
 
This, except without replacing anything (to try just fixing the IDC connections)...

http://www.arcadesolution.com/ribbon.html

+1 on this. I have a Robotron cabaret that I'm deconverting from a Bottom of the Ninth. I pieced together a board set and had the same issue. If I fiddled with the ribbon cable for the I/O board I could change which inputs were stuck. I took an IDE cable out of an old computer and reterminated the connector per the instructions on the site listed above. It solved the issue completely.
 
That's pretty much every button that the widget board reads... I'd think more likely a bad ground connection between the PCB and widget than a bad PIA. Try wiggling the wiring, and doing the "vice trick"... or better yet replace the connector entirely.

Well gents, I called Andre (He's local to me) and his first question was, "Did you put a new switching power supply in?" And of course I had.

Andre then informed me that the "logical" ground to the control panel was not present as the way those Williams cabs are grounded is a bit tricky (at least on Joust.) When you install a new switching PS, it bypasses that logical ground (not the ground used for grounding the plates and metals on the machine--incidentally, I didn't know there was a difference.)

So, I've terminated one of the player start buttons with the ground directly from the switching power supply. And I don't want to count my ostriches before they're hatched, :) but so far so good.

I also ordered the blue connector pieces from Andre so I can terminate a new cable anyway.
 
controler interphase pcb

i have a extra control pannel interphase pcb from a defender that i belive can be made to work with joust./
 
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