Joust won't boot up... Where do I start?

Jakobud

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I just got a Joust cabinet from some guy who had it sitting in his garage for a while. He didn't know anything about it or the condition it was in.

Anyways, this is what I got so far:

When i plug it in and turn on, I see a brief flash of light on the monitor and then no picture after that, just black.

I can also hear the hum of the speakers, so I know its getting power.

I never hear any audio from the game or demo mode if I wait and let it sit there for a bit. I added some credits and pressed the 1P 2P start buttons, but still no sounds. I did find what appeared to be the volume control on the inside of the cabinet on the right wall (it was a potentiometer with a brass looking tub on it that you turn). I fiddled with the volume but still never heard any audio.

Also, on one of the boards (it's not the rom board, I'm not sure what it is) there are three red LEDS labeled "LED, LED2 and LED3". Only LED2 and LED3 are lite up when it's on.

So that is kinda where its at right now and I have no idea where to start trouble shooting. I am a huge arcade fan but don't know hardly anything about restoring them or the circuits or whatever. I know that the power supply can be dangerous to mess with and I know the monitor is dangerous to mess with whether its plugged in or not. I've read about people using logic probes? and stuff to figure out what isn't working on the boards. I don't even know what a logic probe is. I have a voltmeter, will that help?

Anyways, any help I could get would be useful. I just don't know what I should be looking at or how I should be testing stuff. Like should I be able to tell if it's a power supply problem? Monitor? game board? roms?

Thanks in advance guys
 
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If he does not have the three lights on the power supply board, he is not getting the correct power to run anything, so the diagnostic LED on the ROM board won't do anything.

You either need to replace or rebuild the power supply board so that you are getting the correct voltages. Then we can get you to the next step in debugging :D

<shameless plug>
I sell rebuilt power supply boards for $35 shipped (to the lower 48) or I can rebuild your board for $20 + return shipping. PM for details.
</shameless plug>

ken
 
You're missing the +5. If you have the original linear power supply:

Check the PS board for any blown fuses with a multimeter. Test for continuity on both sides of the board. Replace any that are blown.

If all fuses are okay, order a power supply rebuild kit from Bob Roberts or other online source (approx $12) and rebuild it, takes about 15 minutes.
 
Very good point -- resolder the connectors on the PS board before you order a rebuild kit. Could be as simple as bad solder joints.
 
Thanks for all the replies guys!

I will take a closer look at the power supply board. Would it help if I posted a pic or two of the internals?
 
The original Williams linear PS is a small PCB on the side of the cab with 4 connectors. Guessing that's what you've got running, as you already IDed the 3 LED lights.

Switcher looks something like this:
switching-12v-power-0-2937-1.jpg
 
Throwing a switcher into a Williams box is a reasonable way to determine if it is a power issue, but is not recommended long term because of the well known CMOS issues with switchers and Williams boards.

ken
 
Throwing a switcher into a Williams box is a reasonable way to determine if it is a power issue, but is not recommended long term because of the well known CMOS issues with switchers and Williams boards.

ken

Tell me about it... I just lost my 1mil Robotron score yesterday because the machine thought it'd be fun to reset the score tables... ugggg.

I have a feeling that when you get that PS fixed... you'll probably have yourself a working game. I'm not a big fan of the "dual fault"... it's usually just one thing effecting any 1 aspect of the machine. Machine won't boot, you're not getting +5? Tada... should get it to boot. Granted, there's plenty of crap that can go wrong after that, but it's usually just one issue at a time.
 
Hey guys,

Sorry I gotta rez this thread. The game is actually over in my cousins basement and we haven't had any time to troubleshoot the problem until tonight. We didn't do much (as we both still don't know too much about troubleshooting arcade games) but we do have a few things to post.

First of all, some pictures: (Sorry imgur.com automatically flipped a couple of the pics 180* and won't let me flip them back...)

A quick view of the power supply itself (is that what you refer to this as?). All the connections on this appear to be fine. How much can you poke around on these things even while unplugged? I know capacitors can hold a charge so I'm a little cautious here. Also, the fuse on this thing appeared to be A-OK.
NeDegl.jpg


Here is the power supply board. You can see only LED 2 & 3 are lit up. We removed the 5 fuses you see here to take a closer look at them (more on that below) (This picture is flipped 180. LED 3 is on the TOP and LED 1 is on the BOTTOM)
nbvQdl.jpg


This is the board above the power supply. I don't know what it's called. The two fuses appear to be fine.
NN59ol.jpg


Here is the ROM board and the other board... I don't know what that one is called either. It has all the chips on it... I'm sure one of you will enlighten me. You can see that indeed the single digital LED display on the ROM board is not on, as someone previously predicted in this thread. Also, on that big board with all the chips, in the lower left you can see three spots for three large fuses. Should those be empty? I figured maybe those fuses were used on this board if it was used in a different Williams game. But I figure I'd ask anyways.
9owKDl.jpg


Finally, the 5 fuses from the power supply board we removed.
itKyAl.jpg


Okay so two things with these fuses:

First of all, one of them is indeed blown.

Second, once I pulled them all out I realized that there was a label that showed which fuse spot on the board was for what voltage. Like one was for +5, one was for +12, one was for -5, etc... At first I thought "Well they all look like the same fuse, no big deal" but as I looked closer at the fuses, they are almost all different. They were labeled like so:

250 VOLT
7A 250V 313 (pretty sure two of them said this)
125 VOLT
4A 250V

So now the problem is that I pulled them all out but wasn't paying attention to which fuse went where...

So I need to replace the burned out fuse, but how do I know which fuse went in which slot?

Hopefully this one burned out fuse will do the trick...

Thank you all for the help and insight and if you guys can answer any of the little question throughout this post I would appreciate it!
 
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The board above the power supply board is the sound board, and the CPU board (the big board) is not missing three fuses, it's missing three AA batteries, but you don't need those to run the game, and it's recommended practice to replace them with a lithium battery setup anyway (see Bob Roberts' helpful rundown at http://www.therealbobroberts.net/wmsbatt.html - Bob Roberts will likely be your friend in keeping this game running). But you can worry about the batteries further down the track when you get the game running.

From what little I can see of it, the game looks in nice condition.
 
Ya I'm gonna replace that fuse today and see where it gets me and then probably figure out where to buy a new/rebuilt board from.

Now when you say "power supply board" do you mean the circuit board that has the 3 LEDs on it? Or do you mean the main power board in the bottom of the cabinet (the 1st image in my previous post above)?
 
I'd post a picture of the page up, but it'd be too small to do any good.

http://www.robotron-2084.co.uk/manuals/joust/joust_upright_drawing_set.pdf

Page 3, near'sh the bottom of the page. All the fuses are shown, listed, and labeled. :)

Okay so looking at that schematic, I see the fuse labels on there. They are labeled like so (top to bottom):

1ASB
-5VDC

5ASB
6.3VAC

4ASB
+12VDC
+27VDC

7ASB
-12VDC

+5VDC (7ASB)
+12VDC UNREG.

So... that still doesn't really help me determine which fuse goes in which slot... Again, here are my fuse labels:

250 VOLT
7A 250V 313 (two of them say this)
125 VOLT
4A 250V
 
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