Missile Command Cocktail edge connectors

Culcuhain

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Ok. I get to my friend's house to check out his MC.
On the edge connector it looks like one of the fingers (on both sides) got burned up and someone soldered some lead wires. I took off the edge connector and sure enough, those two fingers are burned off and a third is about to come off. How do you "fix" those edge connector fingers....The board is kinda flakey and if the edge connector side isn't support, the game wont boot (garbled screen, white, shows green letters MIS)... This is going to be a fun one to fix...

Then on the Reg Audio II PCB two resistors are nice and blackened toast. R29 and R30. ( I have the manual so I have the values I need to pick up) and it looks like the NPN Silicon Transistor Type 2N3055 has been replaced. Could this have anything to do with the resistors blowing? (open circuit...)

any ideas? Thanks!!!
 
bad edge connector on the harness,its notorious prob with atari games.you need to replace the edge connector on the harness completely with replacement.replace the 2 blow resistors and the 2n3055 is the +5v regulator,if you get no +5v at the board could be that needs replacing,if you say it looks like its been replaced then you could be ok.

as for burned finger on the gameboard:
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=102582&highlight=edge+connector+repair

you can actualy buy replacement fingerboards for gameboards also,they slip over the existing fingers and solder at alternate places on the gameboards edge/fingers.seen in past on net cant remember where but,you can do that.
:)
 
Ok. I get to my friend's house to check out his MC.
On the edge connector it looks like one of the fingers (on both sides) got burned up and someone soldered some lead wires. I took off the edge connector and sure enough, those two fingers are burned off and a third is about to come off. How do you "fix" those edge connector fingers....The board is kinda flakey and if the edge connector side isn't support, the game wont boot (garbled screen, white, shows green letters MIS)... This is going to be a fun one to fix...

Then on the Reg Audio II PCB two resistors are nice and blackened toast. R29 and R30. ( I have the manual so I have the values I need to pick up) and it looks like the NPN Silicon Transistor Type 2N3055 has been replaced. Could this have anything to do with the resistors blowing? (open circuit...)

any ideas? Thanks!!!

Couple of important things here: Yea, those fingers got burned due to design issues. The important thing to know is that the power supply adjusts the +5 volt output level based on a +5 line that comes BACK from the main PCB (that's right, there's a +5 going from the main PCB back to the AR-II board). Thus, as the connectors age and oxidize (or if you try to run it with the main PCB disconnected!), it ends up ramping the +5 up to the point that it starts blowing parts. If you are lucky, there's no collateral damage.

I recommend an AR-II rebuild kit from Bob Roberts, fixing the fingers on the board (there are some youtube videos about that, if you search around.), and possibly replacing the edge connector (again, Bob Roberts has the parts you need).

One thing more: You have two choices in how to deal with this problem for the future.
1) You can try keeping the connectors clean and in good shape. If you keep up with it, this will work for many years with no modifications.

2) You can make a mod on the AR-II board (basically you short the +5 return line to the +5 output line) so that the AR-II board no longer pays attention to the main PCB's idea of +5. This has the advantage that you'll never blow the AR-II again due to this problem, but the downside that the AR-II is no longer auto-adjusting the +5, so you need to get it tweaked in correctly to start with.

I went with #2, but some folk don't like that solution. Given the bad fingers on your board, I'd really recommend doing #2, but that's just my opinion.
 
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