NAMCO Pole position - Help needed

RobotWorkshop

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Hello, I am trying to revive a Pole Position for a friend. Both of the ARII boards are rebuilt and working well. However, I am having a tough time getting any technical information on the NAMCO board set. It seems that most of the schematics are for the Atari version.

There are a few things I am trying to find/determine and I hope someone on here can help:

- Cross or source for one of the 0326 chips. One of the pins rotted off on a chip on the board

- Some of the electrolytic caps and battery leaked. I replaced and fixed the electrolytics but need to get some hi-res images of the PCB front and back to verify I can fix the traces properly in that area. Also need to verify the values for the resistors and diode in that area.

- The tantalum caps for the audio section are questionable and I would like to replace them all. Need to confirm the value and original working voltage on those to get the correct replacements. (I really dislike those tantalum caps from the 80's that tend to fail shorted)

I don't normally work on arcade games but do a lot on similar electronic from the 80's so have all the tools I should need to fix it.

My friend and his daughter really enjoyed this game and I want to revive it for them.

Robert
 
Does anyone have a spare NAMCO Pole Position board set (or partial boardset) that you would be willing to part with. Working or not is ok.
 
I just installed a fresh pair of ARII boards (w/mods) and I get rock solid 5V at both of the main logic boards. I will get garbage on the screen as it tries to start up. At the moment there is no battery installed on the board. It is my understanding that is only needed to keep high scores when the power is off. Does it need to be there in order for it to come up?

I'd still like to find the schematic for the Namco version of PP and get some good reference photos on both sides of the board where the battery goes.

Anyone have the checksums of each of the NAMCO PP ROM's or known good images to compare them too? At least with those I can check all the ROM's and rule those out as possible issues.

Still looking for an extra 0326 chip as a spare.

It seems that almost everyone has the Atari version. Anyone on the forum have a working Namco version?
 
I just installed a fresh pair of ARII boards (w/mods) and I get rock solid 5V at both of the main logic boards. I will get garbage on the screen as it tries to start up. At the moment there is no battery installed on the board. It is my understanding that is only needed to keep high scores when the power is off. Does it need to be there in order for it to come up?

the battery is only for those purposes, it will not prevent the game from booting. I don't know parts placement on Namco sets, but on Atari the main CPU is right next to the battery and courtesy of alkaline leakage or outgassing, that circuit is usually first to get killed

I'd still like to find the schematic for the Namco version of PP and get some good reference photos on both sides of the board where the battery goes.

Anyone have the checksums of each of the NAMCO PP ROM's or known good images to compare them too? At least with those I can check all the ROM's and rule those out as possible issues.

this is what MAME is for, specifically

Still looking for an extra 0326 chip as a spare.

no such thing as new customs, you'll have to get them off a dead board

It seems that almost everyone has the Atari version. Anyone on the forum have a working Namco version?

and that's really all I have to say about that. :)
 
I'll have to check out MAME to see if they have the NAMCO version as well. With that I should be able to fix any ROM related issues.

I've seen serveral of the NAMCO custom IC's show up on ebay but none of the 0326 chips. Not sure if that is also used on the Atari version of the board. If so I could pickup one of the used Atari boards to try and pull that chip off.

The boards are supposed to be similar but the Namco has different connectors and also has the Audio on the main board.

I think this upright originally came from Canada and that is why is has the Namco board instead of the Atari.
 
The custom 0326 chip is in 3E. I'm going to try an fix the broken lead and will see about getting an Atari board for parts.

On the board with the Audio I'd like to confirm the value of the Tantalum cap at C20 ( I think 15uf or .15uf ??) and also what Zener is called for at D1 (someone removed it)

On the other board with the battery I'd like to confirm the values for D10, R117, R119, R127, and R128. With that and come good pictures of the board around that battery area I may be able to revive this yet.

I noticed that several of the electrolytic caps leaked and I have already replaced those.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.
 
Buy old Atari PP's. They have the same custom chips as the Namco version.

I've been looking at pictures of the Atari boards but I can't find any that show the 0326 chips on board. It is a 20-pin DIP. Before I buy a whole extra board I'd like to find out for sure if it really has those on it or if that NAMCO board is different.
 
On the board with the Audio I'd like to confirm the value of the Tantalum cap at C20 ( I think 15uf or .15uf ??) and also what Zener is called for at D1 (someone removed it)

I did confirm the value of the tantalum caps. They are .15uf 25V. I'm all set with that portion of the board.

Still looking for hi-res images of the front and rear of the Namco board w/battery so I can confirm some traces that were damaged. There is one that I'm not sure where it goes. Are the Pole Position II boards the same??

It seems that most people have the Atari version and that the Namco boards are pretty rare. Not finding a lot about these particular boards.

Robert
 
On the sound board there are a total of 4 chips with rotted leads. They are:

PP2-6 @ 6M
PP1-7 @ 8L
PP2-10 @ 2H
0326 @ 3E

I'm going to try and use an extra DIP socket as a carrier for each one to see if I can save them. It would still be nice to find replacements for these.
 
Success! Pole Position is alive!

I was able to use standard dual leaf DIP sockets as carriers to fix the chips that had rotten leads. Three chips had one bad lead and one had 4 leads off. On that chip I had to use a dremel to cut into the plastic case to expose part of the lead. I would have used machine pin sockets but those stretch out and damage the original socket on the board and didn't want to do that in case original spares turn up. We left the battery off since he didn't care about high scores but with all the new tantalum caps and electrolytic caps all the sounds and speech are working (which hadn't worked for a while). There was also a 104 ceramic cap on the edge of the board that was broken and fixed too.

I appreciate Andy reaching out to me and providing some more insight on the Namco boards. They are definitely different although they share some parts with the Atari boards. In case anyone ever works on them I have a list of the checksums and chips used on the boards:

Location, Label, ROM type, Checksum
5N, PP2-17, 2764, E53A
4N, PP2-19, 2764, 8F28
3N, PP2-21, 2764, 7437
1N, PP2-25, 2764, A9F7
5M, PP2-18, 2764, 6269
4M, PP2-20, 2764, A28E
3M, PP2-22, 2764, 2790
1M, PP2-26, 2764, 119C
1L, PP1-27, 2732A, 2D40
1F, PP2-28, 2732A, 379A
1E, PP1-29, 2732A, 1CCB
3A, PP1-30, 2764, DC76
2A, PP1-31, 2764, 90E6
1A, PP1-32, 2732, 14E0

8M, PP2-1, 2764, 18FF
4M, PP2-5, 2764, 4FFF
8L, PP2-2, 2764, B6FF
4L, PP2-6, 2764, CDFF
6H, PP2-9, 2764, A6AA
5H, PP2-10, 2732A, E0F2
2E, PP2-11, 2764, 5E3F
6A, PP1-15, 2764, 5E6B
5A, PP1-16, 2764, 5E6B

There are some other odd smaller custom chips that I believe are small PROM chips but I didn't try to pull anything from them.
 
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