Need Help on X-Men & Zaxxon

AtariShag

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I've got two separate issues on two machines but I figure putting them in the same post will cut down on forum clutter :)

First ZAXXON

I had this fixed not long ago by forum member Buffett who did an amazing job on this. But a short time ago the image suddenly went out. I don't think it's the monitor chassis as the neck glows and there is glow in the tube. The game plays however. I pulled the board out and it was rather dirty, I cleaned it up but didn't see much in the way of cold solder. I did not have a magnifying glass to really look at that though. Still, I would rather focus my time where the problem likely is so any thoughts or suggestions would really be welcome.

Second XMEN

XMEN 6 player just haven't given me a lot to be happy about since I got it as there always seems to be an issue. Since I got it there has been a weird issue where the controls on Storm and Nightcrawler I had to swap on the board itself otherwise when I would try to coin up on Nightcrawler, the game would reset. I tried moving the controls around at the connectors beneath the joysticks but no luck in making that work. So I just swapped the wire on the coin switches.

But today something very strange started to happen where the game started to reset itself anytime sound came on. I just got a second X-Men board in and the same thing happens no matter the board installed. From a little Google searching I can see I want to check the 5+ voltage but question is if its low, what do I do then? If its fine, what else can I check?

Thanks in advance!
 
Invest in a multi meter or a volt meter.
Most power supplies will have a place to adjust the 5 volt power supply.

Do not mess with the adjustment without knowing what voltages you putting out. Too much voltage will do damage to your boards.
 
I have a multi-meter but I just haven't really dealt with voltage adjustments on power supplies before. Good to know to watch out on that adjustment though, thanks
 
Since I am not sure what your skill level is I am going to break it down.

Ask questions if you do not know.

Put your mutli meter on the DC Volt setting maybe If you have several DC volt setting choose the first setting that goes over the DC voltage setting.

Plug the black lead into the Common or ground plug into the meter and the Red lead into the Voltage side of your meter.

To make sure you got it plugged in right measure a battery. 1.5 volts should show up on your meter..
 
Now if the Meter is working correctly.

Look at the large connector (jamma connector) that goes to your board.
There should be 4 black wires on one side of the connector next to 4 red wires.
if your test meter probes are skinny and long enough you can slide them inside the same hole the wire in coming in.

With the game on you should see the voltage that power supply is putting out.
It should be close to 5 volts.

Now carefully pull the red probe out and the 5 volts on the board.

there is a 74ls32 you can use to check the the 5 volts.
Do not run the the probe across the legs of the chip. You ruin the risk of doing damage to the chip.

you want to put the probe on the VCC pin on the chip.
 

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if the voltage from the back side of the jamma is off by 0.5 volts or more you might have a dirty connector.

With the game off, remove the jamma connector. Use a pink soft eraser rub it on the contact on the board. The pink eraser should turn black if it removing the crude off the connector.

Clean the eraser ever so often everything should be nice a bright and shiny.
vacuum up any little rubber pieces that fall down.

Plug in your jamma connector to your board.

If your arcade machine has a typical arcade switching power supply in it.
There should be a knob you can turn where all the wires are plugged into it.

When the game is on adjust the power supply just a little over 5 volts. 5.1 is what I normally set mine too.
 
Thank you for the tips and instructions Alpha-Tron, that was very helpful. The dial needed to be turned up on the power supply and that fixed it.

I'm still not sure where the best place to be looking on Zaxxon is though, I assume I likewise will be making sure voltages are all ok everywhere first?
 
There is a thread I posted on Zaxxon power supplies. Go find it - it tells you what is connected to what, and how to read the voltages.
 
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