Need Help with Playchoice 10

Ghostnuke

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You guys are going to hate me...
I picked up a dual monitor Playchoice 10 today for a grand total of... zero dollars. It had just been hanging out in my aunt's barn for a while, so I grabbed it!

She told me that it worked when they put it in there, but unfortunately that is not the case now. That is where you guys come in. Woodworking I can handle, but I don't know a lot about the electronic side of things.

When I turn it on, both monitors light up, but there is no picture or sound. The inside of this thing is really very clean and it doesn't look like anything has been disturbed really, so I feel like it can't be anything major. But like I said, I don't know much about electronic work so what do I know. Here are some general pictures of the internals, any ideas? I can get pictures of anything else needed for a diagnosis. :D

IMG_1926.jpg


IMG_1924.jpg


IMG_1925.jpg
 
Here's what it looks like currently.

IMG_1928.jpg


Edit: Each monitor flickers and makes a click noise every 4-5 seconds as well. Is that a symptom of anything?
 
Use a meter and check power going into and out of the power supply (the silver thing on the bottom of picture 1)
 
Make sure everything is plugged in and secure. All connectors, plugs, etc. Just look it over and make sure everything is connected.

After that I'd either go buy a multimeter or relive Happy Days and bang on the machine.
 
Alright, everything is plugged in snugly as far as I can tell. Guess I'll be getting a multimeter. I've never used one before though, how would I go about checking the power from the power supply? I watched a youtube video about it and they showed how to do it on a 3 prong outlet, but where would you stick the prongs on a molex?
 
Generally look at the manual or schematic and it will show a picture for you and probably even has the color of the wires you should be checking.

For this put the meter on AC and I think you should be able to put the probes down in the connector on the back of the wires and get contact with some metal. For the AC, put it behind the connector with 2 wires, I believe in the picture they are both grey. Should read ~100V.

Then put the meter on DC. Look at pdf page 17 of the manual, here PO manual
EDIT: Woops forgot this was a playchoice. Pinout for power is the same though so I'll keep the link in.

At the top, you can see the pinout for the power supply. Put the meter's black probe on a gnd and the red on the +5. Should read ~5V.

You could also take a look at the PCB and make sure that is connected. Look for missing chips.
 
Well I cleaned out the cabinet (lots of wasp nests) and checked all the connections. Pulled out the PCB, checked all connections on that. Still no dice. I'll pick up a multimeter today... guess this will be learning experience.
 
Well I cleaned out the cabinet (lots of wasp nests) and checked all the connections. Pulled out the PCB, checked all connections on that. Still no dice. I'll pick up a multimeter today... guess this will be learning experience.

Yep, there's only so much you can do without a multimeter and a soldering iron. For me, the next step was an eprom programmer. Now I'm finding out there's only so much I can do without a logic probe... it's a slippery slope. :)
 
Looks like a power supply issue to me. If it were me, and I knew nothing about electronics, I'd go looking for a working PC-10 Power supply first. If the power supply checks out as working, then I'd move onto the z80 processor chip on the board.
 
Generally look at the manual or schematic and it will show a picture for you and probably even has the color of the wires you should be checking.

For this put the meter on AC and I think you should be able to put the probes down in the connector on the back of the wires and get contact with some metal. For the AC, put it behind the connector with 2 wires, I believe in the picture they are both grey. Should read ~100V.

Then put the meter on DC. Look at pdf page 17 of the manual, here PO manual
EDIT: Woops forgot this was a playchoice. Pinout for power is the same though so I'll keep the link in.

At the top, you can see the pinout for the power supply. Put the meter's black probe on a gnd and the red on the +5. Should read ~5V.

You could also take a look at the PCB and make sure that is connected. Look for missing chips.

Picked up a multimeter earlier, here are the results.

For the grey wires the reading was between 101.1 V and 101.3 V, so that seems to be where it should be no?

I measured the +5v on both 9P out and 12P out and am a bit confused. Both spots read (assuming I did it correctly) at 0.149 - 0.150 V. That doesn't seem right at all does it? Does this confirm a broken power supply?
 
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Picked up a multimeter earlier, here are the results.

For the grey wires the reading was between 101.1 V and 101.3 V, so that seems to be where it should be no?

I measured the +5v on both 9P out and 12P out and am a bit confused. Both spots read (assuming I did it correctly) at 0.149 - 0.150 V. That doesn't seem right at all does it? Does this confirm a broken power supply?

Yeah, that doesen't sound right.

Make sure your multimeter is set to the proper setting. Some can be adjusted for different voltage sizes.

btw... nice score, has an excellent selection of games in it too. I wish I could get what my aunt has in her barn ('64 nova)
 
Picked up a multimeter earlier, here are the results.

For the grey wires the reading was between 101.1 V and 101.3 V, so that seems to be where it should be no?

I measured the +5v on both 9P out and 12P out and am a bit confused. Both spots read (assuming I did it correctly) at 0.149 - 0.150 V. That doesn't seem right at all does it? Does this confirm a broken power supply?


Both 9P and 12P should read the same value, IIRC they are connected together inside the PS. If you are confident you measured correctly then I'd get a different power supply. You can either recap the existing power supply to see if that fixes it, find a suitable Nintendo one, or wire in a normal switcher. Don't worry about hooking up the +24 as that is only used for the coin counters.
 
I didn't change anything between measuring the 100 V and the 0.149 so it seems unlikely that anything changed on the multimeter. Just to be sure, I'll try it again later though. Does anyone happen to have a spare PS for sale?
 
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