Omega Race goes down, fix-it thread

ifkz

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It's funny how these 400 lb. machines make us appreciate them instead of taking them for granted. Last night I had happily turned on the eight machines in my small inside game room and played on all of them a few times. Towards the end of the night, I glanced over to Omega Race and noticed the screen was blank. Curses!

Over the years (since 2007) I've had my ups and downs with this game, enough issues to where I decided to stock pile parts for it. I'm in better shape than a lot of owners and have a broken WG V2000, a repaired spare boardset, and cap kits for both. So, I'll get this going again no matter what.

I have neck glow and I can hear vector 'chatter.' The game plays blind. I've had similar issues in the past that were fixed with simple EPROM reseating and cable reseating. That will be my first stop, if that does not work, I will to measure voltages to see if the power board completely died on me.

Time to dust off my arcade tech hat and see where it gets me.
 
If it plays blind and you hear the vector 'chatter', I wouldn't mess with the board at all. The problem is probably with the monitor.

You could confirm with an oscilloscope or your spare monitor.

That said, if you lose the Z signal (or brightness), you'll get the same symptoms.

I'm betting on the monitor.
 
Confirmed monitor issue. My power supply +5V line had slipped to 4.8, but that was easily corrected. Looks like I get to work on the deflection board and/or rebuild the spare WG V2000 I stockpiled in the garage. At least it's not a game PCB issue, whew!

I'll be needing help on this one, it has already had a cap kit...which is about the extent of my monitor troubleshooting ability. That and the 'shotgun' approach to monitor rebuilding...
 
Neck glow means the heater is working, but not necessarily that high voltage is present. A quick test I did with my v2000 is to turn it on and see if a piece of paper will "static cling" to the screen. If not you may have a problem with your HV assembly.
 
I hope it's not the HV cage. Thankfully I have a working Asteroids Deluxe that also uses a WG V2000, so worst case I can swap the boards around until I isolate the problem.

When the game is on, I can see a glow from the screen, just no vectors. Shortly after if failed, I did see some very faint vector images, though nothing that looked like normal Omega Race gameplay. There is nothing now but the glow of a charged tube. Maybe I just blew the fuse on the deflection board, I haven't pulled it and checked. Omega Race's monitor is mounted in the bottom of the cab reflecting up to a half silvered mirror, so the paper idea would take a little work disassembly to pull off. I'll keep that trick up my sleeve if it comes to it.

I could really have a bad day if it turns out the tube died, though this seems unlikely. Even if that is the case, I have a spare black and white vector tube from an Asteroids that would work (stockpiled after I had to track down a new 19varp4 for my Armor Attack).

Looks like I'll be a crazy board swapping/cap kit installing dude this weekend.
 
Well, rebuilt my other deflection board and...no change. I'll test both deflection boards in another game, but so far this only leaves the HV cage and the monitor tube. Not looking good for my technical ability unless I find something simple blown in the HV cage. More disassembly and testing this weekend. Why do I like "special" vector games, eh?
 
Fixed. Q901 was the culprit in the HV cage as seen in the picture. Amazing how one component can kill an entire game. Now to put her back together, after I cap the PCB while I have everything out.

Anyone have a picture of an Omega Race on fire, or in a bonfire? I want a new avatar.

Stupid component.
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