Pac-man with switched power supply

delroy666

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My Pac cab was at some point converted and has a DC switched power supply instead of the original AC transformer. Since the switched supply seems to work just fine, I think I'm going to leave it in there and just rewire the harness and connect my Pac-man PCB to it. Is there a 'best' way to run a Pac board on DC? I understand I connect the power supply's 5V line to the board's 7VAC inputs, it's 12V line to the 12VAC inputs and ground to the center taps. But should I short the diodes, or leave them and just crank up the switcher to ~5.7V? What about pins E and 5? This page: http://www.mikesarcade.com/cgi-bin/spies.cgi?action=url&type=pinout&page=Pac.html says to connect them to 5V also, but that seems unnecessary judging by the schematic in the Pac-man manual. Thanks in advance.
 

Thanks, but I'm not too crazy about soldering the wires directly to the PCB. I really just want to supply power through the harness, since I need to rewire the harness anyways. Plus, I can't imagine having to get out my soldering iron every time I want to remove the PCB from the cabinet. :)
 
Just get the Bob Robert's Pac to Switcher harness. I got my original Pac PCB running on one with a switcher in my cabinet, works great!
 
Thanks, but I'm not too crazy about soldering the wires directly to the PCB. I really just want to supply power through the harness, since I need to rewire the harness anyways. Plus, I can't imagine having to get out my soldering iron every time I want to remove the PCB from the cabinet. :)

Which is why you put a three-pin molex connector in line with those wires, so you can plug and unplug it anytime you want. It's a 5 minute job that costs almost nothing to do, unlike buying switcher adapters and such....
 
Just get the Bob Robert's Pac to Switcher harness. I got my original Pac PCB running on one with a switcher in my cabinet, works great!

I was actually looking at his 'Pac switcher harness' earlier today, but he apparently doesn't take CC or Paypal, so I'd have to get a U.S. money order which is a pain in the arse since I'm in Canada. With that and the shipping, exchange, brokerage, etc. it's just not worth it. It won't take me long to re-solder my existing harness as long as I know the correct pinout.

Anyways, after reading your post, I revisited Bob's site and stumbled upon some of his step-by-step guides on creating a Pac harness/adapter. It quite clearly shows him connecting 5VDC to all three signals on each side of the PCB (C,D,E,3,4,5) on his adapters and leaving the diodes as-is, so I'll do the same when wiring mine. Thanks!
 
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