Picked up a Battlezone

Im a test engineer for a company that makes laser micro machining systems for drilling micro vias in PCBs, also machines that do flex pcb stuff. We can drill 9000 vias per second. New machines even faster. I dont mess with lasers much at work any more. I do at home though, lol.



Nice!

Nowhere on your level, but I also dabble with lasers in another hobby, retrofitting handheld lasers into vintage flashlights. (I also do test and measurement as my 'real job', but in the digital communications space.) Here's a post with some pics from a while back:


attachment.php


attachment.php
 
Oh neat

Ahh, that explains the eye pattern in your image. I have a nice LeCroy that can do eye measurements.
 
Oh neat

Ahh, that explains the eye pattern in your image. I have a nice LeCroy that can do eye measurements.


Ha. I actually noticed your LeCroy in an earlier post. (I'm a scope geek.) I worked for Keysight for a few years. But I've used high-end scopes from Tek, HP/Agilent/Keysight, and LeCroy, and like them all. LeCroy has always been the underdog of the scope world. The David to Tek's Goliath. But they make good stuff.

I chose that avatar intentionally. People who know the field, know what it is.

What's your location, btw? If you weren't aware, you can set your location in your account settings (under your VAPS account, not the forum settings), and have it displayed with your posts. Most folks here have it enabled, so we can see who's where.
 
Im in Aloha, OR, Work in beaverton, literally right across the street from Tek. In fact it's an old Tek building.

Actually got the LeCroy from the Tek company store a bit before the pandemic for a few hundred. Just needed a new bios battery. Found a nice Leeroy 2ghz FET probe there too for $15. Picked up the digital acquisition unit for it off ebay a few months ago too. It gives it mixed domain capabilities. I also have an old Tek 2465 which is pretty nice. Vector graphics too! lol

I have an older Keysight MDO4000 series scope at work that I need to try and fix. There was a known issue with the flash memory corrupting so I need to try and get the firmware reuploaded to it and updated to fix the issue. Fun

At work we mostly have the new high end Tek MDOscopes, lot of 8 channel ones. Pretty freeking nice.
 
That's too funny, buying a LeCroy at a Tek company store sale. Maybe they bought it for competitive analysis.

(And a few hundred, that's a steal!)
 
Tek was pretty brand agnostic it seems, they used a lot of stuff. I even picked up an old ESI LCR meter that we used to make decades ago.
 
Diode arrived today and.... it's alive. Lost one spring so I had to scrounge up another. Set to 14.5kv with no beam current.

Image is a little low but once I have the RedZone board back in I can deal with that because it has position controls. Retrace lines are not actually visible.

IMG_7858.jpeg
 

Attachments

  • IMG_7855.jpeg
    IMG_7855.jpeg
    604.5 KB · Views: 12
  • IMG_7857.jpeg
    IMG_7857.jpeg
    599.6 KB · Views: 12
  • IMG_7856.jpeg
    IMG_7856.jpeg
    528.3 KB · Views: 12
The OG Atari AVG (main) PCB has placeholders to add X and Y CENTERING circuitry (220K resistor, 0.1uF cap and 50K POT for each).
No reason to not add it for BZ due to the overlay alignment etc. YMMV
 
Diode arrived today and.... it's alive. Lost one spring so I had to scrounge up another. Set to 14.5kv with no beam current.

Image is a little low but once I have the RedZone board back in I can deal with that because it has position controls. Retrace lines are not actually visible.

View attachment 857078
Nice looking image!
 
I saw that about adding X-Y Pos controls. But my plan is just bag the boards and the rest of the old parts and place them in the cabinet and use the RedZone.
 
Got it moved upstairs. Friend had an appliance dolly so she came over and helped me get this thing up. Damn this thing is heavy.

Still waiting on the coins entry bezels and flaps. They should be here tomorrow.

 

Attachments

  • IMG_7869.jpeg
    IMG_7869.jpeg
    818.3 KB · Views: 11
  • IMG_7871 (1).jpeg
    IMG_7871 (1).jpeg
    1.1 MB · Views: 11
Got the coin door pieces from Mylstar today and got them installed.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_7879.jpeg
    IMG_7879.jpeg
    301.6 KB · Views: 11
While i had the flaps out i modeled them in solidworks. Here are the solidworks and step files for the part.
 

Attachments

  • Coin Flap.zip
    163.1 KB · Views: 2
I was messing with the machine this evening messing with video alignment. After about a half hour I noticed a corona sound and it was slowly getting louder coming from the HV PSU. Pulled monitor and popped off the cage to see the diode assy bent to one side. It was warm to the touch but that was still enough to soften the old vinyl that the end caps are made from and the spring pressure pushed it to one side. I snapped off a piece of glass tubing and zip tied it to the side as a brace. Ain't going anywhere now.

CRT has some outward curvature at the bottom of the crt, which means top of the image when it's in the cabinet and the text on the left side curves up. Managed to find a spot on the frame where I can put a magnet which will make the geometry better. Maybe one of the yoke magnets is getting weak.

The Redzone board works pretty well. The engine sound on Battlezone could use some work. One thing I am changing is replacing those trim pots with 10 turn trimmers. Just touching one moves the image way far.
 
I was messing with the machine this evening messing with video alignment. After about a half hour I noticed a corona sound and it was slowly getting louder coming from the HV PSU. Pulled monitor and popped off the cage to see the diode assy bent to one side. It was warm to the touch but that was still enough to soften the old vinyl that the end caps are made from and the spring pressure pushed it to one side. I snapped off a piece of glass tubing and zip tied it to the side as a brace. Ain't going anywhere now.

CRT has some outward curvature at the bottom of the crt, which means top of the image when it's in the cabinet and the text on the left side curves up. Managed to find a spot on the frame where I can put a magnet which will make the geometry better. Maybe one of the yoke magnets is getting weak.

The Redzone board works pretty well. The engine sound on Battlezone could use some work. One thing I am changing is replacing those trim pots with 10 turn trimmers. Just touching one moves the image way far.
Yup the engine sound is not perfect. We have trouble getting analog sounds perfect. All of these boards are a derivative of the masteroids firmware and there is a masteroids rev2 in the works. The rev2 will have a better tool chain and include something similar to the net list that is used in mame for analog sound.
 
Well it is pretty good. Are there any plans to update the firmware for RZ or is the masteroids rev2 going to be something other than the teensy 4.1?

Got the 10 turn trimmers today and it's so much easier to tweak the darn radar into the right place.
 
Well it is pretty good. Are there any plans to update the firmware for RZ or is the masteroids rev2 going to be something other than the teensy 4.1?

Got the 10 turn trimmers today and it's so much easier to tweak the darn radar into the right place.
There will be updates for everything. But masteroids first . And that could be a few weeks to a year depending on what other projects distract us.
 
Ah nice.

RZ question, over on arcade shop with the firmware there are music files. Do these go on the SD card or something?
 
Ah nice.

RZ question, over on arcade shop with the firmware there are music files. Do these go on the SD card or something?
They were originally planned to be part of bz2. But we decided to leave it out. It was debated to allow any music you want and we thought hey let's make the original music available. But that feature was never added. So I guess they are just there for fun.
 
Ah. Ok. I did some searches and comment find anything.
 
Back
Top Bottom