Picked up classic, grail if you will. However there is bad news.....

Cliff Clavin

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Picked up classic, grail if you will. However there is bad news.....

After finding a childhood favorite about 200 miles away, I had to find an excuse to do the trip. Keep in mind after driving 6 hours to buy a smash tv that turned out to be broken, making out of town trips have not been high on my priority list

Several weeks go by and an excuse is found (snowmobile show in the same city). Make the arrangements with the seller and today go pick up the game. SCRAMBLE in a stern cab. Seller said the game was working great but lo and behold......no sound when he turned it on today. Grrrrrr. So he offered to sell it at half price and i now have an upright scramble with no sound.

I am still on the road and I realize this may not be the optimum place to ask but any guesses on the issue? Will reseat the connectors and chips and check voltages and that will pretty much tax my skills. Here's hoping it's something simple because I love the game. Nice to save a few bucks on the purchase but if it's not an easy fix, i will curse the gods!
 
Not the end of the world. It is fairly cheap as far a classic boards go.
 
Reminds me of my Challenger pickup. 3 hours away, seller assures me it's fully working. It too had no sound, and he knew I had made a journey to claim it so I only got $25 off our original agreement. Luckily a fellow forum member had the part I needed to fix it and graciously donated it, so in the end I acually came out ahead a few bucks.
 
Bad news? Curse the gods? You got it for 1/2 price and it will probably be an easy fix. Did you try adjusting the volume at all? It could be as easy as a dirty potentiometer.
 
Dude. Half off for non-working sound is a great deal!

Same thing happened to me with the Pepper II that I just picked up but I didn't get ANY discount. I brought it home, asked for advice on here and then decided to get in there and re-seat the chips on the audio board. 2 hours later, perfectly working sound.

Glass half full, dude.

Scramble is a great game. Congrats.
 
I'm pretty sure that those Stern boards are known for having the sound amp die. So I'd check that out. Also they have a weird volume pot, I think you access it through a hole in the top board or something, can't remember. Shouldn't be too hard of a fix though.
 
Also they have a weird volume pot, I think you access it through a hole in the top board or something
Correct. Through the hole lower right on the board set, under that heat sink plate whatchamacallit...

Scramble.pcb.jpg
 
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don't get me wrong fellas, it could be much worse. If its an easy fix, I come out smelling roses....I of course, am hoping for an easy fix....

If I need to buy a working board, then I will probably be basically the same place as I would have been had the game been working...

I was trying to highlight that it seems like its always working to the seller and then its a huge surprise to them when it doesn't.....I specifically asked the seller whether everything works, monitor ect....I was assured it all worked great....The seller knew I was driving in primarily for the game so it wouldn't have killed him to turn it on before I left the city....

As another poster mentioned, the beauty of scramble is the availability of working boards.....

Thanks for the pointers fellas, I will check it out and hopefully report back good news!

Oh funny side note....the seller gives me an old key, he says this was for the game.....Which is great, saves me from having to drill out the locks....I look at the coin door and then at the back and notice only air, no locks....:) .
 
Could it be this easy???

After unloading from the truck, I do a few minor checks....unplug the pcb harness, push on a few chips, swipe the volume pot and nothing helps. There is a bit of sound which increases in volume when the volume pot is louder but apart from that, nada....The garbled sound occurs when the laser or bomb button is pressed. I do not have any real tools here so I can't check the voltages coming from the switcher.....

However, after poking around a bit, I notice this.....a loose wire, (see the pic..)...is that possible, could it be??? While tempted to touch this wire to all the various spots on the switcher, I held back for fear of trashing something. And for subjecting myself to the ridicule of the forum members.....

So, the big question......where does this wire go to?? While there is no empty slot which assist in solving this puzzle, I am hoping you fellas know where it goes or at least where to try.....

Thanks for all the help......
 

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Cliff, I think the Konami Classic pinout stuff needs the -5 to have audio. I'd compare where that line hits to the spot on the edge connector it originates before hooking it up, though.

If the board is bad, they are cheap. I have a Scramble project in the works and I was able to get a 100% working boardset for under 50 bucks shipped.
 
Trace it back to the edge connector, that is the only way to know for sure.
 
this is only an educated guess since I'm not too familiar with the particular game but it looks like there are other yellow wires with a red stripe that attach to the 5v on the switcher. The vast majority of the time wires that are marked the same are that way for a reason and I'd bet that wire connects to the same place that the other similarly marked wires do.

As for the sound issue my first guess was gonna be the amp chip dying but if you get more hum when you turn up the pot then the amp chip should be fine and the pot should also be ok enough to get some sound. It's possible that disconnected line will bring back the sound when connected but maybe not. Honestly I can't recall if the +5v or -5v drives the sound on stern boards. Pretty sure it's not the 12v like on other games I've encountered. Look at the schematics or even the pin out on crazy kong.com.

If hooking that line up does nothing and there don't look to be any burned up components I would look into the possibility that the eporms that have the sounds have died.
 
I checked the crazy kong pinout here....(thanks p1899m)

http://www.crazykong.com/pins/Scramble.pin.txt

and if I am understanding the pinout correctly there should be a total of 8 wires coming from the switcher...Checking my scramble switcher, there are 8 wires hooked up to it....

The switcher has 4 to the ground, 1 to the -5 +12 and 2 wires to the +5 for a total of 8...

I will trace out where the yellow wire with red hits the connector and report back....it could be a bit as the game is not with me.....That wire though has to go somewhere otherwise why would it be stripped the way it is?

Supposedly awhile back (can't remember exactly when the seller said), the game was taken in and serviced by a tech (of some sort)... the skill of the tech is questionable given the presence of the unknown and unconnected bare wire....The seller is not experienced and I don't believe he would have opened up the back and poked around...

Thanks for all the advice....
 
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Is that the dedicated cabinet with the Spaceman guy on the sides, or is it just the "STERN" letters on the sides?
 
Just to give a quick update: Voltages check out all ok at the switcher.....I followed the path of the unconnected wire and it does not connect at the harness....it runs back and connects to the game counter.....didn't check the number of games on the counter but I now know that the counter is low and the wire will not solve my sound issue.....crap......
 
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