Pickup Today - Sinistar

JODY

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Omaha Craigslist find. Responded yesterday and today. No response until this afternoon and he replies back saying if I can pick it up today it is mine. Empty the truck and get there to find the machine is nicer than I expected. Seemed very clean.

It is non-working. He said it was sitting in his basement for 4 years waiting to be repaired. He had bought it non-working. Needs new locks. Power supply cable has black on a few of the pins. Few cables disconnected. Not sure if anything is actually missing. Looked like room for another board but there were 4 - 5 in place. $150...maybe I should have tried to talk him down but it was very nice and clean.

I've done pinball machine board repair and general repair but not arcade games. Anyone have links handy on checking / repairing the boards in this machine and trying to get it up and running?
 

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From what I can see, that thing looks pretty good cosmetically.

Sinistar is for the serious gamer; I'd love one. Wish they'd made a cabaret.
 
search for posts on KLOV repair forum for defender, stargate, robotron, joust & Sinistar whcih will about cover most if not all of the questions/scenarios/issues you will strike with the SInistar.

www.robotron-2084.co.uk has manuals and schematics etc and piccies of the board sets required for sinistar.

a cleanup of the pins with scotchbrite pads or similar of the pins and sockets for the harness connectors would be a good start before anything, and, reflow the header pins on the power supply and cpu boards.

start by checking out/testing/repairing the PSU, and replace/fix the "burnt" connectors if it is the original style.

if you need some help repairing psu, bob roberts has the rebuild kits for original psus, and, dockert/yellowdog do repairs for good prices too!

then work your way around all harness and ribbin cable connections make sure they are clean/tight. and check your ground connections are clean all the way around.

unplug the cpu power harness from the power supply before you power it up again, make sure you have good power supply voltages, and if the 5, 0-5 and 12v rails are within spec, then reconnect and see what u get.

using the guides in the manuals/schematics pages, check psu voltages at the corners of the ram ics making sure the +5 and -5 supply rails are in spec or as close to 4.9 to 5.2 v as possible.

then report your finidings here!
 
Anyone have links handy on checking / repairing the boards in this machine and trying to get it up and running?

First thing to check is the voltages on that power supply. If you are good there, next common failure is bank of 4116 RAM. There are 24 of them. If any one of them is bad it will not boot up, boot up to a rug screen and freeze, or boot up and notify you of bad RAM.

I picked one of a month and a half ago. The only thing wrong with it was 3 bad 4116 RAM chips. Has been working like a charm.
 
I saw that one and thought about contacting them. Looks nice. I picked up this Sinistar on Saturday instead.
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Omaha Craigslist find. Responded yesterday and today. No response until this afternoon and he replies back saying if I can pick it up today it is mine. Empty the truck and get there to find the machine is nicer than I expected. Seemed very clean.

It is non-working. He said it was sitting in his basement for 4 years waiting to be repaired. He had bought it non-working. Needs new locks. Power supply cable has black on a few of the pins. Few cables disconnected. Not sure if anything is actually missing. Looked like room for another board but there were 4 - 5 in place. $150...maybe I should have tried to talk him down but it was very nice and clean.

I've done pinball machine board repair and general repair but not arcade games. Anyone have links handy on checking / repairing the boards in this machine and trying to get it up and running?

I posted that over in for sale a couple days ago. JoeyCuda responded after looking at the pics, "looks like it's missing the p/s board..maybe that's why it doesn't work"

Hopefully that will point you in the right direction. I was really tempted but I have a garage full of projects already. Good luck and congratulations.
 
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Have a power supply board on order. The rest of the boards are there. The joystick was sloppy and figured the rubber restrictor was broke but it looks good. One of the four legs has the screw or whatever holds it in place missing. Will know more after I get the power supply board. Thanks everyone for the helpful replies.
 
I love Sinistar! One of those really difficult games that chews you up and spits you out but yet you keep coming back for more.
 
Received the power supply board that was tested and rebuilt. Put it in and nothing except some blue bars on the monitor. The test indicator number stayed off. Tested the PS board. Seemed fine. Pulled the CPU board and solder connections seemed fine. Pulled and reset the cable connections and retried and it came up on screen with a 0 for the test indicator.

Worked the coin switches, pressed "Start" and out comes "I hunger..." and with that Sinistar proceeded to show me who is boss.

The monitor has great color but seems a little blurry. I see one cracked capacitor on the monitor board. Needs new locks to get the back on and the coin door shut. Still needs one of the rubber ends under the joystick attached. Also, the battery holder has some acid damage so I'll probably put in a remote battery holder.

As someone mentioned earlier, I should clean the pin connections. Anyone else have suggestions / things to check on or look out for? This is my first all original arcade game so want to learn to take good care of it.
 
Received the power supply board that was tested and rebuilt. Put it in and nothing except some blue bars on the monitor. The test indicator number stayed off. Tested the PS board. Seemed fine. Pulled the CPU board and solder connections seemed fine. Pulled and reset the cable connections and retried and it came up on screen with a 0 for the test indicator.

Worked the coin switches, pressed "Start" and out comes "I hunger..." and with that Sinistar proceeded to show me who is boss.

The monitor has great color but seems a little blurry. I see one cracked capacitor on the monitor board. Needs new locks to get the back on and the coin door shut. Still needs one of the rubber ends under the joystick attached. Also, the battery holder has some acid damage so I'll probably put in a remote battery holder.

As someone mentioned earlier, I should clean the pin connections. Anyone else have suggestions / things to check on or look out for? This is my first all original arcade game so want to learn to take good care of it.

You may want to, instead of cleaning the connectors, replace. Bob Roberts sells a kit for the WMS games. Also, I think the molex headers on those boards are crappy. They have round pins, instead of square. With square pins, you get more surface contact from the header pin/connector pin. On my Stargate, I had some flaky looking connectors and tarnished power/ground connectors. I replaced the header pins on the PCBs with the kind Great Plains Electronics sells - they come in a set length and you break em off for how many pins you need/how long. I ended up having to replace the 2 ribbon cables, but if you're new to soldering, you might want to have someone else replace those.

Good luck.. that's a heck of a find!
 
You may want to, instead of cleaning the connectors, replace. Bob Roberts sells a kit for the WMS games. Also, I think the molex headers on those boards are crappy. They have round pins, instead of square. With square pins, you get more surface contact from the header pin/connector pin. On my Stargate, I had some flaky looking connectors and tarnished power/ground connectors. I replaced the header pins on the PCBs with the kind Great Plains Electronics sells - they come in a set length and you break em off for how many pins you need/how long. I ended up having to replace the 2 ribbon cables, but if you're new to soldering, you might want to have someone else replace those.

Good luck.. that's a heck of a find!

OK. I'll have to pull the boards sometime and look at them closer; however, when I looked at the board I pulled earlier it appeared that the connectors may have already been replaced. At least the solder connections were different than the others.
 
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