pole position power

arcade5jim

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I wanted to replace the original power supply for my game but not sure what I am looking for and how hard it is to do myself. Any help would be great.
 
Pole Position's original power setup sucks. Installing a better power supply is key to making this game reliable.

I used a 200 watt PC power supply scavenged from an old 486, but any modern PC power supply would work.

I kept the ARII boards and simply disabled the 5v regulation section. They're needed to serve as the audio amplifiers.

Another important thing to do is to build a better power harness. A big weak point on Pole Position is the edge connector - it's really not up to the task of carrying the current that the game board draws. I made a small harness with spade connectors on it to plug onto the 5v and ground test point lugs on the game boards.

Doing all this modification is a fair amount of work - but it's not terribly complicated either. It was a lot more tedious in my case, since I also had to completely replace both PCB edge connectors, as the old ones were severely damaged. If you have a good working knowledge of electronics, you shouldn't have any real difficulty. It's just a bit tedious.

-Ian
 
I don't know if this is still available but you could ask. What I am talking about is listed in this link under parts and is the last item listed. I don't know if this is what you are talking about but it is a direction to look in.

That's just a power block and wiring harness. Not what he's talking about.

The "power block" in an Atari game refers to the metal transformer assembly with the fuse holders on it, that goes at the bottom of the game. These almost never fail. The "power supply" in an Atari game is made up of a combination of the transformer on the power block, and the regulator board, the ARII. This is usually a very robust, reliable setup, that should just be repaired, not replaced.

Pole Position is different. Because the boardset draws so much current, Atari opted to simply use two ARII boards. Needless to say, this arrangement really doesn't work very well, and still isn't quite enough current to reliably power the Pole Position boardset, especially after the edge connectors start to fail. Replacing the DC regulation section with a switching power supply is really the best option here. You would retain the power block (since it still has the monitor isolation transformer in it) and pull the fuses for the LV windings. Pole Position only needs 5v, so you use the switcher to supply that, and power the ARII boards (after disabling the 5v section) from the switcher to use them as audio amplifiers.

-Ian
 
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