Reproduction Atari Boards from Original Films

[Scott C]

Original films are useful for checking work if you're doing a repro board, but they're just not how stuff gets down nowadays.

Even if you could find a place that was willng to make boards for you based on the films rather then gerbers, you would need to hand-program in all the drill locations for all the pads and vias and register that data to the optical films.

The "right" way to do something like this would be to do schematic entry for the original schematics in a CAD program and digitally recreate the layout using the data from the films as a guide. With a digital recreation of the data, you can shop the board around and have a lot more flexibility finding a place to fab it, but if you're going to go to all that effort it'd be stupid not to do upgrades, like using a PLCC for the 68k, combining all the ROMs and RAMs into single chips, etc to make it cheaper to build. With the size of these boards, I can't imagine seeing much less than $100/board bare, unless you buy in ridiculous quantities, and I don't think the market's really there.

Red Baron aux boards would make sense to do... Quantum would make sense to do... Havoc might make sense to do... but there's no money in common boards like asteroids / tempest / etc...

I had no idea Red Baron aux PCBs were in such demand. I picked-up one years ago at an ops thinking it was a BZ aux PCB. Funny enough, I even tested it with a working BZ main board, saw it didn't work, then marked it as not working. It wasn't until I later compared it directly to a BZ aux that I realized what it was (I was very happy!).

Scott C.

 

[Tornadoboy]

Ok let me just kick a hornet's nest here:

Personally I've always thought the big things in preserving an arcade game were the cabinet, artwork, controls and the original feel and playability of the game, regardless what the actual electronics of the game were composed of. So just speaking for myself I wouldn't have a problem at all with replacing the PCB of a dysfunctional classic with a re-engineered board which ran the ROMs exactly (and I do mean EXACTLY) as the original, but had all the hardware design defects and unreliability worked out. That doesn't mean throwing out of even removing the original boards, but simply plugging in something more reliable in their place.

 

[dezbaz]

Ok let me just kick a hornet's nest here:

Personally I've always thought the big things in preserving an arcade game were the cabinet, artwork, controls and the original feel and playability of the game, regardless what the actual electronics of the game were composed of. So just speaking for myself I wouldn't have a problem at all with replacing the PCB of a dysfunctional classic with a re-engineered board which ran the ROMs exactly (and I do mean EXACTLY) as the original, but had all the hardware design defects and unreliability worked out. That doesn't mean throwing out of even removing the original boards, but simply plugging in something more reliable in their place.

I agree with you, if it works the same and is not mame, fine by me

Most won't agree, as you said, that's fine too

 

[YellowDog]

Ok let me just kick a hornet's nest here:

Personally I've always thought the big things in preserving an arcade game were the cabinet, artwork, controls and the original feel and playability of the game, regardless what the actual electronics of the game were composed of. So just speaking for myself I wouldn't have a problem at all with replacing the PCB of a dysfunctional classic with a re-engineered board which ran the ROMs exactly (and I do mean EXACTLY) as the original, but had all the hardware design defects and unreliability worked out. That doesn't mean throwing out of even removing the original boards, but simply plugging in something more reliable in their place.

That was the basis of the JROK card. It emulated the hardware in hardware for the logic circuits and then used a real 6809 for the CPU. You don't hear a lot of bitchin about "it's not the real thing" the way you do with the xxxn1 cards. For some of the old classics, I certainly don't see an issue updating the hardware, as long as it doesn't mess with the game play.

ken

 

[joeycuda]

That was the basis of the JROK card. It emulated the hardware in hardware for the logic circuits and then used a real 6809 for the CPU. You don't hear a lot of bitchin about "it's not the real thing" the way you do with the xxxn1 cards. For some of the old classics, I certainly don't see an issue updating the hardware, as long as it doesn't mess with the game play.

ken

Tangent - I wish someone would do this for the classic Taito games...

 

[VectorJunkie]

Tangent - I wish someone would do this for the classic Taito games...

Is the Taito Multi not game play accurate? I have not played one yet, but would like too.

 

[joeycuda]

Is the Taito Multi not game play accurate? I have not played one yet, but would like too.

I thought I read it wasn't completely accurate, but it also doesn't have the complete and partially crappy list of classic Taito stuff. I always read that Qix isn't close enough in emulation, but I haven't personally compared.

 

[Tornadoboy]

Here's another case and point for making repro Quantums:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=163474

Sold for a cool $1000 in just a few hours.

 

[Sharkey]

Well who ever is thinking of reproing some of these boards (and I hope you do!) Maybe they should contact a company named Rottendog. http://www.rottendog.us/ They make replacement circuit boards for most pins at a really good price, so I am sure they have the know how to produce and redesign just about anything in the realm of boards wether its for pinballs, or video games. Just throwing this out there I have both pins and vids but the pins seem to have a step up right now due to new replacement circuit boards, Playfields, and yes
(That website I wish we had for us video guys to learn from, www,pinrepair.com ) Any way most guys like everything arcade related, vids, pins, soda machins, etc. and if we can stick together then hopefully we can all win!

 

[HudsonArcade]

Well who ever is thinking of reproing some of these boards (and I hope you do!) Maybe they should contact a company named Rottendog. http://www.rottendog.us/

#1. They dont' make their own boards
#2. Their prices are terrible.

 

[SeanMcL]

Their prices are reflective of the pinball market in general. You always pay more for pin stuff. The market will bear it over there.

 

[Lindsey]

God forbid they make a profit on their products. Those rat bastards.

 

[mhanlen1]

Some of Rottendog's prices are a little high, but most of them are just slightly higher than the cost of board repair. I don't see the problem. Well actually I do see the problem.