Rip Off - two problems - advice wanted....

jehuie

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I'm just starting to pour over the manuals and have a couple things I can check. But while I'm doing that I thought I'd ask the seasoned experts on where you would start. Two issues:

1) There is absolutely no sound during game play.

2) When I play a game, sometimes it will reset and instantly take me back to the attract screen right in the middle of the game. There's also often a graphics glitch about that time where one of the bad-guy ships doesn't look right...it's way to big.

Thoughts?

And thanks for helping be get the monitor working guys!
 
I'm just starting to pour over the manuals and have a couple things I can check. But while I'm doing that I thought I'd ask the seasoned experts on where you would start. Two issues:

1) There is absolutely no sound during game play.
.....

I've read that those games (RO,AA,SC) were notorious for blowing the speaker. I think there was a note about how to test the output before blowing another speaker.....I'll see if I can find it.

You did try the volume knob, right?
 
I've read that those games (RO,AA,SC) were notorious for blowing the speaker. I think there was a note about how to test the output before blowing another speaker.....I'll see if I can find it.

You did try the volume knob, right?

I was planning to ohm out the speaker coil today so that could be it. And yes, I twisted the knob like there was no tomorrow.
 
You should be able to read an ohm meter off that speaker and see if it's the problem. It should read 7-8 ohms, and if it's bad it will read open between the inputs.

The manual says to first check Q6 & Q7 on the audio board, but if you are getting nothing, not even static, I'd see if that board is getting power first. Those old things have a way of just failing.

Look on page 8-18 of the manual to see the input (at print grid a/b 1 above the title block). I can't tell for sure, but I think it's +/- 15VDC on those two inputs. If you aren't getting power, that's the first place to start.

Bad or intermittent power would also explain the resetting problem.
 
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I've read that those games (RO,AA,SC) were notorious for blowing the speaker. I think there was a note about how to test the output before blowing another speaker.....I'll see if I can find it.

You did try the volume knob, right?

Yep, the speaker is blown. I hooked up an old stereo speaker just for fun and didn't get any sound either but the speaker started to smell hot so I pulled it. So I guess something is fried on the sound board. If you find that note let me know. Thanks for the tip.

As for the resetting....it works just fine after it's warmed up for 15 minutes. No more resetting. Is that likely a cold-solder joint somewhere?
 
My asteroids (different I know) did the same thing until I changed out the processor.

It would work better for a while if I jimmied the processor around a little. It could be a could solder joint, for sure.

Did you check the power supply?
 
My asteroids (different I know) did the same thing until I changed out the processor.

Cinematronics vector games don't use a microprocessor.

His resetting issue is(was) likely power supply-related. The machine is 30 years old and the supply will need to be capped. The 2 large caps are for the +/-25, and +5 cap is on the PS's PCB, which is a pain to work on.
 

Thank you for the link. That's great info. Cinematronics documentation seems to be much more difficult to find than a lot of games.

Cinematronics vector games don't use a microprocessor.

His resetting issue is(was) likely power supply-related. The machine is 30 years old and the supply will need to be capped. The 2 large caps are for the +/-25, and +5 cap is on the PS's PCB, which is a pain to work on.

I noticed there is no microprocessor on the PCB. That's interesting to me. What do they use instead? I may tackle the power supply as well. I read that taking it apart is quite challenging. Any tips?
 
Bleah, the sound board in Rip Off isn't the same as the one in Star Castle in the link above. They are similar and a lot of the stuff will be the same but it's different enough that I can't just use the info without double checking everything. Drat. Schematics time.
 
Ok making some progress. I think I understand what to check on the sound board now so I'll get on that. In the meantime, I measured all the voltages at the power supply and they all look good except +5 which is measuring exactly at +5. So I measured at a chip on the pcb and it's 4.83....which could definitely account for the resetting.

There's not an adjustment in this game to crank up the +5 is there? I've got to rebuild the pain-in-the-neck power supply? Or I suppose I could throw a switcher in there for the +5 to simplify things huh?
 
It's working 100% now. Not sure why it stopped resetting but it could be just resetting the various connectors. We'll see if it lasts.

Got the sound working. I had to replace the speaker since the coil was blown as this game apparently tends to do. Two transistors on the sound board were bad. One was 2N6292 which is the same as NTE196 and the other was 2N6107 which is NTE197. The resistors between them also looked like they had gotten hot although they tested fine but I went ahead and replaced them as well. They are R53 which is a 22k ohm resistor and R54 which is 150 ohm.

Thanks guys for pointing me in the right direction. Me and my kids have played this a lot tonight and laughed the whole time. Fun game that I don't remember from back in the day.
 
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