Robotron on 5 days stright....

andys80s

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So I go out in the garage just now and start moving things around and notice that my Robotron is on...this means it has been on since last Wed when I brought it home!!!
Anyone else ever do this?
 
I left a space duel cocktail on a few days. It doubles as a desk in my office and it got so covered with paperwork I didn't realize. Felt dumb but happy it ran for so long with no problem.
 
Robotron was made by WILLAMS it's like an arcade god. A little 120 hour marathon isn't going to fuck it up. It was built for this. It probably feels better than it has since 1983 right about now.
 
Robotron was made by WILLAMS it's like an arcade god. A little 120 hour marathon isn't going to fuck it up. It was built for this. It probably feels better than it has since 1983 right about now.

Right! haha
 
It's probably thinking

"Man! I've still got it! I'm back in the game, man! Where's the kids at????!!!??? Wonder what happened to Joust???"
 
I left my Missile Command and Wizard of Wor on for 3 and a half days. Went down into the arcade and there they were....on and running fine. Now whenever I leave my gameroom I turn all the lights while I'm down there instead of hitting the last light at the top of the stairs.
 
I've got a Ms Pac that been turned on (on location) for the most part of a year now. Its been running with its original monitor and original power supply (both recently rebuilt at the time).
Oddly enough, the high score save kit I added has died and one of the leaf switches failed 6 months ago but thats it.

For the most part, these things were built to last. I think it would be the constant on/off cycles that would do the most damage.

Whenever I turn my home machines on, I always leave them on for the rest of the day
 
Ug. Somehow my RipOff was left on for over 2 weeks. Its back to scrambled output. I haven't had time to figure out if the monitor or the PCB is unhappy :mad:
 
It's when you turn it off and then try to turn it back on that the arcade gods shall seek revenge...
 
A tech friend of mine always used to say "It's not 'on' or 'off' but the time in between" that causes problems.

I have accidentally gone to sleep with games on but never more than overnight. No problems but these machines were built to be on 24/7.
 
For the most part, these things were built to last. I think it would be the constant on/off cycles that would do the most damage.

I also heard the same thing. I also heard the reason why the games at Disneyland arcade in the 80's hardly broke, is because they left their arcade games on 24/7.
 
Just went out and flipped it back on to get in some game time and the monitor looks dim....guess it was too much for it after all. Ill install a cap kit tomorrow and see if that takes care of it. Hope so....it needs to be in service Halloween night!
 
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Just went out and flipped it back on to get in some game time and the monitor looks dim....guess it was too much for it after all. Ill install a cap kit tomorrow and see if that takes care of it. Hope so....it needs to be in service Halloween night!

Give it 10 minutes to warm up and see if it's still dim.

To my surprise, I came out to my Star Trek cockpit ON after a couple of days once. I'm usually careful about turning THAT one off!

Sometimes I will knowingly leave Defender on for days, and my Crazy Climber is usually always on unless I'm mad at it.

I had 5 games in a gameroom at work and after the first few days, I quit shutting them off at night. They were up for months.

Every now and then, somebody would come get me and say that Galaga went wacky or something reset itself.
The G07 in the Centipede there died twice during about a 6 month period.

Kerry
 
It happens and i think its a good way to find problems by putting em through the duty cycle they were built for

The trick is being happy when a problem arises, because then you can repair and hopefully bulletproof the problem area, and wait for the next problem to break through :)
 
I HAVE to turn off all of my games once I'm done because it "costs too much." Keep in note my games get minimum 5 plays a day all spread out.
 
I HAVE to turn off all of my games once I'm done because it "costs too much." Keep in note my games get minimum 5 plays a day all spread out.

Even if your three games were on for 24 hours a day, they still would only cost you about 2 bucks a day to run them.

As to leaving games on for extended periods of time, consider this:

I repaired 8 games for the local pizzeria in town in September of 2010. They have been on 24/7 since.

Donkey Kong: rebuilt monitor, no issues since
Mario Bros: working 'as is' since - no maint performed
Tetris: PCB crapped out this spring, replaced it.
Mortal Kombat: 'as is' - still runinng. Though the 4900 needs a cap kit, bad.
Neo Geo (League Bowling): no issues
Ms Pac: Flyback crapped out a few weeks back. No issues otherwise.
Centipede: Optos on the trackball needed to re re-soldered last spring. No issues otherwise.

Not bad for nearly 20,000 hours of run time.
 
Even if your three games were on for 24 hours a day, they still would only cost you about 2 bucks a day to run them.

As to leaving games on for extended periods of time, consider this:

I repaired 8 games for the local pizzeria in town in September of 2010. They have been on 24/7 since.

Donkey Kong: rebuilt monitor, no issues since
Mario Bros: working 'as is' since - no maint performed
Tetris: PCB crapped out this spring, replaced it.
Mortal Kombat: 'as is' - still runinng. Though the 4900 needs a cap kit, bad.
Neo Geo (League Bowling): no issues
Ms Pac: Flyback crapped out a few weeks back. No issues otherwise.
Centipede: Optos on the trackball needed to re re-soldered last spring. No issues otherwise.

Not bad for nearly 20,000 hours of run time.
Exactly. My dad thinks it'll raise the bill by 100s. Ever since I started following his advice my Ms. Pac and Jr. kept crapping... Blown fuses, monitor adjustment issues, etc. etc.
 
Exactly. My dad thinks it'll raise the bill by 100s. Ever since I started following his advice my Ms. Pac and Jr. kept crapping... Blown fuses, monitor adjustment issues, etc. etc.

Go to the local public library and ask them for a Kil-O-Watt meter. You can usually check one out on loan from another library for free.

Plug in your games on it, and measure how much they use. Show the numbers to your Dad, and offer to pay for the cost of electrical usage.

I figured out how much it would cost me to run my entire arcade for 8 hours during a party night. It was like 3 or 4 bucks. That's a dozen games. That's an average of 3.6 cents per hour per game. Run 3 games for 24 hours = 2.63 per day. Assuming all your games draw on the high side, since my game lineup includes some pins, which draw higher amps.
 
Exactly. My dad thinks it'll raise the bill by 100s.

Well, to be fair to your dad, at smalltownguy's rates running my 7 working games all day would cost $184.10 for 30 days.

[edit] And at Chicagoland's ComEd rates, that would probably work out to around a jillion dollars.
 
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