_sentient_
Active member
that statement makes me feel really old!
so I've brought home a COMPLETE Tempest (finally)
- Thread starter vintagegamer
- Start date
_sentient_
Active member
Yeah...Im talking about the new arcade project...ADDITION...Be kinda hard to get into that room if the door is blocked, no?
Talon2000
Well-known member
Man and all I have is the DIY kits.
Sorry No delivery either.
Sorry No delivery either.
OP
OP
Man and all I have is the DIY kits.
Sorry No delivery either.
you're all a bunch of hoardin' bitches LOL
xxstatic
Well-known member
When I got mine finally pieced together (got a complete cab minus the game boards) and fired it up I got pretty much the same as you did, I took out the power brick and proceeded to check each fuse and clean the ever living crap out of the fuse holders as they were pretty dirty, after that it fired right up ymmv
OP
OP
Be kinda hard to get into that room if the door is blocked, no?
Oh come on, there's still a window in that room to climb thru!
OP
OP
Sent, i feel compelled to tell you that the previous owner of my tempest was a former employee of... Sportland of O.C.
OP
OP
Holee shit.. I removed and reseated the chips and.. She came on! the text is all displaying correctly, and i see the green shape for your player, but the level shapes aren't forming right. If i turn the screen knob up, i can see random vector lines but they don't form the actual level shapes. I also don't know how long it's been since this game was last turned on so, would letting it run maybe help? WOOT!
Talon2000
Well-known member
Letting it run won't help most likely.
Sounds like those crappy solder joints on the interconnect need to be re-flowed. Put it in Test mode and see what you get. Take a pic and post if you can.
Text forming correctly, and Tubes not is a sure sign that the Aux board isn't working right, anything from bad header solder joints to cable, or bad Bit Slicer.
Sounds like those crappy solder joints on the interconnect need to be re-flowed. Put it in Test mode and see what you get. Take a pic and post if you can.
Text forming correctly, and Tubes not is a sure sign that the Aux board isn't working right, anything from bad header solder joints to cable, or bad Bit Slicer.
Mike Doyle
Well-known member
One important difference with vectors is that you don't want to operate the monitors with anything less than an ideal signal because stray inputs can actually cause physical damage.
Rasters are different and will usually shut down with a bad signal, but vectors will drive the hardware as hard as directed, sometimes with disastrous results.
One example- Tempest originally drew the attract mode differently and it was thought by the engineers at Atari that it may be partially responsible for the failures they were seeing. The code was then revised to remove the wider sweeps and it's easy enough to tell what you've got by going into test mode. The early code displays the wheel rotation in HEX and the revised code displays it in degrees of rotation.
Of course you could look at the stickers on the chips, but that's not as much fun and also won't work at an auction
Rasters are different and will usually shut down with a bad signal, but vectors will drive the hardware as hard as directed, sometimes with disastrous results.
One example- Tempest originally drew the attract mode differently and it was thought by the engineers at Atari that it may be partially responsible for the failures they were seeing. The code was then revised to remove the wider sweeps and it's easy enough to tell what you've got by going into test mode. The early code displays the wheel rotation in HEX and the revised code displays it in degrees of rotation.
Of course you could look at the stickers on the chips, but that's not as much fun and also won't work at an auction
OP
OP
i only had enough time to remove and reseat the ic's on the main board so tnt i will look more at the aux board etc. And yep txt was fine, could see high scores, player info, and most imp, 'tempest'! Sounds also work fine.
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OP
OP
Attached are 3 pics I took last night of the game with my cell phone, mainly so that this morning when I woke up I would know that I hadn't been dreaming!
I have since dialed down the "screen" knob so on the "Tempest" screeen that white diagonal line is gone.
Also, check out the Willis CP overlay (ID'd for me by Bungy- I'd never seen one of those before this)
I have since dialed down the "screen" knob so on the "Tempest" screeen that white diagonal line is gone.
Also, check out the Willis CP overlay (ID'd for me by Bungy- I'd never seen one of those before this)
Attachments
JamBurglar
Well-known member
that statement makes me feel really old!
I'm 34 mang. I just never happened to play it back in the day.
OP
OP
I was trying to explain to my daughter how the screen was 'supposed' to look, and after 3 or 4 tries, she simply didn't get it. I told her "come here" and I took her into the living room, where I popped in my VHS copy of "Night of the Comet". After watching about 10 secs of "Reg" playing the cabaret version of the game, my daughter got it. And I could watch Reg all day.
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OP
OP
Some other things that were weird last night that I noticed about the game were:
1. it showed that it had 40 1/2 credits in it (that was right after resetting the PCB- is that this game's equivalent of "free play"?)
2. it was hard to tell because of the garbled screen during gameplay, but I think it's giving me 5-6 lives per credit
3. both of the 8 pin dip switches on the main board have all of the switches set to "on", with the exception of one on one of the switches being set to "off" on switch #5. I didn't want to mess with them just yet, as I was practically unconscious from shock when seeing the game come back to life
4. you can see that some type of shape is being drafted by the game, but the shape (if that's what it really is) is appearing as some type of smashed circle at either the top or bottom portion of the screen.
Again, I will check out the math/aux board tonight and see if this helps with the visuals I'm seeing.
I'm also terrified about the monitor, since they are ticking time bombs on this game. I want to do the low-voltage conversion soon, but is it safe to run the game for an hour or so while I'm trying to troubleshoot this graphics issue? I simply don't know when the last time was that this game was powered up, and I'd hate to lose the monitor now while troubleshooting graphics issues!
1. it showed that it had 40 1/2 credits in it (that was right after resetting the PCB- is that this game's equivalent of "free play"?)
2. it was hard to tell because of the garbled screen during gameplay, but I think it's giving me 5-6 lives per credit
3. both of the 8 pin dip switches on the main board have all of the switches set to "on", with the exception of one on one of the switches being set to "off" on switch #5. I didn't want to mess with them just yet, as I was practically unconscious from shock when seeing the game come back to life
4. you can see that some type of shape is being drafted by the game, but the shape (if that's what it really is) is appearing as some type of smashed circle at either the top or bottom portion of the screen.
Again, I will check out the math/aux board tonight and see if this helps with the visuals I'm seeing.
I'm also terrified about the monitor, since they are ticking time bombs on this game. I want to do the low-voltage conversion soon, but is it safe to run the game for an hour or so while I'm trying to troubleshoot this graphics issue? I simply don't know when the last time was that this game was powered up, and I'd hate to lose the monitor now while troubleshooting graphics issues!
pringlez
New member
After I reseated my chips to get it to power on, my lines were garbled. I had to tweak the x/y pots on the board to properly align the lines...
Mike Doyle
Well-known member
Sounds like classic cold solder- reflow those header pins and save yourself all the troubleshooting headaches possible.
OP
OP
i did that today and am now having what looks like vertical collapse issues. The screen appears to be folding over.
