Star Rider #1004 - Will it Ride Again?

Hopefully you are willing to share intimate pictures of that pcb in the hopes of getting it reproduced?
Naturally. Just had to pull it out of the Player to get good photos. PCB No. 5775-10575-00 Rev.-
I was not able to find any information on this board whatsoever online. It is not mentioned in any of the Star Rider manuals.
I strongly suspect, it may be plug and play with a standard PR8210R.

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My plan is to see if I can get the player working, and then reproduce this and make it available once I verify it actually does what it's supposed to do.

It does screw into the player's existing mount points, so when I get around to reproing it, I'll have to take some detailed measurements.
 
This is an incredible find!

Is it just me or does the copyright on the board say 1985? Could that "0134" be a serial number?

I also noticed there's an "84??" printed underneath the black connector. The first two numbers should be the year and the two hard to read numbers should be the week it was manufactured.
 
This is an incredible find!

Is it just me or does the copyright on the board say 1985? Could that "0134" be a serial number?
Its actually 1983. It looks an awful lot like 1985 though.

The player itself is a factory player, so I guess the serial is 3016U-I01514

The "U" is for uprigjt. I have no idea what the "I" designator is. I haven't seen that before.

I also noticed there's an "84??" printed underneath the black connector. The first two numbers should be the year and the two hard to read numbers should be the week it was manufactured.
This number is 8417.

My hypothesis is that WMS may have ran out of 8210A players at the end of the production run, and come up with this as a means of converting much more easily available 8210R players. The model number for the PCB is much higher than any of the other PCBs in the star rider board stack, so this supports that theory I think.
 
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Its actually 1983. It looks an awful lot like 1985 though.
Thanks for the confirmation, 1983 makes a lot more sense.

The player itself is a factory player, so I guess the serial is 3016U-I01514

The "U" is for uprigjt. I have no idea what the "I" designator is. I haven't seen that before.
Since this unit was from outside the US, could "I" be international?

This number is 8417.

My hypothesis is that WMS may have ran out of 8210A players at the end of the production run, and come up with this as a means of converting much more easily available 8210R players. The model number for the PCB is much higher than any of the other PCBs in the star rider board stack, so this supports that theory I think.
So this means that board was built between April 22 to April 28, 1984, which does line up with it being a late production board. I would've imagine they had production up and running by November 1983 since there were early machines at AMOA '83 New Orleans.
 
Naturally. Just had to pull it out of the Player to get good photos. PCB No. 5775-10575-00 Rev.-
I was not able to find any information on this board whatsoever online. It is not mentioned in any of the Star Rider manuals.
I strongly suspect, it may be plug and play with a standard PR8210R.

View attachment 826382

View attachment 826378

My plan is to see if I can get the player working, and then reproduce this and make it available once I verify it actually does what it's supposed to do.

It does screw into the player's existing mount points, so when I get around to reproing it, I'll have to take some detailed measurements.
Before I begin, all glory to @dutchman on this one, for helping me out with a donor player for this experiment.

As it turns out, the hypothesis was correct. With *one* solder connection, that little Williams PCB will drop-in convert a regular PR8210 to a Star Rider player. And it works. How do I know? Well... The boards are mostly working now too :)

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So as it turns out, opening up both players, they're pretty much the same, as expected, except for the small williams pcb, and a bundle of wires. I don't have a PR8210-A for comparison.

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That bundle of wires actually was plugged in to the underside of the main green PCB at various points. With adapters and matching cable colors. So glorious. So easy.

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There was only ONE point where a cable was soldered, and that was here, to a jumper just under Q427.

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Other than soldering that wire, the only thing necessary to convert the player was to glue in a standoff to support the interface PCB. That's it.

I will be trying to reproduce this PCB if there's interest. Perhaps it can be used to help out others who want real players for their Star Riders.
 
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Amazing that it worked. Looks like @DLP Kinder needs to update his LD page. Hopefully this adapter board would help with more than Star Rider?
 
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Amazing that it worked. Looks like @DLP Kinder needs to update his LD page. Hopefully this helps restore more games. Hopefully this adapter board would help with more than Star Rider?
Unfortunately I think this is only pertinent to Star Rider.

Freedom Fighter also used Star Rider/Discan hardware for the prototype version, but they heavily modified the PIF PCB and instead used a VP931 player - Same as Firefox. So I don't think this would help with that game either.

Still, with how famously difficult the PR-8210A is, hopefully this will help someone.
 
I made some serious progress today.
First, I put the game on casters, because it's enormous and would be difficult to pull out of the lineup when it inevitably needs service.

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Used a floor jack to lift it up hah. I ended up with two fixed casters in the rear, two free casters in the middle, and two lockable free casters at the front. That enabled me to bring it into the arcade.

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Its spot isn't ready yet, but I wanted it up the step into the arcade before I filled it full of heavy parts.

Which I did. And the big news...

The game is now 100% playable, on all original hardware!

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For my first time ever playing this game, I gotta say it's actually wicked fun.

Still lots of cleaning up to do. Would love a back door....
 
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Spent some time today and polished up some remaining issues. I noticed that one of the optos on the brake was out. That was a devilishly annoying little PCB to remove.

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But remove I did, and replaced the OPTO, realigning the tabs to make the two stage brake work properly. I then applied some lubricant to the turbo switch, which is moving nice and smoothly.

Turning my attention to the throttle control, I think I've realized why the spring in my unit has been preserved all these years.
That handle is ALSO bent. Just like the left side. But not as badly.

When it rotates, it got caught against the side, requiring the user to push it back anyway.

Learning my lesson from the first time, I opted not to try to unbend it, but instead slightly sanded down the collar, which resulted in a very smooth feeling force curve with a nice snap back from the spring.

Also went ahead and cleaned up the monitor glass, replaced the coin door bulbs, and generally tried to clean up the machine a bit.
 
Do you remember playing this as a kid?
The first time I have ever played this game or seen a working one was yesterday.

I wasn't even a thought when this thing was in Arcades haha.

Or just scored this on a deal?
Somewhat. I did get a very good deal on the cabinet given the amount of work it needed, but I was on the hunt for one. I love the weird and technologically complicated games, and I have been on a crazy Williams kick recently. I had been trying to find one for a while, and when this one cropped up, I couldn't say no. The manipulation on the video on Star Rider is just so cool. It does not feel like a laserdisc game, like Firefox doesn't. It has a huge degree of variance in replays, and feels ahead of its time.

Now if I could find a Cube Quest (lol), it'd have the holy trinity of ridiculously overcomplicated laserdisc games, next to Firefox and Star Rider.
 
I made some serious progress today.
First, I put the game on casters, because it's enormous and would be difficult to pull out of the lineup when it inevitably needs service.

View attachment 839712
Used a floor jack to lift it up hah. I ended up with two fixed casters in the rear, two free casters in the middle, and two lockable free casters at the front. That enabled me to bring it into the arcade.

View attachment 839713
Its spot isn't ready yet, but I wanted it up the step into the arcade before I filled it full of heavy parts.

Which I did. And the big news...

The game is now 100% playable, on all original hardware!

View attachment 839710View attachment 839711


For my first time ever playing this game, I gotta say it's actually wicked fun.

Still lots of cleaning up to do. Would love a back door....
It is really cool to see, what appears to be a perfectly crisp Star Rider display .
 
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