Star Wars Upright - Trying to repair to sell

ohiosierra

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Hi,

I have a nice looking 83 upright that has been in my closet for 10 years since the day it stopped working. I pulled it out last month to try to get it working again so that I can sell it and let someone who will actually enjoy it have it.

I don't have a lot of repair or electronics experience but I'm reading a lot and learning.

At first the monitor was out with the spot killer on constant, no picture at all. (WG6100) I replaced the 6 chassis transistors and had some improvement - the picture "flashes" on and off with the spot killer blinking about once a second. The game can start and play, with sounds and flashes of the picture, but it seems to run in slow motion.

Interestingly, the self-test mode displays perfectly fine. No flashing, no spot killer. The self-test runs from the game PCB's so that's a bit confusing to me. No self-test errors reported either.

There's one LED on the main game board that's lit, but I can't find anything about that in any of the manuals. Still, it sounds like the game PCB's thats the problem, if the self-test works fine, right?

Really I just want this fixed. I can't find anyone local that repairs these things, and was wondering if anyone had any advice.

Thanks!
 
Check the molex connector to the monitor. Those pins have a tendency to move down into the connetor.

Clean the edge connectors
Check your +5 voltage to the boardset (red wires on harness). If the voltage is too low or high use the blue pot on the ARII board (board mounted to side of cage) and adjust your voltage. till it hits +5VDC
If you are unable to get +5 then either the big blue capacitor in the bottom of the cab needs replacing and/or the ARII board needs rebuilt.

AVG chips are notorious for going bad on these - but typically the graphics are screwed up even in test mode - slowing down .... not sure what the deal is.
 
Wow, thanks for the quick reply.

The +5 looks fine right at 5 to me (I had to search the forum for how to do this, but I figured it out :)

Interestingly I noticed some of the self-test 'pages' were missing. When going into selftest mode sometimes it starts on the hardware test, and sometimes on the game stats. When it started on hardware I could page through about 6 of the 12 pages with no slowdown, no blinking, no problem. But I reset it until it started on the stats page (which also worked perfectly), and when I hit the coin aux button to go to the next page (settings) it started misbehaving and flashing and slowing down.

Not sure if that helps or not. I don't know what the steps are to determine where on the game board (or which board) the problem might be.
 
I would reseat every chip on the motherboard that is socketed. Gently pry them out and put them back in. Gently pull off the edge connector that holds the 3 boards together and put it back on too. Then start troubleshooting.
 
Thanks for the suggestions.

I pulled out the game PCB's and carefully reseated every socketed chip on them. I also did this to the connector boards. I also looked carefully for any scratches on the boards themselves, and any area which had even the slightest bit of scratch I tested for continuity.

Same problem :(

The light on the gameboard that stays on is labeled CR2. I dont know if this is an error or just a running light.
 
Also, I have run as much of the diagnostic tests as I am able.

The 16 beep test, which checks RAM and ROM, reveals no errors.
The on-screen hardware diagnostic, novram, and mathbox tests were all good.

From the troubleshooting guide, using the switches on the PCB,
The "Main PCB Microprocessor and Memory Test" was good.
The "Analog Vector Generator Memory Test" was good.
The "Sound PCB Communications Test" was also good.

I don't know how to do the other tests in the troubleshooting guide, most of which test the vector generator (I think I need an oscilloscope for that) and the math processing (The screen shows the test number but I dont know how to read the "result").
 
The fact that it repeated "red five standing by" while the screen blinked on and off and shows a crisp screen seemingly resetting makes me think it is something with the cpu board. The analog vector generator on mine slowly failed. The symptom was tie fighters that would be stretched way out of proportion, but the game sounds were normal and did not repeat. When my spot killer went on it was because of loss of vertical deflection due to bad deflection transistors and it stayed on. Yours blinking on and off in synch with the other symptoms seems like a cpu board problem that is shutting off the video and possibly sound signals. Unfortunatley I haven't had to deal with cpu board problems and other than replacing the vector generator chip with an aftermarket kit from arcadeshop.com and adding the multi kit I have not had to troubleshoot the 3 board set.
 
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Thanks for your input. The sound actually doesnt repeat, your video player must have done that.

But, I agree with your point. It does sound like the gameboard is cutting the video on and off. I just wish I knew how to isolate the problem on the board and replace the part. Otherwise I'm sending it off, I suppose.
 
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