Starhawk - cine and vectorbeam issues

tester007

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I picked up that oddball Japanese Starhawk. Its a Vectorbeam version, 1978. Well as luck would have it, found another this week that the guy was giving away for free.. my first free game. This is an original one, and is a Cinematronics 1977 version.

So having 2, I now see a definite issue in the Vectorbeam one. Everything works fine in it, except for the bright vectors in the monitor. Now that I have the other one I can definietely see a difference. What would be the cause of that?


In the new Cinematronics one I had no life at all. Game was very dirty. I powered it up an imediately a tant cap on the sound board popped, and one on the monitor popped. So I replaced a bunch of caps, finding a couple on the monitor open. Now it would power on, and breakers would not pop. But nothing. So I swapped in the working Vectorbeam board and the game works fine. Monitor looks very nice. Sad thing is is the speaker is dead.. really sucks because it looks like a vintage item the way it is made, the basket.... Anyways, so the Cine pcb is dead.

I compared it to the Vectorbeam one and although most things are similar, there are quite a few 74's that are different. So I couldn't really compare to find out what some of the chips are on the Cine pcb as some of the marking are very faint. One chip though that caught my eye is at row 14, 5th chip from the end (its different on both boards). It has on it MI-7603-5 (if anything else its faded off), and 7834 below that. Anyone know what this chip is? It gets 'extremely' hot when board is on. Is this normal? Its hot enough to make the chips on either side very hot as well..
 
The chips should be warm but if it is hot enough that it burns your finger, its most likely bad.

What is wrong with the bright vectors on your monitor? Are they missing?
 
Encom,
The Japanese one (vectorbeam) does have lower intensity vectors, and what 'should' be the higher intensity ones like the ships, are drawn, but they seem the same intensity. I need to take the plexi off that one to see for sure, but I seem to recall (its in my storage garage) that they were slightly brighter. I know I emailed a couple times with Bill Boucher on it and checked the voltages, and the one for the high intensity may have been off I seem to recall but I didn't get around to fixing it completely.
Ahh.. found my email to him.. so this is pretty well what transpired:

- Got game, seemed to work ok although I didn't pay much attention to vector intensity levels as I didn't know there were 2 types.
- Re-capped monitor, rejuv tube. It seemd to me that the vectors of all were now dimmer than before.
- Bill said to check Q1,Q3 and they metered ok.
- Not sure if I swapped out the 7406 or if I have one to do so.. cannot recall..
- I believe the 90v is at 92v, but the 400v was measured at 170v. But, focus was still good on it..


Alpha, I don't recall seeing Sega on it but I will check. The cabs are slightly different as well in the kick area.. higher on the Japanese one. Sucks because I really wanted this original cab as I like it more than the Jap one, even though Jap one is in very good shape. I saw the ad on the weekend, and was busy so put it off until Monday with the guy. Well on Monday it 'poured' rain so I called him and told him I would come on Tuesday because of the rain and there was a bit of a pause on the phone.. and he said something about 'ya I didn't think its raingin outside right now'.. and I didn't think much about it.. But when I did get out to the town to meet him he drew me a map to his place and said it was sitting outside his garage.. I had a bad feeleing.. Of course when I got there it was, and had obviously been sitting in the same spot since the pics taken the week before. The bottom had taken in some water and swolen a bit.. Man it sucks becuase the art is SO much cooler than the Japanese one.. Even with the damage I will probably keep the Cine one.
 
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