tempest board help, partially working?

tron guy

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Ok well I have spent the better part of the last 3 or 4 days getting both of my wg6100 monitors working, special thanks to slackmoe.

Anyway, one of them I intend to restore a pretty beat up tempest with.
I reflowed some solder on the tempest board (interconnect cable) made sure it tempest board looked ok, and went for it. I rebuilt the a/rII and tested it in my battlezone and major havoc (tempest conversion) then left it in there and took another rebuilt a/rII (from the battlezone) and put it in this tempest. Needless to say I was fairly thorough that everything I could control was working 100%. I replaced the molex connectors on the a/rII and on the tempest wiring harness.

So, I decided to try to test this tempest board with my newly rebuilt 6100 by going into test mode. So I tried it and got nothing. I went back to the board, pulled it out, pushed on connectors, pushed on chips, tried again (test mode)

well the game came on, but it was a smaller screen than normal, kind of pushed to the left, upper side of the screen. Showing free play with 2 credits, a few high scores saved with over 330,000 on them, but the start buttons were not blinking and I could not get the game to start. The game went into some type of attract mode (with no sounds) and that's where I left it (turned off)

where should I start, in terms of trying to diagnose this board? I do not own the necessary equipment to analyze or fix this, do I just ship it off?

in case it slipped by, trying to start the game in test mode did not produce a test mode screen. I guess I had better made sure my control panel is all hooked up and working and report back concerning that.
 
Ok well I have spent the better part of the last 3 or 4 days getting both of my wg6100 monitors working, special thanks to slackmoe.

Anyway, one of them I intend to restore a pretty beat up tempest with.
I reflowed some solder on the tempest board (interconnect cable) made sure it tempest board looked ok, and went for it. I rebuilt the a/rII and tested it in my battlezone and major havoc (tempest conversion) then left it in there and took another rebuilt a/rII (from the battlezone) and put it in this tempest. Needless to say I was fairly thorough that everything I could control was working 100%. I replaced the molex connectors on the a/rII and on the tempest wiring harness.

So, I decided to try to test this tempest board with my newly rebuilt 6100 by going into test mode. So I tried it and got nothing. I went back to the board, pulled it out, pushed on connectors, pushed on chips, tried again (test mode)

well the game came on, but it was a smaller screen than normal, kind of pushed to the left, upper side of the screen. Showing free play with 2 credits, a few high scores saved with over 330,000 on them, but the start buttons were not blinking and I could not get the game to start. The game went into some type of attract mode (with no sounds) and that's where I left it (turned off)

where should I start, in terms of trying to diagnose this board? I do not own the necessary equipment to analyze or fix this, do I just ship it off?

in case it slipped by, trying to start the game in test mode did not produce a test mode screen. I guess I had better made sure my control panel is all hooked up and working and report back concerning that.


yer gonna hate me when i say this... Get a Fiberglass brush and clean all the legs on all of your Chips and Reseat them...bet it starts working after that :)


if it don't you have a bad trace somewhere.

Good Luck!


END OF LINE.


Daniel.
 
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hey thanks for the quick reply, and i hate you for even suggesting it. hell even thinking it.

anyway quick update.

dumbass(me) the 2 molex' were disconnected (in the control panel) so I reconnected them and now I can go to test mode or to game play. It plays.

I want to say it's almost 100% working. I"m not getting any sound, but I really didn't start to troubleshoot that yet.

I am, however, having trouble adjusting the screen. I have been messing with the6 or 8 pots on the tempest board, but as my pictures will now show, I'm not very close.

Looks like I just need to adjust the x/y pots eh?

edit: keep in mind the monitor is 100% working. tested it in my major havoc a couple minutes after these pictures to prove it.
 

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Have you measured the pots? They might be bad.

well funny you say that. one of them (xbip or ybip, do those even exist) aren't very stable at all.

I suppose I would feel the most comfortable changing all of the pots, does bob roberts carry them?
 
Yes he sells a prepackaged set of Tempest PCB replacement pots ($12) since there are 8 of them. Note that the 2 size and 2 centering ones are 10K, the linearity pair is 2K and the BIP pair is a mere 200 ohm. They should fix you up. Then (care of Nicholas Sayer's Tempest: Detailed theory of operation):

Tune the Video

You should be in the self-test mode on the first screen. Momentarily close the SLAM switch and you should see a rectangle with diagonal lines in it and a character set near the bottom.
Adjust the X and Y center pots to center the pattern
Adjust the X and Y size pots to put the rectangle roughly within half an inch (1 cm or so) of the edge of the tube
Adjust the X and Y BIP pots so that the corners of the diagonal boxes rest exactly on the large rectangle
Adjust the X and Y linearity pots so that the diagonal lines are straight. When this is done the size pots may have to be readjusted.
 
Yes he sells a prepackaged set of Tempest PCB replacement pots ($12) since there are 8 of them. Note that the 2 size and 2 centering ones are 10K, the linearity pair is 2K and the BIP pair is a mere 200 ohm. They should fix you up. Then (care of Nicholas Sayer's Tempest: Detailed theory of operation):

Tune the Video

You should be in the self-test mode on the first screen. Momentarily close the SLAM switch and you should see a rectangle with diagonal lines in it and a character set near the bottom.
Adjust the X and Y center pots to center the pattern
Adjust the X and Y size pots to put the rectangle roughly within half an inch (1 cm or so) of the edge of the tube
Adjust the X and Y BIP pots so that the corners of the diagonal boxes rest exactly on the large rectangle
Adjust the X and Y linearity pots so that the diagonal lines are straight. When this is done the size pots may have to be readjusted.

well thanks for this "gameplan" I went out and approached it in this sequence and now this bitch is 100% working.

found another unconnected connector (marquee and speaker) and that shit is working too.

BAM!
I now have a 100% working tempest, where 3 days ago all I saw sitting there was 100 hours worth of thankless work.

sweet
 
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