tempest spinner one direction only

TheShanMan

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Donor 2011, 2024
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My spinner for the most part moves in the same direction regardless of which direction you turn it. IIRC it's to the right. But if I turn it left at a certain slow speed I can sometimes get it to go left. I've swapped in various pokeys (and the diagnostics do not report a pokey error anyway) and I've also tried 4 other optical boards. Everything I've tried has the same results. It's conceivable that all the optical boards have optics going out but it seems unlikely that they'd all behave identically.

Suggestions on what else to check?
 
Replace that crappy IDC connector for the optic board with a molex connector. If that doesn't cure it, then you will need to look at the boardset.

LMK if you don't have the molex connector and pins and I will send you what you need.
 
I don't have the connector (sometime soon I'll have to order a good selection of them since I'm getting more and more games).

I'll try jiggling the connector and/or hacking a bypass of the connectors today to see if that helps, since we have a bunch of friends coming for new years eve.

Hopefully not the boardset since the guy who sold me the tempest very recently got his boards back from repair! But yeah, my next thought was to break out the schematics (after the party).
 
If it was only one optic board, I would say that it is probably dirty. 4 optic boards with the same issue usually means the crappy IDC connector is at fault. There is only 4 wires with 1 being +5vdc and another being ground. The problem would be on one of the other two. A temp fix would be to pull those two wires out of the connector, snip the ends, strip the new ends, re-insert into the connector and see what you get.
 
Well, not the connector. I tried soldering some wires onto the optic board and shoving them into the main harness connector, and the symptoms were the same. Guess I'll have to start checking the circuitry on the tempest boardset. Oh well, so much for getting the game ready for tonight. :(

Thanks for the help Dave!
 
Hopefully not the boardset since the guy who sold me the tempest very recently got his boards back from repair!

Even though it was "repaired", make sure they reflowed the solder joints on the interconnect cable header pins.
The problem will most likely be on the Aux board.

Re-seat any socketed chips too while you're at it.
 
Well we got to play it last night anyway. As it turns out, it does the "wrong direction" thing in the diagnostic mode but only at a certain slow speed. In actual game play I couldn't seem to get it to happen. Probably still comes into play to a degree, but it's not a speed that is often used in practice.

Not sure why it was so bad when I first got the game home. Perhaps that was the connector issue that Dokert suggested.

With all my optic boards showing the same symptoms, I wonder if other people with Tempest can get theirs to do the same thing in diagnostic mode? Anyone care to try??? :)
 
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