Tower Of Terror (Addams Family Generator, etc.) info?
Hey,
Is there any info on the "shocking" games made by Nova Productions, like Addams Family Generator, Star Trek Borg Contact, Tower of Terror, Seat of Terror, etc?
I picked up a Tower of Terror this weekend, just because it's kinda cool, and was cheap... just looking for some info, like a manual, parts list, etc.
I see it has a smoke generator and a printer... I'm mostly looking for information on what to use. Does the smoke generator use fog machine liquid, or model railroad smoke... or are they the same thing? How about the printer... I assume it's thermal paper, but what size? Is there any sort of free play for it? If not, I was thinking about hacking the ROM to add it.
Information I've found so far is schematics here: http://ohwow-arcade.com/Assets/Game_Manuals/ADDAMS FAMILY GENERATOR.PDF , and I see this guys repairs the boards: http://webpages.charter.net/coinopcauldron/shocker.html .
My machine had (and still has) several problems. The volume was ridiculously loud, the display was really glitchy, one handle was dead, and the buttons don't work very well. I first unhooked the speakers so I could start troubleshooting without going deaf... found only about 7v going to the display. It turned out that the ground going to the display wasn't connected to the rest of the grounds, including the voltage regulator. The rechargable battery had leaked a little bit and ate the ground via... so I chucked the battery, repaired the via, and had good 12V (and I think the ground was also the root of my button problem). One of the 7805 regulators was also bad, though I'm not sure what problems that caused (I didn't trace it, but it wasn't the 7805 driving the main logic).
Having read horror stories about finding replacement handle motors, I decided to verify that my handle was dead, and not the driver board, so I swapped driver boards and the other handle worked! Whew... so I began troubleshooting the driver board and found two dead MOSFETs. I swapped a couple around, and it partially worked, so I'm pretty confident that replacing those MOSFETs will fix the problem completely.
I then plugged the speakers back in, hoping to troubleshoot that problem... and it was ridiculously quiet this time. I tracked that down to the volume control chip (TDA1524A), which may have also blown the digital potentiometer (it's supposed to output a ~4V reference to go to the pot, but was outputting ~10V, which is beyond the specs of the digital pot). If it's blown, I may just use a regular pot, since the software controlled volume is dumb IMO anyway.
So anyway, I've got the TDA1524A and MOSFETs on their way... hopefully those will fix the remaining problems. Along with looking for information, I just figured I'd share a little bit of repair knowledge that I've learned over the last few days.
DogP
Hey,
Is there any info on the "shocking" games made by Nova Productions, like Addams Family Generator, Star Trek Borg Contact, Tower of Terror, Seat of Terror, etc?
I picked up a Tower of Terror this weekend, just because it's kinda cool, and was cheap... just looking for some info, like a manual, parts list, etc.
I see it has a smoke generator and a printer... I'm mostly looking for information on what to use. Does the smoke generator use fog machine liquid, or model railroad smoke... or are they the same thing? How about the printer... I assume it's thermal paper, but what size? Is there any sort of free play for it? If not, I was thinking about hacking the ROM to add it.
Information I've found so far is schematics here: http://ohwow-arcade.com/Assets/Game_Manuals/ADDAMS FAMILY GENERATOR.PDF , and I see this guys repairs the boards: http://webpages.charter.net/coinopcauldron/shocker.html .
My machine had (and still has) several problems. The volume was ridiculously loud, the display was really glitchy, one handle was dead, and the buttons don't work very well. I first unhooked the speakers so I could start troubleshooting without going deaf... found only about 7v going to the display. It turned out that the ground going to the display wasn't connected to the rest of the grounds, including the voltage regulator. The rechargable battery had leaked a little bit and ate the ground via... so I chucked the battery, repaired the via, and had good 12V (and I think the ground was also the root of my button problem). One of the 7805 regulators was also bad, though I'm not sure what problems that caused (I didn't trace it, but it wasn't the 7805 driving the main logic).
Having read horror stories about finding replacement handle motors, I decided to verify that my handle was dead, and not the driver board, so I swapped driver boards and the other handle worked! Whew... so I began troubleshooting the driver board and found two dead MOSFETs. I swapped a couple around, and it partially worked, so I'm pretty confident that replacing those MOSFETs will fix the problem completely.
I then plugged the speakers back in, hoping to troubleshoot that problem... and it was ridiculously quiet this time. I tracked that down to the volume control chip (TDA1524A), which may have also blown the digital potentiometer (it's supposed to output a ~4V reference to go to the pot, but was outputting ~10V, which is beyond the specs of the digital pot). If it's blown, I may just use a regular pot, since the software controlled volume is dumb IMO anyway.
So anyway, I've got the TDA1524A and MOSFETs on their way... hopefully those will fix the remaining problems. Along with looking for information, I just figured I'd share a little bit of repair knowledge that I've learned over the last few days.
DogP


