Useful Guide for Beginners

[emperormax]

Kind of dated, though:

Atari - The BOOK - Guide to Electronic Game Operation & Servicing : Atari : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

This book was written by Atari in 1980 specifically to teach people who had bought their arcade games how to repair them. As you might expect, The Book assumes...

archive.org

But I am finding it useful. Are there more or better (free) guides out there?

 

[SNESNESCUBE64]

It's mostly finding threads to figure out what people recommend. I don't know of any specific guides but this thread might help. It's one of those things where you are just going to stumble through repairs a lot until you get good and recognize the signs and trends. The important thing with board repair is to understand digital logic so that you can interpret what you are trying to troubleshoot. If you don't have that core understanding it will be hard. Glancing through that atari book, looks like they touch on that stuff which is a good thing.

Diag flow

I've been trying to learn more and more about board repair and I've fixed several now. But I think that was a combination of luck and good resources vs my actual knowledge and skills. I have better luck when I am up against a semi working board ie....a board that "works" but with problems...

forums.arcade-museum.com

Edit - in this section of the forum there is a pinned thread with a beginners guide.

How to fix PCBs - A Beginners Guide

There have been a few posts scattered around from people asking how to fix their boards, and or fishing for people to fix it for them. I wrote this a couple of years back on another forum, it may shed some light on the topic. Have had to split over two posts due to the 10,000 chr limit here :(...

forums.arcade-museum.com

 

[cwilkson]

Kind of dated, though:

Says the guy with 2/3 of his collection being 40+ years old!

It really depends on what you hope to learn. Design? Analysis? Repair?

Here are some good resources:

• Atari handbooks: read all of them
  • Atari TM-038 Video Game Operators Handbook. Should be on ARCARC someplace. If not, then from "the web".
  • Atari TM-043 Video Game Operators Handbook. Should be on ARCARC someplace. If not, then from "the web".
  • Atari TM-129 The Book. Solid Gold. You already found it.
  • Computer Games Operators Handbook (Atari and Kurz-Kasch) - I see it on the Internet Archive.
• Any early Atari game-specific operator's manual. These are the gold standard. Get them from ARCARC.
• Atari TM-198 Mechanical Assemblies. Get it from ARCARC.
• The Kurz-Kasch Video Game Library series. Get them from ARCARC and/or "the web".
• A lot of Don Lancaster books. Get them from "the web". Check Bitsavers.org and Don Lancaster's website.
  • TTL Cookbook
  • CMOS Cookbook
  • Maybe the TV Typewriter books.
  • Other Don Lancaster books and articles....
• There are some general repair books for Bally/Midway but I don't remember what they're called. From ARCARC.
• Tektronix manuals. These are even better than the Atari manuals for learning Electronics. But maybe overkill. Get them from BAMA.

Online repositories:

• The Arcade Archive ("ARCARC")
• The Internet Archive ("Wayback Machine")
• bitsavers.org
• BAMA - The Boat Anchor Manual Archive

 

[GothGirl]

 

[HudsonArcade]

Kind of dated, though:

Atari - The BOOK - Guide to Electronic Game Operation & Servicing : Atari : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

This book was written by Atari in 1980 specifically to teach people who had bought their arcade games how to repair them. As you might expect, The Book assumes...

archive.org

But I am finding it useful. Are there more or better (free) guides out there?

Got a copy of THE BOOK that I found in a warehouse raid sitting on my shelf.
It's got a lot of basic but useful info if you're just starting out.

A lot of the early (B&W) Atari manuals did a good job of explaining what the circuity is doing.

 

[emperormax]

Thanks, that's a lot of good basic info in this thread. Incidentally, I discovered Atari's "The Book" by flipping through my Pole Position manual. It mentions it in there. Atari's manuals seem better than most.

Max

 

[cwilkson]

Thanks, that's a lot of good basic info in this thread. Incidentally, I discovered Atari's "The Book" by flipping through my Pole Position manual. It mentions it in there. Atari's manuals seem better than most.

Max

They ARE better than most.