Well this bloody figures....

Blades

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Well this figures. My Circus Charlie has been working wonderfully for months. No problems, lots of play on it from my kids and myself. In rolls the Holiday's...

Family is coming into town, my sisters have been wanting to play it, as they are big Circus Charlie fans. So I turn it on today to make sure all is good. And as you probably guessed, something goes wrong... Yep, switcher took a shit(never mind that it was working flawlessly the day before). And I don't have a spare switcher on hand....Figures.

Never mind it could have done this AFTER the holiday, but nooooo it had to do it when guests where coming to town to play. Pisses me off.

Just bitchen mostly, anyone else have this problem. All works well until you need it to work well?


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my games are all jacked. my wacko monitor just shrunk to about 3 inches and the screen burn is just bad enough and im just anal enough that now i have to do a tube swap.
and i pulled my mousetrap board out to test another for a friend and the track broke and the monitor is now dead too. it all happens when you are aboutto have people over.

and trust about half of my games are broken right now :(
 
Well, if you had given me that Circus Charlie, you wouldn't be having this problem right now... :D
 
Could you possibly rebuild the switcher? Maybe a local place you could and pick up the caps for it I have rebuilt like 3 without issues just needed a recapping.
 
Do you have a game they don't want to play that you can borrow the switcher out of?
 
Could you possibly rebuild the switcher? Maybe a local place you could and pick up the caps for it I have rebuilt like 3 without issues just needed a recapping.

+1 on that... Open that thing up looking for swollen caps and you might be able to get them at radio shack or somewhere else local. I have one of Bob's bulk cap packs and highly recommend it to everyone. If I need a cap, I almost always have one that will work. :)
 
I'm in that same boat, my friend. My Golden Tee crapped out...still hoping to find a GT05 hard drive image in time............
 
My Golden Tee crapped out...still hoping to find a GT05 hard drive image in time............

Hard drive, whats that? I thought a hard drive was when it starts snowing when you are on the way to pick up a game? Or maybe a long gravel driveway, getting lost on the way...
 
Bah - just use a PC ATX power supply and be done with it. The only thing you might have an issue with is if your board is one of those bastards that requires more than +5. (say 5.2)

Cut the green wire and any black wire on the large molex connector and twist them together for constant power.
The color code for the wires is: Red = +5V, Black = Ground (0V), White = -5V, Yellow = +12V, Blue = -12V, Orange = +3.3V, and Green = Turn DC on (input).
 
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Update:

Well I was going to throw in an ATX power supply via Deadly's advice. I unplugged my Hanatrix 900e monitor and just for shits fired it up. She came on with no problems(sans monitor) measured the volts. The switcher voltage was kind of high though..+13v on 12 rail, -5.4 and +5.2. It's an old old switcher so there is no variable nob for the 5v rail.

Anyway, checked the voltage wire going to the monitor it shows 120v. Turned it off, plugged everything back in, fired it up. Now all is working. But I do know when it wasn't firing up before that there was NO voltage coming out of the switcher and the monitor was kind of squealing. Maybe the transformer is going bad? or something in the monitor itself. I recapped it about 3 months ago, but it does put out a high pitch squeal for a while before it goes away. Takes a while to warm up also before I get full bright colors. Anyway, that is where I'm at. So hopefully it lasts during the holiday, so then after I'll tear into it more, as there is a reason WHY it did what it did, I just don't know what. But that switcher needs to be replaced I think.


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That's when this shit always happens, never fails. I have family coming to stay with me next week and.............................. let's just say I'm terrified to even turn the games on!

My Ms Pac has no sound, and my TRON has spinner issues that I hope to address tonight. KLOV's Riptor offered to fix my Ms Pac sound probs if I got the boards to him, but going on the issues we all have right before people show up to play these games, I'm hesitant to take the board out for fear that the remove and replace might make something else break on Ms Pac!

Face it, we are prisoners to these antiquated candy-colored migraines.
 
Your switcher probably still needs to be replaced or capped. I've had switchers that would turn on sometimes and other times wouldn't. Different one fixed it every time. It will probably start messing up again sooner or later. Most likely after your relatives arrive and before their first game.
 
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