What do you do with your most temperamental games?

Welcome to nightmare pcb boards.
Can these two layer pcbs boards be repaired? Yes, cost effective? No.

The equipment to fix these pcb isnt cheap. Better equipment is needed to find non common problems.
 
Do you:

1. Keep working on them and just say well, it's old(?)
2. Fix it once and WHEN it breaks again, send it down the river?
3. Keep at it and bulletproof it?
4. Turn it into a multi with an LCD monitor?
5. Make it a chair?

I like fixing things, but when a game keeps acting up, I end up sending it down river on a raft. I get to where I don't even want to look at it anymore if it keeps breaking.
My Joust is like this. I keep thinking about what I need to do to make it reliable.
 
Some of my boards having issues is a big reason I changed my multi light gun setup to a MAME setup instead.

The part I did not know about was how down the rabbit hole I would go with the MAME setup and ended up adding more emulators than just MAME to it, and just the entire configuration of everything took MUCH more time than it did to even get my multi light gun setup going with real hardware.

The catch though is now that it's configured and setup I won't have to mess with that part of it anymore unless I add new games to it, and now I have many more games than I had before and many I never would have even been able to have in the cabinet.
 
I just troubleshoot until I find the problem.

If a problem keeps happening, look upstream to see what is driving the problem.

I don't have any problem games. They all work until I mess with them.

Then I fix what I messed up. Simple.
 
A power surge will keep killing a pcb board even after you repair it.

Static shock.. same

Hooking a zaxxon pcb to +5 and a ground to -5. Will kill a pcb quickly.

Microwaving any chips instance death!

No amount of connections will fix those things laughs
 
Of late I have taken to using Chat GPT to help troubleshoot boards that have no documentation or community knowledge. I have had success in resurrecting one of my "problem children". What I do is feed Chay GPT a list of ICs on the board. Then I put it into voice mode as I am working on thr PCB and describe the types of behaviour I am seeing on the logic probe and other devices. It's not a silver bullet but it really helps as I am not constantly stopping to read data sheets.

If I am really stuck with a cab then I will put it in storage until I have the time and resources to deal with it.

Ive also taught myself C++ using Chat GPT so I can develop Arduino based solutions to some game issues too. For example, I created an Arduino replacement for the G-Loc motion boards recently.

So far I have never given up on a cab.
 
Several times in the past, I would have just sold the game that was giving me problems. Not surprisingly, most of those games were vectors. I have yet to figure out what's wrong with my Eagle after several years. I just don't have the knowledge to repair it myself. Someday, I'll have someone over to fix it for me. It's one of my grails, so I've held on to it.
 
Typically, if I can't figure it out with google and this forum and the manuals, I'll ask for help from Gamefixer, and if that didn't fix it in the past I would just pay Matt to fix it 😝 Now that he moved away, that option is off the table, which means I'm gonna have to improve my skills or figure something out.
 
Now that he moved away, that option is off the table, which means I'm gonna have to improve my skills or figure something out.
He still repairs pcbs at his 9 to 5 job last i heard. I wouldn't say its off the table, you just have to send it (somewhere else) to have him fix it.
 
He still repairs pcbs at his 9 to 5 job last i heard. I wouldn't say its off the table, you just have to send it (somewhere else) to have him fix it.

Yeah for sure if I had a PCB to repair I would send it to him. But I had issues like a Qix that had been rained in, or a Tron with a mystery that ended up being corrosion inside the wiring harness with no exterior clues. When he was a mile from my house it was easier to just load up the game, or he could sometimes fix them in my arcade room on site. And he's a great teacher and didn't mind me watching and asking questions. I'm fairly confident in what I know, and what I'm confident I could do with the help of the internet. But sometimes you just want to let someone else who you know will do it right fix it for you painlessly 😆
 
I had the power supply on a dedicated ROTJ fail on me three times and I finally said "F-You" and sold it.
Now, years later, I regret the decision because of advances in replacement parts kits. *sigh*
Same could be said about a Tutankham I had. Another "I can't keep it running so it's outta here"
decision I regret.
 
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