What do you do with your most temperamental games?

braedel has a zener diode mod that should fix the CMOS getting blown up

what's getting hot, the transformer?
Just the whole room. When all the games are on all night, it gets hot in there. It's just my working theory that the board issue only happens with a certain amount of heat, since it's been running for days with the back open / cool room. Maybe it's random and I've just been lucky this time.
 
Just the whole room. When all the games are on all night, it gets hot in there. It's just my working theory that the board issue only happens with a certain amount of heat, since it's been running for days with the back open / cool room. Maybe it's random and I've just been lucky this time.
Well, each game puts out around 100 watts of heat from various things, the CRT being the biggest load of them all.

So if you have 20 games running, it's 2 kW of heat into the room, 24/7. Open a window or run a fan.
 
Just the whole room. When all the games are on all night, it gets hot in there. It's just my working theory that the board issue only happens with a certain amount of heat, since it's been running for days with the back open / cool room. Maybe it's random and I've just been lucky this time.
perhaps just don't turn them all on at once lol

didn't you get my memo in the most temperamental games thread? just don't ever turn them on. you can't miss 100% of the shots you DON'T take!
 
perhaps just don't turn them all on at once lol

didn't you get my memo in the most temperamental games thread? just don't ever turn them on. you can't miss 100% of the shots you DON'T take!
I start my games in a programmed sequence, alternating circuits with a 10 second gap between games powering on. It takes a few minutes for everything to start up, but it protects against blown fuses, and voltage sag from heating CRTs isn't so bad.
 
Well, each game puts out around 100 watts of heat from various things, the CRT being the biggest load of them all.

So if you have 20 games running, it's 2 kW of heat into the room, 24/7. Open a window or run a fan.
Yeah, they generate some heat. We sometimes have to run fans especially if you also add a bunch of people to the room. I'm not complaining, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of a problem that might be heat related.
 
I start my games in a programmed sequence, alternating circuits with a 10 second gap between games powering on. It takes a few minutes for everything to start up, but it protects against blown fuses, and voltage sag from heating CRTs isn't so bad.
And cuts down on brownout complaints from your neighbors!
 
Yeah, thanks. You pointed me to that before about the settings getting lost, but I wasn't fond of modifying the board (at the time) or doing a full rebuild of the linear power supply. I'm going to try the board mod so I can keep a switcher.

The not running all night thing is interesting, but it's been running now for days with the BACK open and no other games on. So I'm thinking it might be brought on by heat. I'm going to try applying heat around the board and maybe it will point to an area where the rams are messing up after they get hot or something. Or "lose" the backdoor I previously cut. ;)

I've had Williams games that ran for a while and got hot and shut off and it was the bridge rectifier getting crazy hot and failing. A new rectifier with a heat sink on it always fixed them. But I always fix and keep the linear power supplies in all Williams games.
 
My biggest problem child was Battlezone until Red Zone came along. I have 38 games so eventually one of them will break since they are all 50-35 years old but to me that is part of the hobby. Not just fixing them but learning on how to fix them. This was the year I finally broke down and bough an oscilloscope and I just love finding out new technical info as I go along with any repair. Sometimes I even buy broken PCBs cheap off EBay just to attempt repairs. LOOK AT ALL THESE GRAN TRAK PCBs I AM NUTSSSSS

View attachment 831660
Is that an arcade button light switch?!
OK, how did you do that?
 
Freakin Joust. It's been running for like 5 days straight!! I'm going to take a hair dryer to it tomorrow and see if I can make it mess up. These things don't fix themselves.
 
(Looking over my shoulder…)
I don't have any temperamental games.

At this moment…
 
Move it across the room. That shake up is always an interesting adventure
I tried the hair dryer on various places on the pcbs, never could get it to mess up. Of course it won't mess up when I want it to. I give up for now I guess. Come to think of it, I haven't seen the issue in quite a while. I'll call it "working" until that changes!

Now to try the zener diode swap to hopefully get it to not lose settings when using a switching power supply. Have it on order.
 
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I gave up on any kind of preventative maintenance long ago but I try to keep everything working 100%. I still panic a bit when something goes down. It eats at me.
 
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