What is this on my Robotron CPU Board

calz

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Rewiring my cabinet, and not sure how I did not notice this before, but when compared with others I saw on the web did not look the same... anyone know what this is? It has a bunch of silicone around it as well.
 

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Its in location 2G isn't it?

Should be a 74LS367 (hex bus driver). I think I removed a little board like that from one I was working on one time and it had another type of chip on it, doing the same job.

Does it work OK with that board attached to the main board?
 
It's a factory fix.. What you have is an early robotron pcb that had an issue when it was first produced. I just sold one with the same mod/fix. Can't remember exactly why or what it fixes, but it's original from Williams.
 
It's a factory fix.. What you have is an early robotron pcb that had an issue when it was first produced. I just sold one with the same mod/fix. Can't remember exactly why or what it fixes, but it's original from Williams.

Cool, thanks for the clarification. I had not seen this on any other board I looked at and wanted to make sure it was legit. With all of the looking around though and not seeing this, wondering if it would be worth replacing.
 
Its in location 2G isn't it?

Should be a 74LS367 (hex bus driver). I think I removed a little board like that from one I was working on one time and it had another type of chip on it, doing the same job.

Does it work OK with that board attached to the main board?

It seems to work OK, but the game was having all kinds of problems... resetting, weird flashes on the monitor, firing control was stuck shooting up, RAM errors, you name it... I did happen to get over 1 million one game until it reset though. That said, I have completed gutted this thing... new PS (removed switcher), wiring harness, Wico bases, repro stick, ribbon cables. Doing the CP now as well so can't power it up until that's done but we'll see. Once done, planning on challenging one of the marathon records set back in the 80s so want it to be totally original and solid. Thanks for the info.
 
Thanks for that really stupid answer and wasting 5 seconds of everyone's life reading it.

You're welcome brother. That's mainly what I'm here for. If you need..

wait.

You're being sarcastic, aren't you? Ahahaha-- you got me. Good one!

K
 
It seems to work OK, but the game was having all kinds of problems... resetting, weird flashes on the monitor, firing control was stuck shooting up, RAM errors, you name it... I did happen to get over 1 million one game until it reset though. That said, I have completed gutted this thing... new PS (removed switcher), wiring harness, Wico bases, repro stick, ribbon cables. Doing the CP now as well so can't power it up until that's done but we'll see. Once done, planning on challenging one of the marathon records set back in the 80s so want it to be totally original and solid. Thanks for the info.

I had no end of problems with my Robotron until I got a Jrok, so good luck getting it reliable.......

In any event, if you are planning on marathoning it, you need to deal with the shot in the corner bug.....get the blue roms patched to eliminated this issue....but then you are not "totally original....."
 
you realize that marathoning to beat old records is a lesson in futility right? the top 8 scores are blatantly fake and there is no question they are fake. TG will not budge on them. I pled my case to Walter recently who I worked for at TG and still friends. those scores aren't budging.

you'd be better off to try to beat the 5 man tournament score but John McC / Redelf on youtube is a machine. his game is down pat up to a million.

See post's about Sean Riddle's site if you want to get the digital eclipse patch on a set of blue roms burned by anyone who burns roms. TG doesn't care if the roms are patched, they have no criteria for that. so have fun. post some twitchTV video if you really are a marathon calibre player. we'd enjoy it. cheers
 
you realize that marathoning to beat old records is a lesson in futility right? the top 8 scores are blatantly fake and there is no question they are fake. TG will not budge on them. I pled my case to Walter recently who I worked for at TG and still friends. those scores aren't budging.

you'd be better off to try to beat the 5 man tournament score but John McC / Redelf on youtube is a machine. his game is down pat up to a million.

See post's about Sean Riddle's site if you want to get the digital eclipse patch on a set of blue roms burned by anyone who burns roms. TG doesn't care if the roms are patched, they have no criteria for that. so have fun. post some twitchTV video if you really are a marathon calibre player. we'd enjoy it. cheers

Those scores are completely bogus....I find it hard to imagine what the logic is for keeping scores that are completely impossible...(referring to the ending 80 or 60 .....) In addition, any robotron machine would reset dozens of time over the 4-5 days of continuous play....Lastly, playing for a couple of hours can be tough, playing for days straight at a high level? brutal.......
 
i don't know the whole story but it has to do with some TG politics with dwayne r and rob m. trying to cleanup scores. and then there was backlash and robotron stuck.

Leo was a popular score entry back in the original era. and Walt was friends with him. Probably something there I'm not privvy. regardless his entry is dishonest on some level, restarted games/dual playing/naps and restarts/etc...

I sent a lengthy technical email to Walt and Grace S who is now the main decision person at TG (she knows who I am, too and that I am friend's with Walter) awhile back where that was part of the topic. it is completely ignored. which is why i can confidently say they could care less if patched blue roms are used.....

Kelly Tharp is a reputable marathoner and he told me, face to face he played robotron 55hrs once. i didn't ask if the game reset along the way but I presume it would have had to, since so few people actually have the patched blue roms in a real machine. (probably not many more than reading this thread.....)
 
you realize that marathoning to beat old records is a lesson in futility right? the top 8 scores are blatantly fake and there is no question they are fake. TG will not budge on them. I pled my case to Walter recently who I worked for at TG and still friends. those scores aren't budging.

you'd be better off to try to beat the 5 man tournament score but John McC / Redelf on youtube is a machine. his game is down pat up to a million.

See post's about Sean Riddle's site if you want to get the digital eclipse patch on a set of blue roms burned by anyone who burns roms. TG doesn't care if the roms are patched, they have no criteria for that. so have fun. post some twitchTV video if you really are a marathon calibre player. we'd enjoy it. cheers

Yeah, I do totally realize this and know that most all of those top scores are fake. Would like to get something to start in the top 20 though and see how the machine holds up.... Annoying that all of those scores are back to 82 :). I do have the #1 marathon score on TG for the MAME marathon version that I killed off being worried about the reset bug, and #2 in MAME tourney version behind John. I am more of a streaky player though, can marathon forever, but need to work on the tourney format... have not really concentrated on that format but think I can do it if I change the mindset. The MAME version seems to play harder than the actual arcade game for some reason.

Thanks for the info about the eclipse patch. I did not know that was "legal" but that will help out a real lot and will look into that... just don't know anyone that burns ROMS... I think the ones I have are red? I'll also keep you updated on progress/video if you are interested. Just gotta get this beast going... working on the CP now and crossing my fingers that all the rewiring I did works :). Sounds like I need to make a few more mods now though.
 
i don't know the whole story but it has to do with some TG politics with dwayne r and rob m. trying to cleanup scores. and then there was backlash and robotron stuck.

Leo was a popular score entry back in the original era. and Walt was friends with him. Probably something there I'm not privvy. regardless his entry is dishonest on some level, restarted games/dual playing/naps and restarts/etc...

I sent a lengthy technical email to Walt and Grace S who is now the main decision person at TG (she knows who I am, too and that I am friend's with Walter) awhile back where that was part of the topic. it is completely ignored. which is why i can confidently say they could care less if patched blue roms are used.....

Kelly Tharp is a reputable marathoner and he told me, face to face he played robotron 55hrs once. i didn't ask if the game reset along the way but I presume it would have had to, since so few people actually have the patched blue roms in a real machine. (probably not many more than reading this thread.....)

So come to think of it, I think I remember a thread in the TG forums where there was talk about the patch, for MAME as well. I assumed that the inp fiiles would show the patch and it would disqualify the score so didn't mess with that. So 55 hours... do you know what score he put up? I could see back in the day the game resetting and the refs letting folks start over after they took a nap or something :). I do remember back then though, when I was like 13 or so, I marathoned several games, some more than 12 hours at least and the game never reset.
 
No, that's not what it is. To me it looks like a little adaptor board to use a 74LS368 in place of a 74LS367.

On the later MPU boards (Rev C and above) there is a set of pullup resistors on some of the address lines. I think this was to put that in place. I have several of those boards buried around here somewhere, if I get a chance, I'll try to find one a take a look.

ken
 
on the rom stuff-
i asked sean riddle about wolfmame. he says he has never done timing on it.
but assumes it plays like mame prior to aaron and he's blit and cpu/video fixes.

i have played wolfmame recently and would agree that it is harder but not like 19-1 multi-pcb hardness. the blit on the enemy projectiles is too fast and the cpu/video count makes the player a tad slower at start of waves.

still if you hit 17 million on wolfmame that's serious.
the mame patched roms only work if you are using a version that allows editing the source code like mamedev 0145. wolfmame is kinda stuck so it'll keep the original blue roms for play.

there are lots of sites and folks on here that can burn roms for you. i'll add the link where we were talking about the details of the digital eclipse patch.

UPDATE-
Digital Eclipse Rom patch info here- http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=225042&highlight=robotron&page=4

If you know John then you probably know Ken / athometech . he can give you more info about patched blue roms maybe.

Why it would be embarrassing to admit the top scores on Robotron are fake-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_7lJ10vMCk

Regarding exact digits and criteria for records. Remember 1982 was an innocent time overall. Those scores that came into TG were scribbles on makeshift paper forms or phone calls to the arcade. Nothing more than simple scribbles like a permission slip at school. Date/name/score/address info and an "adult" signature.
Then us 14yr old kids or Walter took the piles of accumulated papers into the back room at the arcade and entered them into a Tandy Model 1 or 2 computer with a simple index card style database. Archaic and no quality assurance. Walter probably still types with the 2 index finger method to this day. Lots of room for typo's.

There was no Guinness exposure or money involved. It was just fun kid games. So when a dishonest kid came into the mix, we were innocent enough to not really notice. Very open and happy time period.


i'll ask kelly on FB for details of his gameplay.
 
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