Wizard of Wor Boardset Repair

ItsJustaGame

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Hi, geniuses.

Bought a backup Wizard of Wor boardset and the speech doesn't work. Researching, I think I probably need the SC-01 speech chip replaced.

Does anybody have one of those chips they can sell me?

Actually, it's weird. The speech works for a second (says one phrase very quietly) when I boot it, but then doesn't work at all. Could it be just the voltages? Do those older boards voltages vary that much from board to board? It's strange because my other boardset works perfectly.

Also, the player 1 up control doesn't work. It can't be the wiring because my other boardset controls works just fine. Does anybody happen to know how I might go about fixing the "Up" control?

Thanks for any suggestions or help, and please forgive my ignorance.
 
If the rest of the game is working, but you have no speech, the SC-01 chip is almost certainly at fault. There's no source for replacements, you have to take one off another boardset that used it. Install a heatsink on your working one, and if it develops problems, swap the chip over into your back up boardset when you put it in your machine.

On the "up" control, check out the schematic. Circuitry for the controls is on the last page. Looks like your prime suspects are U3, R6, C6, and R24.
 
If you are feeling "lucky", you can swap chips and note the results. That is why people with these games always have a spare set of boards.
 
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yeah those famous VOTRAX SC-01 chips can run from $20-40 each these days and are
very infrequently sold on eBay. good luck in finding one of the rarest chips in the arcade hobby! :)
 
Yeah, I am pretty disappointed because I was sold this board as working.

If anybody knows of or sees an SC-01, please point me to it. I know they are on Gorf boards. Where else can I scavenge?

Also, since my repair skills are so shoddy, is there anybody here who might take a look at it if I can not fix it?
 
Yeah, I am pretty disappointed because I was sold this board as working.

If anybody knows of or sees an SC-01, please point me to it. I know they are on Gorf boards. Where else can I scavenge?

Also, since my repair skills are so shoddy, is there anybody here who might take a look at it if I can not fix it?

Unless you bought the boardset 5 years ago, I'd go back to the seller. It's not fully working & the way in which it's broken will require a significant time/money investment to make right.
 
It was more like five days ago.

I already reached out to him, but haven't heard back.

Maybe he'll compensate me for the SC-01 if I can get one. Now, though, I think it's just a pain.

I'm hoping someone will see this thread and help me find the parts/fix it.
 
When you move the stick up, is it that the Worrior does not face upwards, or does it face upward but there is no movement? If not even facing up, ieure is correct, but I believe up for player 1 is on pin 4 of U1. If you have a logic probe, you can test to see if pressing up has any effect on that input. If it does, then see if the state changes on pin 7 (output).
 
So I have both a working Gorf and a Wizard of Wor. And I did buy a spare board set for this type of thing...havent had to use them yet.

I also didnt know the SC-01 had to be scavenged. Is there no one that can produce them? Is there a reason for that?
 
I also didnt know the SC-01 had to be scavenged. Is there no one that can produce them? Is there a reason for that?

Yes. Votrax is still copyrighted and owned by a modern day company. See the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Votrax

Which means the IP (intellectual property) of that IC is still protected by law, and to this day, nobody knows how to reverse engineer it, at least publicly.
 
Interesting. I wonder if anybody here has ever tried to contact them to get them to share schematics/data sheets/etc.

That's a kind of thing it would be really hard to get a company to do, but it would certainly be a win for this community.
 
Interesting. I wonder if anybody here has ever tried to contact them to get them to share schematics/data sheets/etc.



That's a kind of thing it would be really hard to get a company to do, but it would certainly be a win for this community.



There used to be an online website that had this chip on the backend. You would enter a message and they would email the sound file for free.

I noticed it went defunct last year or two.
 
There used to be an online website that had this chip on the backend. You would enter a message and they would email the sound file for free.

I noticed it went defunct last year or two.

There still exists a software implementation of what the votrax SC_01 does, it was
released as the Software Automatic Mouth, and a website exists to let you do it
immediately or if you want to d/l a windows executable file to save it as a wav file too:

http://simulationcorner.net/index.php?page=sam

sure, it's not a hardware solution via the votrax chip, but it does exactly the same thing using software! :)
 
There still exists a software implementation of what the votrax SC_01 does, it was
released as the Software Automatic Mouth, and a website exists to let you do it
immediately or if you want to d/l a windows executable file to save it as a wav file too:

http://simulationcorner.net/index.php?page=sam

sure, it's not a hardware solution via the votrax chip, but it does exactly the same thing using software! :)

didn't know about that one. pretty cool.
I had some program for the TRS-80 color computer that did speech. I can't remember much about it, though. Just amazed that a home computer could talk.
 
Sadly, I discovered it's not the Speech Chip. I got a working one and swapped it out. Still doesn't work.

One of the transistors (big ones that look like pinball transistors) in the line of three on the main board (I think they're at Q5-Q7) seems to have scorched the board pretty good. I replaced it and tested all the connections and traces to be good. Still, there's no speech.

Also, the up direction on player one doesn't work. I know there are two switches in all directions of WOW, so could that somehow help me be a clue in to the problem?

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
Sadly, I discovered it's not the Speech Chip. I got a working one and swapped it out. Still doesn't work.

One of the transistors (big ones that look like pinball transistors) in the line of three on the main board (I think they're at Q5-Q7) seems to have scorched the board pretty good. I replaced it and tested all the connections and traces to be good. Still, there's no speech.

Also, the up direction on player one doesn't work. I know there are two switches in all directions of WOW, so could that somehow help me be a clue in to the problem?

Thanks in advance for any help.

There are five directional switches: up, down, right, left, and move. Each cardinal direction has a two-switch stack, with the switch next to the actuator being the direction, and all four outer switches connected to the move input.
 
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