Wizard of Wor - where have the colors gone?

Superully

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my wizard of wor came up with a white screen after working flawlessly for a long time - attract mode & sounds are there, game plays blind! i had read somewhere that it might be a certain chip (tba530) on the rgb board gone bad. it took me a while, but i managed to get such a board from a gorf machine (i was told they are identical). but before i installed it, i turned the WoW back on again to find out if the white screen was still there. well, it wasn't, here's what i saw instead:

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as you can see, all the colors are gone except BLUE, but the game itself works flawlessly. i put in the replacement rgb board, but the result was the same! :(

does this look like a board or a monitor issue? any input?
 
If it were me, I'd be taking a look at the monitor next since you already swapped out the RGB interface. Easiest thing to do would be put a spare monitor behind the game and hook it up.

If it is the monitor, it could be as easy as cracked solder joints. Or it could be a tiny bit more involved and be a couple transistors.

Good luck,
Jeff
 
well, the rgb board is untested, so it could be damaged as well, but i'd say it's the monitor as well. there is a crack in the neckboard which we fixed by bridging connections, but it could be something else now on the monitor - just like you've suggested.

what makes me somewhat doubtful though is the fact that i had this white screen first and after a couple of weeks (of doing nothing) the white screen is gone and i have that color issue ...

monitor test would be the best (and easiet) thing to do though for now!
 
ok, here's an update after some tests. i pulled my wizard of wor next to a perfectly working centipede and connected the centipede game to the wizard of wor monitor. here are the results:

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(continued in the next post due to the picture limit)
 
as you can see, there are colors missing as well, so it IS a monitor issue. i couldn't connect the wizard of wor to the centipede monitor though because the wiring harness is not long enough. therefore i pulled both chassis from the respective monitors and swapped them around. first, i tested the ex-centipede chassis in the wizard of wor cabinet - here are the results:

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as you can see, all the colors are there BUT there is a small graphic issue with the red, you can see that on the red monster in the last two pictures. however, this looks much better than on the original chassis!

(continued in the next post due to the picture limit)
 
finally, i installed the ex-wizard of wor chassis in the centipede cabinet - here are the results:


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my conclusion: the original wizard of wor chassis is definitely broken! and i'm pretty sure it is the chassis' neckboard, because it has a crack in it. originally the monitor wasn't working at all and a friend of mine fixed it by bridging some connections (not on the following picture, which was taken before the fix).

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so, what should i do next? any input is appreciated ...
 
start with reflowing those header pins on the chassis. i recently capped a K4900 and forgot to reflow the header pins and of course when i went to test my work the red was intermittent. pulled the chassis back out, reflowed all the header pins (and anything else that looked suspect,) and now it's all good to go.

if that doesn't fix it, try the flow charts which'll tell you where to look for the suspect parts specific to your chassis.
 
You're missing the green and blue colors.

Measure (in resistance (Ohms) test setting) between the two red arrows.

Then again between the two blue arrows.

Even better would be to measure between red arrow A and the actual connector pin on the other side (so remove the neck-board from the tube to measure this.

The missing Blue I can imagine, because the crack on the board actually runs there. The missing green is a bit weirder though because that's out of that area...
 

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ok guys, i put in a replacement chassis in my cabinet and as expected, the colors are back with one exception: red. well, that's not 100% correct, red is not gone entirely, it looks as if the letters' shadow is still there (if you know what i mean). have a look at the following pictures

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here's where it gets interesting: when i tap on certain parts of the chassis (e.g. on the right where the focus / brightness potis are), the "real red" flashes in for a millisecond, only to return to the "shadowy" look immediately. even stranger, from time to time (but not very often), the colors are fully there when i turn on the game, only to change back to the "shadow look" later.

remember, it's only the red i'm talking about, not the other colors ...

anything i can do? i don't think that tapping on the chassis is the way to go. could it be a matter of a loose connection somewhere?
 
Wait a minute, is that the original monitor in the WoW or a 3rd one ?

Makes things complicated....

If I sum up correctly:

1) The Centi monitor is 100% OK, works OK in Centi and works OK in WoW
2) The WoW monitor only shows red on both games
3) The 3rd monitor has no red only when you tap on it.

Correct ?
 
Makes things complicated....

If I sum up correctly:

1) The Centi monitor is 100% OK, works OK in Centi and works OK in WoW
2) The WoW monitor only shows red on both games
3) The 3rd monitor has no red only when you tap on it.

Correct ?

yeah, i'm starting to get dizzy as well ;)

anyway, your information is A-L-M-O-S-T correct, only that we're talking about the chassis here, not the tube.

everything is as stated above, BUT the centi chassis attached to the wow tube also had slight difficulties with the red and i'm pretty sure the problems would have been identical to 3) if i had turned it on later. there seems to be some kind of connection problem for the red color, because as i've stated, sometimes the red is fully there when i turn the game on, most of the time it isn't - and when i tap on the chassis at certain point, the red flashes in. perhaps i should put up a video of it ...
 
Tapping problems indicate bad solderings, poor connections etc.

You're going to have to follow the path from where the color lines come into the chassis until the neck....
 
Tapping problems indicate bad solderings, poor connections etc.
You're going to have to follow the path from where the color lines come into the chassis until the neck....

hmmm, as i've said the problem existed on both chassis, although it was a little bit less obvious on the centipede chassis (and the centi chassis works perfectly on centipede). could it be anything else than the chassis?

regarding the tapping: i just wanted to film a video of it, but "tapping in the red color" is not working anymore (at least extremely seldom). therefore i've only made a video of the screen to show you the problem "in person". it looks worse in reality because the camera boosted the brightness.

here is the video!

any ideas? just to make sure i will probably try out the centipede chassis again ...
 
This happens to be one of my favorite old games as a kid. What language version is that, and does the speech speak in a different language also?
 
German and yes the voice is German too. Since Ully is from Germany he has those settings.

In all honesty I can not understand a word it says in German (even though I master the language pretty well). Ully had to explain what it was saying when I was there :)

The issue is that LPC speech synthesizers were all created in the US and thus "targeted" at English speech.

Although I think it's very cool that they actually adapted the game to incorporate different languages, I would still prefer the machine to speak English. But then again, I would also prefer the on-screen texts to be English.

Since I'm from Holland, we are already much more used to hearing English (like TV programs that never get the voices replaced but only subtitled, and likewise, arcade games simply always had English on-screen texts and voices. The Dutch language area is simply too small as a market to adept those things.

The bottom line is that you usually prefer just what you have been brought up with (are used to).

Since I had the chance to play Ully's wonderful WOW (of course 2 player!) I'm hooked to that game and it would be a dream to find one....
 
I had the same problem with my WOW using a 4600 WG monitor.
Turned out to be the input daughter card amps, very easy fix and my red came right back.
(daughter card the video signal connects to) Bob Roberts had the replacement parts.
 
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