u/MegaMuffindude

Its outside your travel range, but theres Capital City Arcade in New West that takes private bookings

No problem! At the arcade I repair games at we usually install switchers with these adapters on them, they only take about 15 minutes to install and we haven't had an issue with any out of ~40 games.

For my personal machines I like running the original power supply but the switchers are more reliable and easier to change out if they do fail since the screw on posts are the same spacing / order on most models.

Id check to make sure that the AC you are getting from the transformers is correct. If that looks fine Id look for shorted diodes and transistors, specifically D103, D107, D108, D110, D111, Q101, Q102. The diodes run pretty hot and Ive seen them fail before. You could also try swaping the two LM305 (U2, U5) to see if that makes a change. If everything there looks fine you might have a short on the PCB, if you measure the resistance from 5V to gnd it should be around 100 - 300 ohms.

From my experience when I repaired the power supply on a Spy Hunter the pots get pretty dirty on these, as well the bottlecap transistors are prone to failing. Also check for cold solder joints on the pads for the big capacitors.

If you want the easier route you could swap out the linear with a switcher with the same style plug so that you dont need to hack the wiring: https://www.arcadeshop.com/i/931/midway-power-supply-kit-2.htm

Im not great at this game by any means, funny enough I was looking up strategy for this game recently as well because its the only game I own that I cant get a consistent score on. Heres just a couple things that help though:

• Seems like keeping the computer player alive helps, as it has instant reaction to killing enemies, as well the enemies tend to split focus on him which makes rooms easier. Although that also means youre missing out on 3k - 6k points + whatever he kills.

• Enemies supposedly dont get any faster on dungeons past 7 so you can take as long as needed. (Never last that long on those stages so not 100% sure, lol)

• The joysticks are pressure sensitive, so a light tap will only turn the character, and a full tap will move it.

• You can orient yourself halfway through a T intersection or corner so that you have vision, can rapid fire, and when enemies pass you they push you back. The enemies can only kill you when they are facing towards you. Heres a picture

Looking on aurcade seems like ~100k on 3 lives is a pretty good score. Hopefully someone else chimes in with some other strategies.

Nice collection by the way, jealous of the williams row

As far as I can tell from the manual it looks like it only came as a conversion, however the closest thing to official would have probably been a "Dynamo" style cabinet (same company who makes air hockey and pool tables), which was specifically designed to be a generic cabinet for operators to easily switch games out of. The later ones in the series from the late 90's did have a dedicated cabinet with a higher resolution monitor, but were also still available as a kit. The manual is quite interesting to read if you're interested in what was needed to convert a game.

Similar to what /u/UncookedMarsupial said, many games came in a unique cabinet shape to make it possible to figure out what they originally were. That Pengo cabinet is (to my knowledge) the only game Sega/Gremlin released in that style cabinet.

As well, Golden Tee came out in the 90's as a conversion game. If you've ever seen a popular game from around that period like Street Fighter 2 or Tetris, you'll notice that many of them came in a variety of different cabinets. Thats because arcade operators back in the day had tons of cabinets from the early 80's and 70's that weren't popular anymore and not making money, so the game companies would sell kits to take these games and turn them into a new game that would hopefully make them money without having to invest a ton in a whole new cabinet, usually a couple grand vs. a couple hundred.

Cabinet is a converted Pengo

Ive ordered from arcadechips.com multiple times, and have no complaints. In fact the past couple of times they've thrown in extra chips.

Ive also heard good things about twistywristarcade, but I havent personally ordered from there.

Heres a link to the TMS5220: http://www.arcadechips.com/product_info.php?products_id=52

Holy shit, the bus rides... I took the bus from Arequipa to Cusco and even though it was at night I remember being terrified from how they were driving. Threw up twice from motion sickness, and when I arrived at Cusco I had altitude sickness and felt dizzy the whole time. Seeing Machu Pichu was 100% worth it though, the views there are beautiful.

Cosmo Gang?

A static screen with random characters usually means the cpu is not running, you should reseat all the socketed chips on the cpu board (side with the edge connector). Otherwise you might have bad power, make sure to check for 5V at the chips. If you have any other board problems id be glad to help, ive repaired a few of these in the past.

Most Nintendo joysticks just need to be taken apart, cleaned and lubricated. You only need a pair of pliers and a Philips head screwdriver. I usually wash all the metal parts in warm soapy water. For the base you want to make sure you clean inside the ball joint where the joystick shaft goes through as this usually has some old grease hidden. For the microswitches I just wipe away any dirt with a paper towel.

Then you want to relubricate the ball joint, I usually use 3-in-1 oil but I've heard people also use lithium grease. I don't think WD40 is good since it gums up the joint faster than the other products. Then after putting it back together it should be as good as new. Sometimes the 4-way / 8-way restrictor is a bit worn, you can buy new ones from MikesArcade.

I recommend watching this video, it's a bit long but its also thorough in how to do it. He starts around 31 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xpd1b2f54c

From what I recall the fuse holders on Pacman / MsPacman are known to become rusty and not conduct well, replacing them with new ones might solve your problem if it's intermittent.

Check this thread (specifically 2nd post): https://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=391458

You can turn off the attract sound by going into the test mode (if the button's not in the cabinet theres a pushbutton on the PCB), and going to 8. Coin, Game Options > 8.4 Sound in Attract Mode Off.

It really is annoying hearing the Simpsons theme every 2 minutes in the background, everytime I turn it back on wondering why I turned it off previously it doesn't take long to realize why lol.

Thats a pretty good score! Just curious what stages you have the most trouble on, for me its the level 5+ rivet stages, those drain my lives pretty quick.

Hey Steve, I was wondering if you still play Dk or any other arcade games competitively? Also, do you have any tips for improving at Dk Jr? Right now im stuck getting past 150k, I'd love to know if there's some secret I haven't heard of.

Imo ThinkC's interface is a lot more approachable if you want to try writing Mac code

Are arcade games allowed as well or is it limited to computers/consoles?

There's a jumper pad on the board that when soldered together makes the game more "difficult", as seen on the second to last page of the manual (link). Should be the same for ms pacman since it uses the same main board but with a daughterboard attached. I think all it does is make the later levels appear earlier than they normally would.

Just measured the speakers on mine, they are 6" on both sides.

I think it would be really interesting if you had some videos about making a microcomputer. It seems like the next step up after finishing the 8-bit computer. I think using a classic processor such as a Z80, or 8085 would be best as they have been used many times in the past which could give you reference design ideas, have many peripherals designed for them (interrupt controllers, display drivers, dma, uarts, timers), and have operating systems you could run on them such as CP/M.

Personally, I'd love to see it build up to the point where you could load an operating system from secondary storage and have multiple computers communicating to each other, or maybe having some sort of multi-processor system.

I've been watching your channel for some time now, and your videos are really inspiring. Regardless of what you choose for the next topic I'll continue to watch them!

According to the CP/M wikipedia page, you need the following to run it:

• A computer terminal using the ASCII character set

• An Intel 8080 (and later the 8085) or Zilog Z80 microprocessor

• At least 16 kilobytes of RAM (beginning at address 0)

• A means to bootstrap the first sector of the diskette

• At least one floppy disk drive

So with the parts list above along with the UART should be enough to meet the requirements. You will need to use banked memory or a similar mechanism (since you need the bootstrap code at address 0, but CP/M needs RAM at address 0 as well). Only problem is the floppy drive, which you should be able to overcome with a Compact Flash card, an CF to IDE converter, and a IDE interface. I haven't tried this myself but I think something like this would work.

If you were interested in writing your own OS, Operating Systems by Woodhull Tanenbaum is a good book on the topic.

Overall I'd say that it costs around $50 to make a simple computer. I buy most of my parts off ebay, but some like the 74xx series and oscillators I can buy locally. Here is an example list that shows the different prices:

• Z80 ($3)

• 62256 32k SRAM ($4)

• 2864 8k EPROM ($4)

• 5-10x 74xx chips (and, or, not, d-ff, decoder) ($0.75 - $1 ea)

• 8255 PIO ($5)

• 4Mhz Oscillator (System clk) ($3)

• Buttons, 7-segs, LEDs, analog components (~$15)

If you want to add other functionality, you could also get:

• 8251 UART / 16550 UART ($5)

• 1.8432Mhz Oscillator (Serial clk) ($3)

• 8253 Timer ($4)

• ADC/DACs (various prices)

Glad I could help :)

If you're ever looking for design ideas most times the manuals for older computers or arcade games from the late 70s to early 80s are a good source. For instance, this technical manual for the TRS-80 goes quite into depth about how each section of it operates.