Picked up a non working Asteroids Deluxe. If you are not familiar with an Asteroids Deluxe, it’s a great looking machine with a more difficult version of the Asteroids game that is projected onto a two way mirror with 3D asteroids that were printed on multiple levels and lit with a blacklight. A really great effect.
So I get the machine in the basement and plug it in. Let’s see what’s going on…
I noticed a few things right off the bat:
- Marquee was not working
- Blacklight was not working
- 5v light was lit on the PCB
- The dreaded spot killer LED lit on the monitor board
- Both the player 1 and 2 lights are lit continuously and there is no gameplay (game is not playing blind)
Let the troubleshooting begin.
I get my multimeter and begin to start testing power.
Power is not terrible, but it is somewhat erratic.
- 5vdc coming of the A/R board is at around 5.4vdc
- The unregulated 10.3 VDC is around 12vdc – high but within specs
- The 36vac from the power supply to the PCB was around 33vac.
At this point I decide that the best thing to do is to get an A/R board rebuild cap kit and order a new Big Blue cap for the power supply. I put in my order from therealbobroberts.net and I’ll see how things look afterwards.
I also opened up the Marquee section to see if there were any issues in that area. I found a shattered fluorescent bulb that is still plugged in, and the frame that contained both lights and transformers was broken. I took it out, fixed the frame, put in new fluorescent bulb and new starters and then plugged everything back in. Voila! Marquee is lit up and so was the blacklight and I could see the great background behind the mirror. Making some progress.
I did one last thing before closing up the machine I tested the fuses in the monitor and in the power supply. All of them were fine and working well. Off to order some parts and wait for them to come in.
11/15/2014
Got the A/R rebuild kit and the Big Blue capacitor from Bob Roberts. I installed them and put everything back together. I was able to get more stable power readings, but otherwise the game was still the same. I read all the power point on the PCB and most of the power setting looked ok, but the spot kill was still on. That points to no video signal getting to the monitor. At this point I decided to order a cap kit for the PCB board and a LM305 voltage regulator for the A/R board after referencing the Asteroids troubleshooting encyclopedia.
More to come.
11/29/2014
I received the PCB cap kit and the LM305 from Bob Roberts and installed them.
I didn’t immediately see a change then suddenly there was a dot on the screen that was not there before. Woohoo we have a working monitor! One less thing to worry about. However, still no working game. I did notice however that the dot was moving on the screen. I did a couple of tests and noticed that it moved left to right while adjusting the X gain on the PCB and it moved up and down while adjusting the Y gain.
After getting home and doing some research I found a post on KLOV where someone had the same issue. They checked the voltage regulators and found that one of them was dead. I needed some voltage regulators on hand anyway so I ordered a few voltage regulator from my friend Mike at twistywristarcade.com. I’ll check them next time I’m in the arcade and see where we go from there.
More to come.
12/5/2014
I checked the voltage regulators. They were all good. Changed them anyway. No change. Looks like it’s time for me to get some outside help on this one. I will be reaching out to a fellow KLOV member that fixes Asteroids boards to see if he can help.
More to come.
Got repaired boards from DouglasGB on KLOV.
Game works great, but no sound.
Found a bad trace on A/R board. Soldered in a wire to repair. Audio is working.
Game Repaired!