Arcade repair event? Arc-aid!

[Nes4life]

Event: 'Arc-aid: Cambridge'

Confirmed venue: Cambridge Computer Museum

Date: 12th July (free rollover to 13th July for those who want to continue on)

Cost: £5 online or £7 on door (exclusive discount code: 'tempest' - do not share this)

Purchase a ticket here: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/34377/Arc-Aid-12th-and-13th-July-2014/

Book hotel here: http://www.travelodge.co.uk/hotels/577/Cambridge-Newmarket-Road-hotel

Highlights:

- Repair museum's cabs! Click here to see a few - also thread discussion from Ianski

- Play museum's working cabs and others (inc. pins) that are brought along by attendees

- Organised arcade-centric talks by forum members

- PCB repair workshop (register and bring a PCB - maybe you'll learn how to fix it yourself!)

- 100's of retro consoles to play and read about in the museum

- Exclusive museum access for forum members all evening until midnight!

- Buy / Sell / Trade

Talks:

[list type=decimal][*]Jason Fitzpartick - All about the museum.[*]NES4Life (Phill) - 'Collecting, cabs and code'.[*]t-m - 'So you bought a broken PCB? Now what?!'[*]
[/list type=decimal]

Equipment:

- t-m: soldering/desoldering equipment, JAMMA test rig, EPROM programmer, logic probe/scope

Organisation:

- Jason Fitzpatrick: Museum founder / venue & cab owner

- NES4Life (Phill): general organisation of event

- ianski - initial checkup of cabs before event - see thread

Museum's cabs:

- t-m

Other cabs / pins coming:

- Steve - 2 pins and a Jamma cab

- ianski - ROTJ

Workshop gurus:

- t-m and 1 other

PCB bearers:

- NES4Life: Sega Mega-tech with minor P1 control fault, sound issue & potential battery replacement

- DrGlitch: Turtles in Time with some severed traces

Possible attendees from this forum:

- NES4Life (confirmed)

- Dr.Glitch

- strykr

- t-m (confirmed)

- Steve (confirmed)

- virtvic (confirmed)

- ianski (confirmed)

- Alpha1

- Bloodflowers (confirmed)

and 1 other

--------------

Original thread:

Hey, what's the general consensus on a meetup based around carrying out repairs together, knowledge sharing, and trading parts / PCBs / games / other retro (oh and playing a few cabs / consoles too)? I attended a smallish retro event in the southeast a while back and it was awesome; some guy used the entire day to make repairs, others traded and talked about the stuff they brought in and others just played a few games and held tournaments. Was just held in a village hall. Some guys stayed in a hotel the night before and after; much food and beer consumed!

Professional repairers could attend complete with looms - repairs with no postage costs sounds awesome to me. We could have a few talks put on about people's experiences in the industry. Bring your spare parts, chips, caps & soldering irons! I'd love a 101 on using logic probes and hunting down bad traces etc. what's the best way to clean up a leaked battery, how do you make an X-to-Jamma connector etc.

What say ye?

I bet even the thought of instant trades minus postage costs (with access to test rigs) is enough for some of us to make it a day or 2?

Nes4life2014-07-10 11:06:39

 

[retrorepair]

Sounds pretty interesting, when else would you be able to talk shop with like minded folk and have a bit of hands on group repairing?

I'd be in for sure.

 

[virtvic]

+1 From me too.

 

[69er]

brilliant idea but it does resound of the 'majority' hounding the 'minority' with a list of personal difficulties. most of the time with arcade stuff hands on is the only way you ever learn.. and as technology advances it gets more difficult to follow ...... just in design the components are now minute and often cant be identified . even frequently labelled as 'NO USER REPLACEABLE PARTS' ie 'chuck it when broken' or we the makers reserve the right to charge you extotionately for replacement parts.

have that experience HARRY LEVY SWTCHMODE PSU ACQUIRED THIS WEEK FOR £170.22 with pp & vat........ just u/s (stands for un-servicable)

i have read hundreds of technical threads here and elsewhere where forum members who dont have sufficient knowledge but do have the correct attitude and ambition to do their own repairs or at least diagnostics towards a repair get frustrated because they have limited avenues of advice........ and ...........i have written basic instructions on using a multimeter for perusal for such readers..(its on J+ technical)...i admire the time the tech guys on these forums put into replying with step by step assitance where possible.

i have a printed engineers course published by coin slot and all my city and guilds course notes still and if this type of thing got suggested in the northwest during the winter i would be for it ....

its just a bit difficult to sometimes translate 35+ years of doing it into a ready to digest seminar tho showing somebody how to solder and testing selected components is quite straightforward....

however many of the tech guys will tell you the tools are expensive and essential to them so would possibly be reluctant to allow everyone free eratic use of them........

i have often considered printing a simple course in electronics for beginners ( and most people who collect arcadia are already capable of wiring a plug etc. ) but i mean from that level as its quickly covered and lets face it if your plug is wrong you get no further with 'live' fault diagnosis.......just dont usually get the time in summer.. i recommend some good reading for general electronic repairs but many go into calculations and theory unrelated directly to specific problems causing loss in interest unless you want to design and build projects from scratch......... and almost or probably none cover amusement machines as the main topic.

maybe we should begin an 'on forum' classroom to pass on knowledge but it would not be useful if the pace got too fast too quickly for all those interested,,, but some people would maybe still bombard the topic with specifics which need to be kept in 'tech help'

finally kent is too far from here

 

[guddler]

Kent's too far for me too.

To be honest, last time I did this was at the first Retro Ball. The concept there was that we had a big marquee / tent thing up in the middle of the event with the intention of initially keeping the games going, and also the idea was that forum members (this was when I was on J+) could bring the odd board to be looked at etc.

Problem was, I ended up spending most of my weekend looking down a microscope working on surface mount crap on some freakin' crappy fighting game that I normally wouldn't have pissed on had it been on fire. By the end of the weekend I just wanted to throw stuff at the wall and I'd not seen much of the event outside of the tent.

Pretty much swore then I'd not do it again, and therefore don't even take a toolbox with me to events any more

If you can find some people knowledgeable enough to be able to do it without relaying too much duff information that are also enthusiastic about the idea then go for it, but I'm guessing they'll be very much in the minority

 

[jengineer]

sounds good, I'm not really interested in repairing game boards but I do like tinkering with monitors and its a nice feeling when you breathe new life into an old chassis
jengineer2014-05-15 08:45:31

 

[Purity]

I think this actually does happen but on a smaller scale i.e. a few people go round to someones house and we discuss or look at a problem and try and suggest things to try or even try them out whilst there. There's is fairly sporadic though and not organised

I think if something like this was going to happen you would need to have a plan of the things you want to look at, that would interest most people and stick to that, rather that wasting the whole day looking at a crappy fighting game that no-one is really interested in. Then everyone gets some benefit from it

A NW tech gathering sounds good.

 

[guddler]

If it was round my place, for a few people I know and centred around getting my games working (all but one of which have faults after the winter!) then I'd do one, but I have a feeling that's not really what is being requested here!

I has the skillz, but seriously lack the motivation

 

[69er]

If it was round my place, for a few people I know and centred around getting my games working (all but one of which have faults after the winter!) then I'd do one, but I have a feeling that's not really what is being requested here!

I has the skillz, but seriously lack the motivation

Ahhhhh .......... now thats diagnosed all my faulty arcade video problems...... ......... its ' Lo MS '

............................ Lack of MOTIVATION SYNDROME ............

totally agree !

 

[Nes4life]

Decided that I might approach Cambridge Computing Museum to see if they'd be interested in hosting an arcade-repair related event. They actually have cabs and a lot of repair equipment to hand (as they maintain 1000's of retro consoles). Give me sometime to see what's available... it's probably worth a trip just to spend a day at the museum. Failing that, I might contact the guy who hosted the event in Otford village hall as it's only 45mins from London on the train and pretty central in Kent.

For us south-easterners though I'll also start looking at hosting another smaller event somewhere (even if it's at my own home or local village hall). We should definitely all meet up some time and share this hobby.

 

[Pacman83]

This is the type of idea that could be translated into a great idea for a big event like Play Manchester.
The arcade side of these large events is huge now and some guys giving advice, tips and experiences from the repair and restoration side of this hobby would be a benefit to a big slice of the audience.

UKvAc could possibly arrange this with Replay Events and in conjunction with RGP etc. Utilise a small stage at the event and rally some of the troops here to share some experiences. I feel this would a great success. There's so much experience here in this country.

 

[Nes4life]

Ok so I made an initial contact with the museum and Jason loves the idea!!
I'm going to start the ball rolling this week. Something like this held at the Cambridge Computing Museum has the potential of being epic!
They've got a lot of facilities for large groups as well as restoration; and they've got an awesome retro collection to peruse to boot. I've seen they have accommodation etc.

So, who wants to volunteer to put on a talk or offer their skills in a particular area of interest? It's early days so I'm not going to hold anyone to anything... just getting some ideas to present to the museum for any potential event.
If you're a professional and you have fees then let me know what they are via PM!

Not thought about dates yet... maybe the museum will guide us.

 

[Nes4life]

Exciting news!!! The Cambridge Computer Museum are totally up for it!!

They are willing to strike a deal with the UK arcade forum community (bear in mind they are a charity that is totally geared up for retro preservation, education and play):

- They will provide a FREE private venue area with separate talks room and access to their cabs for an entire Saturday. Doors open at 10am.

- They will give us discounted access to the museum at £5 online or £7 at the door (this is mandatory for all attendees). The general public will also have access to the museum.

- They will close the museum around 5pm and then we will have exclusive access until midnight!! They will obviously allow food, drinks, snacks and alcohol to be consumed. They have hundreds of consoles / games as well as the cabs.

- If we have enough attendees they'll call up a burger-van for lunchtime (classy) otherwise we'll be getting food from their 'Pac lunch shop' (which is oddly stocked with lager!)

- They will rollover our access to Sunday if there are any clingers-on who want to finish what they started. I'm totally making a weekend of it. There's a cheap Travel Lodge or similar close by.

- They'll have a generic Jamma cab available that we can switch the board as we please - so we'll need some awesome Jamma PCBs brought along

So here's what we will organise and provide in return for all of the rather generous things above (besides giving a fiver to the museum and turning up):

- the main request is that we attempt to fix any of the cabs that have fallen into disrepair! How awesome is that?! Jason personally owns the cabs so he'd like us to see what we can do. Please see list of cabs and various ailments at bottom of this post. I'm sure we can sort something out.

- we'll need 3 to 4 people to put on a talk (as we've already discussed). If your talk has a minor practical point (how to properly apply a CPO or discharge a monitor for example) then we can organise for a new CPO to be printed for one of the museum cabs or for a cab to be wheeled in for discharge.

- if we'd like to hold a practical PCB repair session / workshop then we'll need a test rig, common spare parts, and we'll need the tools. If we do decide this is a good idea then I'd suggest we limit it to a fixed number and have people register what they are going to bring in advance. Any professionals / knowledgeable types will need to be available for wisdom impartation but maybe this can be done on a rotational basis or even on a fee basis (let's talk turkey). Either way, we'll need to be fixing the museum's cabs as our priority. If there are any professionals with fees then we'll need to front that cost as a community or ask for services effectively be donated to the museum.

What other details do we need from the museum to make this event a success?

So, what do you all think? The museum is an awesome place to visit anyway but with a private venue, exclusive evening social, access to cabs onsite and a mandate to do some fixing it's gotta be worth a weekender right?!

I'll decide on a date in July / August soon.

Unconfirmed museum cab list:

- A generic 60 in one Cab working. (upright games)

- A generic 19 in one Cab working (horizontal games)

- A non-original Street Fighter Turbo cab (sometimes puts horiz lines across the screen)

- A sega mega-tech (a couple of carts don't work)

- A X-Men COTA machine - the lopt transformer is shot - replacement already purchased but not fitted.

- A 60 in 1 jamma board in an Atari Primal Rage Cab (21" VGA CRT fitted)

- An original Atari Asteroids cocktail cab - The HV diode in the monitor is dead - replacement purchased. May also have reset fault on main board - there is a second spare main board.

- An original Atari Tempest upright cab (picture on monitor keeps getting bigger than the screen!)

- A NeoGeo MVS with 163 in 1 cart (and other original carts) in a clear box with psu that then connects to a standard CRT TV via SCART. (great for people to see what is in a NeoGeo arcade cab!)

- a couple of arcade PCB's (one is football and can't remember the other)

In storage (and from memory) we have :

- A Space Invaders upright - condition unknown - US spec from local airforce base.

- A Centipede upright - condition unknown - US spec from local airforce base.

- A Gorf upright - condition unknown - US spec from local airforce base. I also have a spare set of Gorf boards.

- possibly more!

 

[guddler]

Hmm, this is shaping up to be something considerably different than I had first envisaged!

Date dependant as 1) Retro Revival is in August so you MUST avoid that, and also there is a week in August that would personally rule me out as I'm elsewhere, otherwise, I could be tempted by this, primarily because the museum is something I'd like to visit anyway and I used to live in Cambridge so there's the possibility of tie-ups and visits for me anyway.

If I decided to attend, I could fix the Asteroids HV diode (easily!!) and the PCB. I could fix the Centipede provided it was a PCB fault (possibly a monitor fault) and be generally helpful for golden age PCBs (up to early 80's I guess).

Depending on what transpires, I could be persuaded to do a talk, demo or some such, perhaps in co-operation with someone like Tim (TRM).

But Cambridge is a good 4 to 5 hours drive for me and the weekend would cost me several hundred quid so I'm not committing to anything until I know I can make a proper kick-ass weekend of it.

Oh, PS: While it may not be, it sounds to me like the Tempest monitor has "blooming" HV, which usually, on B/W vector monitors is a sign it needs a new HV diode. I don't know if colour vectors have in-line diodes. If they do, I'd guess it needs one. If they don't, it could be more serious. I'm no expert on WG-6100 monitors though.

 

[bonehead]

Well Cambridge is only 20 mins for me so i would be defintaly up for it. Believe it or not i had no idea there was a retro museum there!!!!!

Dependant on date i could take a couple of cabs there for people to play and a pinball or two.

Let me know when you have a date.

Steve

 

[virtvic]

I'm definitely up for this, as long as I'm not in America at the time!

 

[Nes4life]

So things are starting to shape up!

The museum has some equipment available in its classroom that we can use for the workshop / field repairs of the museum's cabs:

- 16 soldering irons / stands (cheap spec)

- a couple of oscilloscopes (old and 20 / 40Mhz)

- a Dataman S3 eprom programmer/reader

- multimeter & logic probe (just the 1?)

We'll still need more I guess so feel free to make your suggestions.

I'll get around to making an official list of who's coming, what they're bringing / doing, and what we need to organise. I'll also set a date based on a few suggestions that have been made.

We'll definitely inform the local rags / radio and perhaps the Beeb so we can make it an exciting day for us and the museum. Really looking forward to just meeting up, playing, learning and fixing.

 

[Pacman83]

Well done. Sounds great

 

[guddler]

If I make it then I'd bring some somewhat more heavyweight PCB repair kit like a Fluke 9100, logic analyser etc. Let's be honest most people that are serious about PCB repair don't do it with a logic probe, or at least not a logic probe alone by any stretch of the imagination*

*OK, there may be a hardcore few but they're making it hard for themselves!

 

[Muppz]

In the good old days of tech meets the deal used to be Chinese and beer as payment. Those were the days