Pac-Man ball repair and restore

[muddymusic]

It's been a long time since I picked up this cab and it's finally time to crack on with it.

There's pretty much no information on these online, so I'll document as much as I can as it might help out later when these start to get in to more peoples collections.

The cabinet is pretty badly rusted around all the metal parts, I'm guessing it was sited on a pier or outside an arcade for its working life. It's pretty much all surface stuff so I'll just need to do lots of sanding and polishing!

Back playfield is in good shape with no broken parts, just very dirty.

Lots of the screws will need to be replaced.

Rear of the back playfield.

Inside the front door.

Rusted around the pusher shelf motor

 

[muddymusic]

What was very good to find was that there's a complete set of manuals inside, and with the lack of stuff online I'm sure these will prove invaluable.

When I opened up the pcb cage I could tell I was probably going to have problems.

Looks like it's been exposed to a lot of humidity, the tray is really rusty and there is visible track damage on the pcb.

Main transformer.

What I wasn't expecting to see was that the pcb is a Namco System 10 Jamma board! It's got a couple of extra daughterboards for the flashers, motors and video output. Here's some pics of it all separated and the connections it uses.

muddymusic2016-07-02 10:56:53

 

[Ronnie Dent]

Olly, that's way too much work mate, I will take it of your hands, save all that stress!

Seriously though I just got a Kash Kong pusher and the internals look very similar apart from the main board, this one is PC. Based, even the hoppers are the same, I have learned loads over the past few weeks, thanks for sharing the info and was good to see the pics. I had a stuck on hopper which puzzled me for a while but each has its own driver board and it was a shorted transistor, hoppers are powered all the time and switched on via the driver board. Look forward to the resto.

Cheers Ronnie

 

[penrhos]

Have the roms been dumped for MAME?

At least if the game PCB is toast you'll be able to get another System-10 one easily.

 

[muddymusic]

Have the roms been dumped for MAME?

At least if the game PCB is toast you'll be able to get another System-10 one easily.

They haven't sadly, which was part of the reason this cab has been sat doing nothing for so long, it needs some special kit to dump this type of rom, and it's not something I have access to. They are surface mounted too so it's a really tricky job even with all the right stuff.

 

[muddymusic]

That leads me on to what happened next....first power up the cab didn't show much life, the wipers were working which showed those motors were ok, and cab illumination was working but that was it.

First thing I did was check the 3 power supplies on the base, which was made a lot easier with the schematics listed in the manual.

PSU1, 30W 5v supply, 100v in, 2x 5v outputs.
PSU2, 50W 12v supply, 100v in, 2x 12v outputs.
PSU3, 150W 24v supply, 100v in, 3x 24v outputs.

All were ok, so next up I made a little adapter so I could feed the video signal on the daughterboard to the jamma edge. Pcb was unfortunately completely dead. I knew this hardware is pretty flaky at the best of times - and that's without a board having been exposed to damp conditions for its life. I had a couple of spare motherboards from other System 10 games so was able to swap some boards around. It appeared that the fault was with the motherboard AND the rom board.

This level of pcb is well above my level, so I sent everything off to Porchy to see if he could get anywhere with it, and also to see if it was possible to dump the roms as there's no dump of these. That's where the bad new was. Turned out the rom board had corrupted, and all the data on the roms was lost. As there is was no dump of the game there really wasn't anything that could be done, so that was the end of it, I'd need to source another pcb set.

I asked around a load of places, but it just wasn't happening. It turns out lots of other people (operators) are looking for working boards too. Best offer I had was Namco asking £900 + VAT for one, and given that's the price of a working cab it seemed like this little project was going nowhere.

I think I actually put the cab up for sale not long after that thinking it was just never going to happen, but I had a chat with Alpha1 who said he thought after seeing the photos of my pcb that he'd seen one of these sets somewhere and would try to get it for me. Sure enough a few weeks later I got a picture texted through of a complete pcb tray for Pac-Man ball! I couldn't believe it. After meeting up not long after I got it back and was able to hook it up to the cab...it only bloody worked!

With this I've been able to access test mode, tray and 1 hopper are working ok, but one hopper is jammed and I've got no sound at all so that's next to check out.

 

[Purity]

Get the roms dumped off the working board, and get the dead board working again

 

[muddymusic]

I can't, I don't have the kit and don't know anybody who can do it.

 

[silverfox0786]

I can't, I don't have the kit and don't know anybody who can do it.

Porchy?

 

[muddymusic]

He was the first person I asked, he said it needs a special adapter to read the rom which costs upwards of £200, and even with that there's a very high possibility of damage or corruption - his advice was after the trouble it took to get a working one in the first place it's probably a good idea not to f*ck about with it.

 

[jase38]

Interesting pics. I never knew these had a Namco System 10 jamma board, very cool. Glad you managed to find a replacement board.

 

[muddymusic]

Completely stripped down the playfield yesterday, it's so dirty it is quite hard to see the text on the lcd. There's also some rust forming around the fruit coin entry parts, and on the coin shelf.

I used dry 00-grade wire wool on the very light patches of rust which takes off any marks, then for the more stubborn stuff a tiny bit of t-cut as well, applying almost no pressure to the metal parts. Then gave everything a good polish with a microfibre cloth, cleaned the glass and finally gave all the plastics a good clean with Novus 2 then Novus 1.

It's all come up like new I'm pleased to say.

 

[lespotts]

Looking good mate, a nice alternative piece for the games room

 

[Jodo]

Beautiful work - a great little story too - what are the odds! You must have wanted one of these for what, 3 years or more? Jodo2016-07-06 22:38:47

 

[muddymusic]

Yeah been waiting a long time to get one of these....it's not like they are hard to get, it's just the £1200+ price tag was saying no!

 

[muddymusic]

So today was a good day for this cab. All the tests seemed to suggest everything was working ok, but it was impossible to know for sure without loading all 3 hoppers up and getting it going.

I made sure they were all empty and clean and polished up the cash box ready for some coins.

Now it was time to fill the thing up with 1800(!) 10p's.

Looks like a pusher now!

Ran a load of coins through the hoppers in test mode and after a bit of a struggle (certanly due to it being unused for so long) they started working and I was able to get a couple of short games in.

It's not quite running right just yet as I keep getting stuck coins, to be expected really as it was all rusty and hasn't been working for well over a year. I'll strip down the coin and hopper chutes next and give them a good clean and spray with WD40 so the coins slide through nicely. Also many screws need to be replaced so those jobs will be next on the list.

Really chuffed to be able to play it though!

 

[muddymusic]

Some videos of it running for anyone who's not seen these.

Attract Mode
[tube]OwBE_vI1vnE[/tube]

Short gameplay vid
[tube]Q4HJ6gVwTiI[/tube]

50-Coin bonus mode
[tube]DqhWzKlpIm0[/tube]

 

[Alpha1]

Awesome, best pusher to have! In Japan they did loads of other versions of this machine. There's a Makaimura one!

 

[teddydog]

hi glad you got your packman ball working mine has just packed in it shows error 5-13 divider sensor error Right everything checks outvoltage wise im sure the sensors ok do you have any ideas as im stuck>

 

[muddymusic]

I never had that particular error, but it sounds like the sensor or solenoid is faulty. Swap the one from the left side and see if you still get the error then you'll have a better idea of the cause.