Hello all. As many of you know I've been the proud owner of a Star Wars upright for what, 11-12 years now? Bought with what was minor faults or at least they would have been were I more technically savvy.
I've enjoyed about 45 mins of playtime in that whole period. I've replaced.....
All 6 transistors on the WG6100, Big Blue, fuse holder, fuses and sent the board away for repair and still the damn thing didn't work. Game play freezing and various monitor woes. There was already a LV2000 installed when I bought it.
In the meantime I treated it to a new marquee (I covered all that in a post a couple of years ago).
I found that I had RAM bad in a location, P-Man sent me a couple of chips. Seemed to cure the freezing issues, still had the graphics woes and then a RAM chip went again in the same location, the new replacement.... (bah) 2'nd replacement chip cured the game play and that's not currently an issue. Regarding the graphics it was suggested that analogue vector chip was SNAFU, so it had one of those too with no change.
So in this time in disgust the cab just sat downstairs non working. Other stuff I'd cured cap kits, yep done, lasergames - fixed those. Defender sound issue, cured that. A few jobs that were easy to moderate I'd done and felt pretty chuffed I'd cured.
My woodworking and spray painting on cabinets including ground up builds? A breeze, never a problem. But my Star Wars? This thing really seemed cursed and destined to NEVER WORK.
Just before last Xmas I asked about on here and a few peoples names, people with far more knowledge than I got suggested. I was beginning to get desperate, I'd really considered selling it more than once and if it didn't get sorted soon then it was gone.
So having not done a cap kit on it before I replaced those and gave the neck board, HV board and deflection board a good scrub and clean. Replaced the caps. Any better? Er, no. Infact I was down to just blue colour....
OK, enough. I removed the 3 boards and sent the to our very own TB Lilley (James). He quickly tested them and confirmed they weren't the culprit and suggested the boards were still the problem. Well that was something anyway.
Next send the boards of to another regular here Equites (Nad) another top bloke who really knows his stuff and confirmed, yes there were problems. His fix log is as follows....
"Your SW PCB set is repaired and now working 100%.
The PCB was actually running blind, the problem was that
there was a failed 8-Bit DAC (DAC08) in the analogue final output section.
I've replaced this and the display was back.
I also replaced all five op-amps (TL082) in the final output
section, as they are inexpensive and prone to failure. The ones on your
PCB were the original items and could have failed anytime. A couple of
them actually broke off while I was desoldering them. I tend to do this
as a matter of course on all Atari vector stuff for reliability. I'm
surprised (previous repairer) did not do this.
I also found a Quad Analogue Switch (LF13201N) which was not
working to spec, and caused the vectors to not align 100%, they would have just
gotten worse over time.
I had intially thought one of your 12-Bit DACs which drive
the display had failed, but they were fine. I did notice that someone had
already desoldered them both, and then simply soldered them back on. They
were definately the original DACs, I could not figure out why they only
socketed one of them until I desoldered it and noticed traces had been damaged.
I have now tidied all this up for you, and socketed most of the output
area for ease of maintenance."
So this sounded MEGA!
Blimey, he's right too, it does work!
In the meantime I thought I'd get some powdercoating done on a couple of parts.
The cash box and service panel were still coated in 32 year old paint and going red rusty.
... and after?
The coin doors too weren't that bad but were only painted over a red primer so those were done too and I re-polished the coin reject buttons.
Anyway the parts arrived back from the Nadster safe and sound. It will be working now! Definitely!
Install the boards, boots "The Force Will Be With You..." - no display. Still plays blind. Grrrrr...
Voltages were close enough on the AR2. So it was a monitor issue.
So I was all set to take the whole monitor up to James and see if he could see what was the matter with the thing. Spoke to Pobster (Paul) top bloke and we were working our way through components with a WG6100 flow diagram.
Blah, blah, check voltages the chart said. At P900 - "Is there + or - 28v?" Nope... +20.5 and - 0.5v.
"check continuity of the transistor supplying power underneath the monitor chassis" so I get my meter and look underneath. What do I find? A yellow wire off transistor Q102. Just floating there!
You have to be joking! When did that come astray? The final hurdle couldn't be that easy, could it? Resoldered it and fired her up... only bloomin works!!
So there you have it. At long, long time working. So if I get another problem with it I hope next time won't be so bad!
A big thankyou to Nad, James, Paul, Alifonso, Andy W and everyone else who helped me get it up and working! Better late than never!
Rich
I've enjoyed about 45 mins of playtime in that whole period. I've replaced.....
All 6 transistors on the WG6100, Big Blue, fuse holder, fuses and sent the board away for repair and still the damn thing didn't work. Game play freezing and various monitor woes. There was already a LV2000 installed when I bought it.
In the meantime I treated it to a new marquee (I covered all that in a post a couple of years ago).
I found that I had RAM bad in a location, P-Man sent me a couple of chips. Seemed to cure the freezing issues, still had the graphics woes and then a RAM chip went again in the same location, the new replacement.... (bah) 2'nd replacement chip cured the game play and that's not currently an issue. Regarding the graphics it was suggested that analogue vector chip was SNAFU, so it had one of those too with no change.
So in this time in disgust the cab just sat downstairs non working. Other stuff I'd cured cap kits, yep done, lasergames - fixed those. Defender sound issue, cured that. A few jobs that were easy to moderate I'd done and felt pretty chuffed I'd cured.
My woodworking and spray painting on cabinets including ground up builds? A breeze, never a problem. But my Star Wars? This thing really seemed cursed and destined to NEVER WORK.
Just before last Xmas I asked about on here and a few peoples names, people with far more knowledge than I got suggested. I was beginning to get desperate, I'd really considered selling it more than once and if it didn't get sorted soon then it was gone.
So having not done a cap kit on it before I replaced those and gave the neck board, HV board and deflection board a good scrub and clean. Replaced the caps. Any better? Er, no. Infact I was down to just blue colour....
OK, enough. I removed the 3 boards and sent the to our very own TB Lilley (James). He quickly tested them and confirmed they weren't the culprit and suggested the boards were still the problem. Well that was something anyway.
Next send the boards of to another regular here Equites (Nad) another top bloke who really knows his stuff and confirmed, yes there were problems. His fix log is as follows....
"Your SW PCB set is repaired and now working 100%.
The PCB was actually running blind, the problem was that
there was a failed 8-Bit DAC (DAC08) in the analogue final output section.
I've replaced this and the display was back.
I also replaced all five op-amps (TL082) in the final output
section, as they are inexpensive and prone to failure. The ones on your
PCB were the original items and could have failed anytime. A couple of
them actually broke off while I was desoldering them. I tend to do this
as a matter of course on all Atari vector stuff for reliability. I'm
surprised (previous repairer) did not do this.
I also found a Quad Analogue Switch (LF13201N) which was not
working to spec, and caused the vectors to not align 100%, they would have just
gotten worse over time.
I had intially thought one of your 12-Bit DACs which drive
the display had failed, but they were fine. I did notice that someone had
already desoldered them both, and then simply soldered them back on. They
were definately the original DACs, I could not figure out why they only
socketed one of them until I desoldered it and noticed traces had been damaged.
I have now tidied all this up for you, and socketed most of the output
area for ease of maintenance."
So this sounded MEGA!
Blimey, he's right too, it does work!
In the meantime I thought I'd get some powdercoating done on a couple of parts.
The cash box and service panel were still coated in 32 year old paint and going red rusty.
... and after?
The coin doors too weren't that bad but were only painted over a red primer so those were done too and I re-polished the coin reject buttons.
Anyway the parts arrived back from the Nadster safe and sound. It will be working now! Definitely!
Install the boards, boots "The Force Will Be With You..." - no display. Still plays blind. Grrrrr...
Voltages were close enough on the AR2. So it was a monitor issue.
So I was all set to take the whole monitor up to James and see if he could see what was the matter with the thing. Spoke to Pobster (Paul) top bloke and we were working our way through components with a WG6100 flow diagram.
Blah, blah, check voltages the chart said. At P900 - "Is there + or - 28v?" Nope... +20.5 and - 0.5v.
"check continuity of the transistor supplying power underneath the monitor chassis" so I get my meter and look underneath. What do I find? A yellow wire off transistor Q102. Just floating there!
You have to be joking! When did that come astray? The final hurdle couldn't be that easy, could it? Resoldered it and fired her up... only bloomin works!!
So there you have it. At long, long time working. So if I get another problem with it I hope next time won't be so bad!
A big thankyou to Nad, James, Paul, Alifonso, Andy W and everyone else who helped me get it up and working! Better late than never!
Rich
