Arcades in Norfolk - July 2016

Here's a selection of photo's from some arcades in Norfolk I visited whilst on holiday last week.

Highlight for me was the Namco Final Lap 2. Set to 20p play or 50p for 3 credits. I was in a decent condition and played OK, but would need a few tweaks if moved into my home arcade. The big ass Jurassic Park twin shooter was a good fun too but I didn't take any photos of that.

REVIVAL Solstice 2016 - 30-31 July 2016

Had a great weekend at Revival, great show and peeps involved, good selection of Vids/Pins/Console/Computers. Here's the photos I took...

My Games, Video Pinball and Centipede behaved all weekend but Hang-On developed a PCB fault early Saturday afternoon which I couldn't fix.

I even reset the scores from my cab so everyone had a fair chance of entering their initials, shame the bloody thing broke down!

View from the show hall, the Football game was cancelled on Saturday. The after hours game 'team 'Vac' decided on never happened in preference to propping up the hotel bar.

The event in full swing.

Jon Stoodley chilling at the Barrel Pacman, making it all look so easy.

Saturday afternoon Walter Day Skype talk.

A few photos before the show opened.

Saturday Evening meal with the organisers, traders, helpers, 'Vaccers etc. With 30 of us in the room it was a good noisy laugh, especially watching one of the Retro Lords down a pint of curry sauce for a bit of fun!

Nice score on Video Pinball, going by Twin Galaxies its in WR territory...

Alex and Roger going two's up!

Steve's Meet 12-03-16

Atari Missile Command PCB repair

I recently offered to look at a Missile Command PCB that had stopped working properly, symptoms were described as the image not syncing on the monitor, I decided that I could probably fix the issue, the board arrived today and I fired it up in my test rig tonight.

The problem was the same on my test rig as shown below. All colours present but the video wouldn't sync to the monitor.

I cracked open the schematics and headed straight for the sync circuit section. Using my trusty logic probe I checked the LS32 at J7 the HSync* input on pin one was dead, pin 2 Vsync was pulsing away OK on my probe. The Hsync* signal comes from a 7474 at A9, Input signals on pin 12 looked good along with the horizontal timing on pin 11, but pin 9 was showing now activity and no high or low signal on my probe.

 

I piggybacked a new 7474 and the game synced back into life, the IC was removed, a new socket fitted and replacement IC inserted.

Another classic game lives to be played again. :)