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Post by gliptitude on Dec 13, 2013 19:33:05 GMT -5
It's easy to remove the boards (well, watch out for the HV flyback on one of the monitor PCBs!!!) & ship them as needed. I've shipped many an arcade motherboard PCB or monitor PCB over the decades... Ok. .. I thought maybe the monitor would need direct attention. Or that diagnosing the problem might require seeing it all together in action. If not then I guess not so big of a deal. PM me regarding KLOV sponsorship. I'm not sure how that works--hit me up & point me to relevant info. Thank you for the offer. .. After looking around the site, I really can't figure out what is required to get a recommendation. It seems like the sponsor is supposed to make the recommendation himself, but it does not say how to do that or exactly where to send it. So I went ahead and made a small donation instead. Hopefully I get access soon. |
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Post by jasonbar on Dec 14, 2013 21:21:53 GMT -5
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Post by gliptitude on Jan 28, 2014 23:47:45 GMT -5
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Post by VectorX on Jan 29, 2014 0:03:36 GMT -5
Hey, great!
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Post by jfmateos on Jan 29, 2014 1:02:10 GMT -5
Congratulations gliptitude, I feel a bit jealous ;-)
I would love to own one of those classic cabinets.
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Post by jasonbar on Jan 29, 2014 14:42:05 GMT -5
Stupendous. If we may pry, what was wrong with it, who fixed it, & how much was the fix?
-Jason
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Post by gliptitude on Jan 29, 2014 16:38:05 GMT -5
The repairs were done by Mike Salay, who is on KLOV and can be contacted there. He mostly does Atari vector BOARD repairs.
Would rather not say what I paid because it was kind of a special arrangement based on me being local and having some common interests and insights related to video games. Let's just say that it was a very good deal and less than he originally quoted. .. His original quote was also very reasonable though, around $100. But that did not include monitor work. He generally does not work on monitors and will not accept a monitor from a non local customer.
Here are some excerpts from the repair process and the status reports he gave me:
update #1:
just tested your boards.....AR board is fine.....Asteroids game board has sound issues (thrust and explosion) but plays fine.
update #2:
Hooked up the monitor and got nothing...not even neck glow. I'm going to pull the deflection board and reflow all the header pins. Hoping that will get us some vectors.
update #3 :
pulled the deflection board late last night....found bad solder joints on the tube heater voltage supply and one of the deflection transistor connectors.....repaired the connectors and the monitor fired right up !!!!
update #4:
The thrust and explosion problem was a failed chip in the noise generator circuit. Everything is now 100%
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Post by jasonbar on Feb 5, 2014 14:43:31 GMT -5
Thanks for the scoop. This is why I gave up on collecting vector arcade games...so fussy! ;P
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Post by gliptitude on Feb 7, 2014 23:30:46 GMT -5
This is why I gave up on collecting vector arcade games...so fussy! ;P Heh? I got the machine fixed very easily. This is a success story. |
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Post by jasonbar on Feb 8, 2014 0:05:40 GMT -5
Hope it stays fixed! (I'm cynical after my vector experiences--hope yours is better than mine!)
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Post by VectorX on Feb 8, 2014 0:26:46 GMT -5
That's too bad...what happened?
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Post by gliptitude on Feb 9, 2014 18:28:18 GMT -5
.. Yeah I remember you saying you had owned a few and had perpetual problems. I do not remember which games it was you had, or if you even named them.
.. With my machine it is possibly THE most common and best documented vector game. And then having a local (and cheap) guy who specializes in Atari vector, it wasn't that big of a deal, (and I'm sure this guy would help me again if another problem arises). BUT, aside from the sound problem, it looks like the problems with this machine were fairly common and easily diagnosed, (his repairs were very similar to some that I had found prescribed in a klov article).
I thinks it's a lot different with Cinematronics games. They used a greater variety of monitors and graphics setups etc and they are also less documented as well as more prone to breaking down.
I was happy to hear back from Mike Salay a week or so ago that he was about to dig into an Armor .. Attack restoration. I don't know that he has ever ventured outside of Atari. Hopefully it goes well and he becomes willing to work on the Cinematronics games.
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Post by gliptitude on Feb 25, 2018 4:41:19 GMT -5
.. Well I sold my Asteroids game a couple days ago. Although I am needing money more than usual lately, it was more a factor of having the inkling to sell it and swiftly acting on that feeling while it existed, knowing that it would otherwise be very difficult for me to decide to get rid of this game. I'm just pushing for various changes around the house and in life, and Asteroids was a great big easy target.
As expected I am sad to not have it anymore. But besides that I am very frustrated to realize that this object was really the one that tied all my other crap together, in a variety of ways. Basically, to the untrained eye, I am just a plain old hoarder now! The Asteroids game was impressive to people who know nothing about video games. It was big and colorful and it was a gateway curiosity. It was equal parts furniture, art object and amusement machine - kind of like a piano.
I think I'm going to have to get something else together. .. Or go ahead and get rid of the rest of my old stuff.
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Post by hcmffm on Feb 25, 2018 10:26:06 GMT -5
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings, glip. This Asteroids arcade looked nice and was definetely something special.
Perhaps this "something else" could be a Vectrex console with Rocks 'n Saucers (Asteroids clone on VecFever) and an Asteroids Vectrex Wrap? There is no such thing like an Asteroids Wrap, yet, but I think such a wrap would be really cool. Both for playing with Rocks 'n Saucers and for Minestorm. What do you think?
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Post by gliptitude on Feb 28, 2018 13:54:12 GMT -5
I'm thinking a cast concrete Vectorcade built around Vectrex, to the scale of a caberet/mini cabinet, with a screen magnifying fresnel lens and a custom built-in control panel. .. A few embellishments, but nothing terribly complicated or involving internal mods to the console. I thought maybe two cups or horns on either end of a hose to relay the audio from the native Vectrex speaker, (something I have experimented with before), or some other form of "mechanical telephone".
I'm also thinking of a harpsichord instead though.
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