Insentricity

Got my very first jukebox!

After years of searching, I finally picked up my first jukebox on Sunday. I have been looking for an AMI model C that I could afford for about 3 years. Back when I first got into the arcade thing, I was at my parents house discussing the stuff that used to be in the basement at my grandma's house. One of the things that was there was a jukebox, but we had no idea how old it was or what model or anything. After doing some searches on the internet for pictures we decided that it was probably an AMI model C from 1949, much older than we expected. The next day after I got home my mom sent me a screen capture from an old videotape which showed the jukebox in the background. Yep, we had identified it right!

Every time I have seen one come up for sale it has always been way out of my budget. Pretty much any jukebox where you can actually see the record changer in action is priced in the thousands of dollars range. Even if it's broken and missing half the parts! A couple of weeks ago I saw an ad on Craigslist for a whole lot of fixer-upper jukeboxes with starting prices of $200 each. Most were '70s and later models, but listed in the text of the ad was a mention of the one I was looking for. I jumped on the oppurtunity and called the guy up to find out how much he wanted. It was a lower price than all the others I had ever seen, but still out of my price range. I let him know that if he ever got one that was in bad enough shape he could sell it to me for what I could afford to let me know, and I left it at that.

Well on Sunday out of the blue I got an email that said he was willing to sell it to me for my offer, and how soon could I come and get it! I freaked and got on the phone right away with him to see when he would be available. He said that day was fine, or else I could come get it in the morning when the banks open. I ran to the ATM to see if I could get that much cash out, and sure enough, it let me! So I loaded the dog in the truck and took off to Napa in 100 degree heat, with no A/C in the truck. Traffic was stop and go all the way and it took forever to get there. When I got there he told me someone else had made him another offer, but couldn't pin down when he would be able to pay for it and pick it up. I was SOOO glad that I braved the heat instead of waiting until the morning when it was cooler!



It's dirty, it doesn't work, but it's complete and only has one major break in the plastic. The color tubes on the inside are split down the seam, I'm not sure if I will be able to repair them or have to replace them.

Yesterday I took the gripper out and completely disassembled it (wasn't easy, the grease on it had turned to glue) and greased it back up. (I would have taken pictures but my hands looked like I had been working on a car engine so there was no way I could handle the camera.) It'll now scan for a record and pick it up and place it on the turntable when I plug it in. Can't figure out how to make it put the record away. Still a lot of work to do and I'm waiting for a manual that might describe how to take the plastics off and hopefully also include schematics. It looks like I'll be re-assembling my K'Nex rock tumbler, and at least polish the smaller parts that way. Not sure what I'm going to do for the large rails, if I can ever figure out how to remove them that is!

The rooms around where the jukebox is now have a very musty smell to them. I'm not putting it into the garage while I work on it. It gets to live in the house in a nice environment, plus it's just too hot in the garage to work on things anyway. Hopefully the jukebox will air out soon, but until then I'll just have to live with the smell.

Skee Ball display

Just picked up a 13 foot Skee Ball machine. Price was right, it was local, I've got room, couldn't resist. :-)

The previous owners had unloaded it on me because they were unable to repair it. Plugged it in and didn't get anything on the score board, but it made noise and I could coin it up and manually flip the ball switches and get a reaction. Found the wire for the display was plugged in the wrong way. Turning it the right way got all the segments to light up, but nothing would change. Got out the logic probe and it was getting signal and clock. Changed out the 74c164 on the left which controls the left digit and cascades to the rest. Fixed!

Sega/Gremlin Depthcharge

Finally moved and in our new place and getting back to work. Got in a Depthcharge that was supposed to be working and only have power supply issues. Hooked up the game board on the bench and guess what? It doesn't work, it's got a short from +5 to GND. Nice!

Started looking all over to see if something got bent or there's a lump of something where there shouldn't be. Looking at the back I see someone had to make a huge modification to the original design. The ground trace running around the board had been designed hooked to a huge +5 trace and had to be cut apart at the factory. But on top of that someone had actually soldered huge wires to hook it back together? What the hell?!

I undid the jumper and checked it again for a short and found it was good now. Fired it back up and just got a white screen. Started looking for overheating chips and discovered that our previous genius had also taken out one of the 2708s and installed it upside down. Turned it around the right way and let it cool and then tried the board again. Now I get a funky white line pattern but nothing else. The LED doesn't even come on. I have a feeling one or more of the 2708s is dead.

Big Event Golf

Decided to pull a board off my untested stack, a Taito Big Event Golf. First thing I found was one of the funky custom ICs on the sound board hadn't survived shipping and all the pins were broken off. I sanded the edge of the pins to remove the insulator and soldered it onto a 14 pin .100" header and put it back.

After hooking up power and video and firing it up, I got: nothing. Pulling out the logic probe I can see the crystals are working. I also find the Z80 reset line is staying low. I lifted the Z80 and bent out the pin slightly and put it back. Fired up and the Z80 does something for a little while then locks up. No video during that time. Looks like the reset circuit is probably dead, maybe some EPROMs too.

I have no schematics for this board, so it may just go onto the stack of stuff to fix when I'm really feeling inspired.

Centipede bench testing

Finally got around to testing out a Centipede board I got for cheap. Did a bunch of searches and found lots of people making JAMMA adapters but no real details. Decided to just "go for it" and clipped power to the marked test points on the board. For the video I didn't have a smaller edge connector so I followed the pins back to components on the board and clipped onto those. Flipped it on waiting for something to smoke and it came right up!

Here's a shot of the power hookup:

And here's the video hookup:

For the video, the yellow clip is connected to the composite sync, and the black is connected to the RGB ground on the monitor.