Re: New Irobot owner

The Atari switcher CAN be a nightmare, simply because sometimes it likes
to really go out with a bang.. I had one Atari switcher that blew up the
switching transistors, half-wave rectifiers, and blew up & shot several
large caps right off the board. It seems like a "tight" design, I'm sure a
recap would be a good idea. They really arent all that hard to fix, it
just uses some odd parts.. They do seem fairly reliable though, I have had
no problems for a good 3 years with 2 of those supplies. Only I,Robot and
some Firefoxes used it.

Is your original switcher wired in to the monitor still? If so you must
have a fairly simple problem with it. If there is any reason the PS is
shutting down the +5, it will shut down the monitor also. I dont know if
it will still turn on the monitor is +5 is not present (I'm just trying to
figure out why you have 2 supplies in there).. The Atari switcher is a
goofy setup to say the least, but I really like the "soft start" feature.

I'm unaware of the wrong error codes in the self-test mode.. If anybody
knows this please let me know and I'll note them on my I,Robot webpage...
I'm about to update it, started working on it 2 days ago.. (only been 3
years :). I'll probably load some new pages later today, and finish it up
by the end of the week..

The video RAM problems will not affect power-up, but I think its a safe
bet you'll have to replace them anyway. Every I,Robot I've seen has bad
V RAM. You may not notice when you are playing, so as a test hit fire to
cycle through attract mode screens quickly. If the screen isnt refreshing
properly you need to replace the RAM.

I recommend finding a Hall Effect stick from any other Atari game to
stick in your I,Robot.. The original I,Robot sticks suck and require
constant tweaking.
 
(Tom M. I'll get the stick numbers for you soon)

Would there be any interest in reproing the control panel stickers? I
think somebody did it about 3 years ago, but I need a few sets for now and
the future..

Jeff

On Sun, 23 Apr 2000, Jess Askey wrote:

> If your power supplies are all okay, then there are multiple problems that could
> be happening with the boardset. First, see if the watchdog is barking, if so,
> then check the main CPU and associated chips (verify all ROM's and other
> socketed chips first). The big bank of video RAM on the video board was known to
> have big failure problems. Im not sure if that would keep the board from booting
> however. Unfortunately, Atari didn't socket any of these Mostek RAM's, you will
> have to pull them all manually and this time, maybe add sockets. The Actual RAM
> (4164's I think) are a dime a dozen on many old 80286 motherboards.
>
> Also, the self test errors that the game displays are wrong in certin
> circumstances. I would do a deja search in RGVAC for more info on this as I
> can't remember which two messages are swapped.
>
> I don't think that the power supplies are all that bad if yours is initially
> working. I think the big problem with them was that it was in the early years of
> a switching power supply (if not the first) contained in an arcade game. Most
> techs never got down into the theory of fixing them since later they were so
> cheap that you just threw away the old one and put in another peter chou.
> Im sure that the power supply has some weaknesses in it's age but given that you
> do an inital re-cap, everything should be fine.
>
> I wish I had an I,Robot too. :-( I only have the hall effect joystick, so far!
> :-0
>
> jess
>
> Steven Zeuner wrote:
> >
> > Hi folks, I Robot #296 owner here. :)
> >
> > The game is all original and has the large switching supply inside. There
> > is also a modern switching supply hacked into the old switching supply. I
> > like my machines as original as possible.
> >
> > I've heard the older switching supply is junk and unrepairable, any truth to
> > this?
> >
> > Is there a FAQ available to help me find out the cause of the machine not
> > coming up?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Steve
> >
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Received on Mon Apr 24 08:41:46 2000