Re: Rip Off problems

On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, scott wrote:

> After aquiring the game the monitor burnt out so that was replaced. But
> there are some areas of the screen that are "jiggly". If you are parked in
> these areas and rotate your tank, there is a jiggly effect. but i can live
> with that.

        Problems like this suck. It's probably a cap or marginally bad
transistor, but you won't be able to test for the bad transistor with your
meter.
 
> The real problem is- as soon as you plug in the game you hear the test boom
> sound and the background rhythm sound starts, then a few seconds later a
> very annoying high pitch whine starts. The whine seems to start exactly when
> the marquee light comes on, but i dont see how that would have anything to
> do with it. the whine is definitely coming through the speaker and it
> adjusts with the volume knob along with the rest of the sounds. the problem
> was thought to be the power supply

        The problem is with power, but not the power supply. It looks to
me like the light fixture is noisy, and putting noise on the AC line --
more noise than can be filtered by whatever filtering is on the power
supply (I forget how big the caps are.) A line filter on the AC line
might help. Again, I forget if one is already there, so it may just be a
matter of replacing the one that is already there. If you do install one,
make sure that the plug of the game has all 3 prongs (i.e. the ground
prong is not broken off) because the line filter will form a capacitive
divider between the hot and neutral, and put about 60V on every metal
piece of the cabinet.

> so it was replaced but still have the same problems. another thing is- the
> background rhythmn sound is supposed to get faster and higher as the enemies
> steal the fuel cell triangles, but mine doesn't. It just keeps the same the
> whole game- and sometimes the game just cuts out completely while you are
> playing.

        What do you mean by the game "cuts out completely?" The sound, or
the whole thing? The pitch problem could be caused by a problem on the
sound board, or a problem on the main board. I'd more suspect a problem
with the main board, or, more liekly, some of the digital logic used on
the sound board to latch the commands from the main board. There should
be detailed sound board troubleshooting tips in the manual.

Joe
Received on Wed Aug 25 09:43:45 1999