Got a Red Baron in on trade last week and voltages were all wacky. Decided to look up Atari AR II board. Low and behold one of your videos show up! Got the big blue and voltage rectifier installed on the brick and have the sound amps left to rebuild on the AR II board. Main issues was 36 volt was at 18. thanks as always man!
Those AR II's are pretty reliable long term and since they have that sound amp on them you kind of need them in the game, some people try to put switching power supplies in them but I prefer the originals personally. Yours will probably be good for many years now that you rebuilt it.
Rubuilding the vector monitor is a pain in the ass but nothing beats vector no lcd monitors can come close even no some folks on ebay are now selling tempest with new lcd
Now that was a funny voice at the end of part 1 :-D Looking forward for that episodes because I have a centipede, missile command and tempest waiting to get fixed!
Hey Joe, I recently bought a Pole Position project and had some questions regarding the cab and some of the AR2 board stuff. 1. My cabinet has swelling in similar areas from water damage, along the t-molding area and the back. What are your suggestions for fixing areas like that? (I’d like to avoid replacing the whole side) 2. What is that pink goop stuff under the big compaciters on the AR2? Is that normal because yours has it and mine does too. 3. One of my resistors (small pieces) is burnt out on the AR2 board. Can those be replaced in kits? When there are burn marks on the board, does that damage the board? Thank you for posting this video, it helped me understand this stuff a lot more than before.
Hi Tim; Those resistors are because of the sense lines, basically if you have a bad connection on the motherboard, on your 5volt or ground line, the power tries to get to the board through the sense line, which is much smaller and is basically supposed to just monitor the voltage on the ar2 board so it can adjust it up or down automatically. If the edge connectors on the board are dirty, it will send the voltage through that small resistor and the extra current burns it up. You can actually replace the resistor with a jumper, it will disable the sense circuit but that's o.k. it's a mod a lot of people do. What I personally do usually is tie the sense circuit to the power circuit and tie the negative sense circuit to the ground circuit, on the ar2. There's a connector where they all leave the board, you can put small jumpers on the back of that connector. Tie the 5V to the +sense and the tie the Ground to the -Sense. The stuff under the capacitors was used to hold them in place so they wouldn't move around. Came from the factory. The water damage is a big pain, it kind of depends on how deep you want to get into it. You could cut the board partway up and replace it, but you kind of need dados or something inside of it to hold it all together... or you could just sand down some of the swollen area, and put some wood filler on it to make it smooth again once it's the correct size.... or you could just leave it. On the cosmetic stuff, I'd check out www.KLOV.com in the forum section, they have tons of tutorials about fixing water damage and also if you search for the Sense Mod on there it will tell you about those resistors too! Thanks for watching Tim we'll see you on the next video, good luck with that awesome Pole Position!
Often it's best to buy a fiberglass edge cleaner not that expensive and often even if boards run good it can prevent future problems from connection issues learned this early on doing my own repairs and learning from.videos like yours
Also way better to put new switching power supply in they are so much better then the crappy old power supplies and if done right home owner can replace down the line
You can't put a switching power supply on Tempest, it uses 22 volts from the power supply and also the power supply amplifies the audio. I guess you could have it on the 5 volt line but you'd still have the original power supply in the cabinet running the other voltages. Better to just rebuild it and service it if there's a problem.
To be honest with you, I don't know much about it. We use solder with flux built in because it flows nice, and we just use a fairly small size that 'looks right' I don't even know the measurement of it. For temperature, we usually have the iron set at 650F or so which really isn't as important as how long you leave the iron on a joint. If you leave it on too long at that you'll burn the pcb so we like to just touch the solder long enough to see it flow then remove the iron. I can't really do a video about it because there's probably a much better way to do that, I'll have to leave it to the experts :)
But if selling it to home owner you schould replace the wire connections there not that expensive and can make atari games play trouble free for more years down the line because most home owners are not technically able to fix this
Got a Red Baron in on trade last week and voltages were all wacky. Decided to look up Atari AR II board. Low and behold one of your videos show up!
Got the big blue and voltage rectifier installed on the brick and have the sound amps left to rebuild on the AR II board. Main issues was 36 volt was at 18.
thanks as always man!
Those AR II's are pretty reliable long term and since they have that sound amp on them you kind of need them in the game, some people try to put switching power supplies in them but I prefer the originals personally. Yours will probably be good for many years now that you rebuilt it.
Rubuilding the vector monitor is a pain in the ass but nothing beats vector no lcd monitors can come close even no some folks on ebay are now selling tempest with new lcd
Now that was a funny voice at the end of part 1 :-D Looking forward for that episodes because I have a centipede, missile command and tempest waiting to get fixed!
We just did a Centipede and Tempest, now we've got a Missile Command we're going to do soon, we'll film some repair stuff on it :)
goofy even, hyuck
Hey Joe, I recently bought a Pole Position project and had some questions regarding the cab and some of the AR2 board stuff.
1. My cabinet has swelling in similar areas from water damage, along the t-molding area and the back. What are your suggestions for fixing areas like that? (I’d like to avoid replacing the whole side)
2. What is that pink goop stuff under the big compaciters on the AR2? Is that normal because yours has it and mine does too.
3. One of my resistors (small pieces) is burnt out on the AR2 board. Can those be replaced in kits? When there are burn marks on the board, does that damage the board?
Thank you for posting this video, it helped me understand this stuff a lot more than before.
Hi Tim;
Those resistors are because of the sense lines, basically if you have a bad connection on the motherboard, on your 5volt or ground line, the power tries to get to the board through the sense line, which is much smaller and is basically supposed to just monitor the voltage on the ar2 board so it can adjust it up or down automatically. If the edge connectors on the board are dirty, it will send the voltage through that small resistor and the extra current burns it up. You can actually replace the resistor with a jumper, it will disable the sense circuit but that's o.k. it's a mod a lot of people do. What I personally do usually is tie the sense circuit to the power circuit and tie the negative sense circuit to the ground circuit, on the ar2. There's a connector where they all leave the board, you can put small jumpers on the back of that connector. Tie the 5V to the +sense and the tie the Ground to the -Sense.
The stuff under the capacitors was used to hold them in place so they wouldn't move around. Came from the factory.
The water damage is a big pain, it kind of depends on how deep you want to get into it. You could cut the board partway up and replace it, but you kind of need dados or something inside of it to hold it all together... or you could just sand down some of the swollen area, and put some wood filler on it to make it smooth again once it's the correct size.... or you could just leave it. On the cosmetic stuff, I'd check out www.KLOV.com in the forum section, they have tons of tutorials about fixing water damage and also if you search for the Sense Mod on there it will tell you about those resistors too!
Thanks for watching Tim we'll see you on the next video, good luck with that awesome Pole Position!
Often it's best to buy a fiberglass edge cleaner not that expensive and often even if boards run good it can prevent future problems from connection issues learned this early on doing my own repairs and learning from.videos like yours
Where is the power on off switch on these cabs?
Not talking about the back door spring switch
It's down on the back near the bottom of the game
Also way better to put new switching power supply in they are so much better then the crappy old power supplies and if done right home owner can replace down the line
You can't put a switching power supply on Tempest, it uses 22 volts from the power supply and also the power supply amplifies the audio. I guess you could have it on the 5 volt line but you'd still have the original power supply in the cabinet running the other voltages. Better to just rebuild it and service it if there's a problem.
Nice!
Thanks Bobby Jack!
Do u think you can make a video about soldering.... like what temp was size solder flux or no flux ?
To be honest with you, I don't know much about it. We use solder with flux built in because it flows nice, and we just use a fairly small size that 'looks right' I don't even know the measurement of it. For temperature, we usually have the iron set at 650F or so which really isn't as important as how long you leave the iron on a joint. If you leave it on too long at that you'll burn the pcb so we like to just touch the solder long enough to see it flow then remove the iron. I can't really do a video about it because there's probably a much better way to do that, I'll have to leave it to the experts :)
nice vid and info- i'm sub'n you!
Thanks Terry, more repair videos soon...
But if selling it to home owner you schould replace the wire connections there not that expensive and can make atari games play trouble free for more years down the line because most home owners are not technically able to fix this