Fixing a 1979 Asteroids Arcade Game - Operator Caught The Vector Monitor On Fire!
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 2 янв 2020
- Thank you to everyone who has been supporting our channel! If you use the link below before you purchase anything on Amazon, we get a royalty for sending you there, thank you!
This is our USA Amazon Link: amzn.to/3qwgVQU
This is our UK Amazon Link: amzn.to/31aKGaC
This is our Canadian Amazon Link: amzn.to/2Ycu5RQ
This is our Australian Amazon Link: amzn.to/34UvvVl
This is our German Amazon Link: amzn.to/3hh2QgI
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get Merchandise, T-Shirts, Mugs, and links to all the tools and parts we suggest for repairs on our website at www.LyonsArcade.com/Parts.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
All Music Provided by www.BenSound.com !
See all our other Machines for sale, right now, at www.LyonsArcade.com !
See My Brother Donnie's Awesome Channel at : / @mybrotherdonnie
Our store is located at 139 Caldwell St., Rock Hill, SC 29730. 
Игры
Buy an inexpensive set of monitor adjustment tools here: amzn.to/2u39J1M
ANYTHING! you buy on Amazon after clicking that link doesn't raise your prices but gives us a referral tip, thank you!
This just reminded me that when I was 18 I worked on the assembly line at a small computer company and one of the jobs I had was aligning the picture with one of these tools and putting on the back cover. This was in 1985.
@@jamesdye4603 Very cool! Did you get 'bit' a little bit from time to time?
@@LyonsArcade I don't think so, but that was a lifetime ago.
What is you have a pre-update screen adjustment tips? I cant see my sores/highscore!
I don't have a clue what's going on, but I love watching those classic repair videos, thanks for sharing :)
If you keep watching you'll be a PRO at this stuff soon enough :)
Looks like an asteroid smashed into the board.
maybe one got out of the CRT somehow!
@@LyonsArcade Buffer overflow in the code?
The irony
@@LyonsArcade lol.
@@gorillaau dido lol.
This game came out when I was 8. I use to go to the local arcade all the time (sometimes just to hang out) But I was there so often the owner made me a wooden step stool so I could reach the controls better without being stretched to the max (I have always been short)
That's really cool, that owner was a cool dude or he really wanted those quarters :)
You may have been 8 when Asteroids came out, but me myself, I was born that year so I'm the same age as the game.
I've seen this done before, and I've done one myself. Cut out the burnt section, cut a chunk of single-side to replace it, lay out the traces with a sharpie, etch, drill, epoxy it in, bridge the connections with copper braid and solder. It looks ugly as homemade sin, but it doesn't alter the board. Mine really looked bloody awful cuz it was blue fiberglass patched into an old-school brown phenolic board.
That's what I was thinking.
I take side cutters to the old board, then use protoboard to patch back in what was taken out. Works perfectly fine for old single sided boards, but yeah, it's ugly.
Think I would have just cut a small piece of perforated board and attached it over the hole using 5 minute epoxy or RTV silicone. Just for the support and holes to slide components through.
My cousin was married to the late Jerry Logg, the father of Ed Logg who created Asteroids. I met Ed many years ago-
Very cool! He made a real classic, what a game!
This is incredible, man. Truly incredible. I’m going to college for computer engineering and programming and in the fall I will be learning this kind of stuff. AC and DC circuits and digital electronics, and I can’t wait. This is all so fascinating to me!
Very cool man, glad you enjoyed it!
When I do resistors in series like that, I use heat shrink, or keep the leads just long enough to solder to avoid shorting.
Chunk of the board gone and you still get it to work! Dude your genius! Never have worked with electronics but I love watching these videos!
Thanks tourstagez, we appreciate you checking us out :)
This game fascinates me still as it did when I played it back in 1979 as a kid in Italy! Incredible piece of video game history! Awesome restoration work!! Simply great!! Congrats!
It's a very well designed game, just the concept of it is great. Thank you for watching Ralonso, we'll see you on the next video!
*There's also a simpler version of the speed hack, which doesn't require a daughterboard. That's an older method, before a better one was found. You can just clip or lift the inputs to the 161 at C5 (pins 3, 4, 5, and 6). (Socketing that chip lets you do either.) Depending on which you lift, you'll get faster or slower play. There are 16 combos, and 5 or 6 of them will give faster play at different speeds, while the others are either slower, or they are too fast and cause the board to hang.*
Board is actually fixable. You cut the burned part out and groove the edge. Then make a fiberglass patch the same size, groove the edge then epoxy it in. You can etch the runs in before you epoxy it in, then solder copper patch runs in the breaks where the old an new boards meet. Been there done that. Nice work around repair Joe. Best Wishes n Blessings. Keith Noneya.
Part of the reason for the speedup board is that it makes the strategy of getting down to one small asteroid and hunting the small UFO ship unusable. People who could do that could roll the game over on a single quarter which wasn't profitable for the arcades.
That makes sense!
Could also have been to end your game sooner so as to squeeze more quarters out of you in less time. But I don't really know
@@1yobrevef I remember reading an arcade strategy guide on asteroid: The take away, reduce the asteroids down on large one at a time, before moving to the next big one. The smaller asteroid move faster. The high scoring strategy is to reduce the playfield to one large asteroid and the wait for the ufo before picking off the ufo.
Speeding up the game means you are less likely to hit the correct target.
I never played one with this hack/mod. I could put 10 pence in and play for hours. Even handed the game to anyone waiting if I had to be somewhere else. Memories ♥️
Cool vid.
I remember that. We used to call it playing "ships" . You could spend hours on one quarter that way.
Loved watching this vid I have a real affection for this particular game. Thanks for bringing back the memories. Still looking forward to a Phoenix, scramble or a Battle Zone repair! I always look forward to your vids.
I repaired TV's from the 60's until 2000. We did many repairs like that. I remember the name Wells Gardner too. I'm not sure but I think they also made bowling alley monitors back in the day. We had a contract to do their repairs.
You're correct Glenn, Wells Gardner made the bowling alley monitors! I didn't realize it until I was operating some games in a bowling alley, and the tech in the back told me about it. Thank you for watching, see you on the next video!
I was a video game tech in the 90’s and most of them used Wells Gardner CRT monitors from Chicago
This is so cool! You've kept a piece of history intact for us old timers to relive our youth. I spent most of my high school years at the local arcade. I actually became good enough at pinball I could play all night on a buck. Cost me a ton to get there though!! Lol
Very cool man, thank you for watching and see you on the next one Rusty!
Great job, I worked on these type of video games back in the 70’s ! This really takes me back 👌
Thanks for watching Dale, glad you enjoyed it!
Maybe it's my age, but the electronics of this period (when I was a young teenager) feels much more miraculous to me.
Back then most of it was done with hardware, now most of it is done with software. There's a lot of miraculous stuff still going on (just running RUclips is pretty amazing), but it's all software that you can't see, where this hardware stuff is something you can hold and touch, it just looks so impressive.
@@LyonsArcade Sure, I mean show me or anyone else a smartphone back then and it would've been literally something from science fiction. But maybe the whole point is this stuff was cutting edge then and required all this hardware, it verges on mad scientist stuff when you look in the back of something that played an asteroids game :D
And maybe now we're spoiled. Back then the electronics in most homes consisted of just a TV, record player and a transistor radio or two.
And thanks for these videos I am much enjoying watching them. I'm just about halfway through where you've found the op amp transimpedance amplifier connected to the DAC outputs :D
Makes you appreciate 2 things. The skill and ingenuity of the original designers and builders of these machines....and the ongoing skill of those who understand it and keep them working. Hats off to you.
Thanks Peter, we appreciate you watching!
My bud,James just LOVED asteroids! It was never fast enough. But even he would be wondering how much LSD that game was dropping to be super mega ultimate turbo speed!
Great video as usual. I can remember playing these machines back in the late 70's in the local arcades in the UK. I've learn't a hell of a lot watching you videos on repairing boards etc. Keep em coming Thanks.
Thanks Simon I appreciate you watching us! I'll keep 'em coming :)
Great job bringing back that mess from the dead. Love the look and sound of Asteroids. Designed to instil panic.
Yeah, they did a fantastic job designing it.
WOW! This game brings back so many fond memories. Than you so much for sharing and restoring such a remarkable piece of gaming history.
Thanks Star Wars Collector, glad you found the video :) See you on the next one!
It's over Anakin...I have the high ground!!!!😆
Incredible - this machine was one of the foundations of my personality
It certainly was a great game!
Its an authentic asteroid board now. An asteroid exploded right there. : )
Somebody else mentioned that possibility haha
Played this arcade in a local pharmacy back in 1980. Great game and floored by its graphics and sounds. Heck a lot better than my Radio Shack pong game at home! One thing I remember was a dial controller to turn the ship and two buttons for fire and thrust. This console in your video was a different one. Maybe I played a first generation Asteroid console? Anyway, very entertaining how to troubleshoot the technical issues! Can’t wait to watch more of yours!
I played a lot of arcade video games back when I was younger and these were some that I remember that were out back then, in no particular order: Asteroids, Defender, Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, Moon Patrol, and countless others I can barely remember! Even in 2020 old video games like this bring back the nostalgia I experienced as a teenager or young adult. :D Thank you very much for making this channel what it is, and please don't worry too much about people trying to correct you or whatever, that is just how people are! Reply to anything replyable if it's not a troll post.
Thank you for the kind words DarkVoid, I'm glad you found our channel and we'll see you on the next video!
It's really impressive how you fixed it! Thank you for sharing your experience. I love when repair manuals are included too.
I would have used a raspberry with an emulator (mame) :) but it's a totally different approach.
I've never Maimed any cabinets LOL Just kidding, the MAME stuff is actually how we fix all ours because it contains all the original rom codes. Whatever gets them going again is fine with me.
Nice repair, good to see it fully working again. I remember playing this some time back in the 80s.
Thank you for watching, I'm glad we got it up and running :)
I’ve had an asteroids for 20 years and it has ran great, never had a single problem with it.
Keep up the great work joe
These games are classics and need to be brought back🤗
Thanks Gregory, we appreciate the kind words :)
Thanks for this video. I like how you showed all the mistakes post solution. As that is usually how my repairs go.
A very interesting video. Thanks for sharing it. I like to watch how classic arcades are being repaired. It is like magic.
Thanks for watching Juan, we appreciate it! See you on the next video.....
Nice video for a rainy Carolina day.
Thanks Dad we appreciate you watching!
Thanks Joe! My Asteroids is now up and running.
Very cool, glad to hear it!
I LOVE Joe’s videos! Looks like a fun and often frustrating job lol
That's a good way of putting it :)
Also, a little shrink on that series 1.5 meg resistor would have been a good idea.
I think you're right!
As a personal preference; on the removed and jumpered 3.9 Ohm resister, I'd have run the jumper wire straight between the two points. In the very unlikely case of wire insulation melt, it couldn't short to anything under it. Just an OCD paranoia thing.
Pretty good work in the board reconstruction. Fun fact; in the 50's vacuum tube era, passive components were straddled in air between connection points (typically tube sockets, and terminal blocks). So that work is kind of a call back to methods of old, pre-pcb.
You bring back a lot of memory, i have like a billion game’s on Asteroids!😁
This might have been one of the ones you played :)
No sir, i live i Sweden! Always wonder about the speed, suddenly the game was faster 😁 the ”feeling” when you control the ship was like driving a small howercraft, a friend had one!
Asteroids, Defender, love those games, i diddent have the right age to go to a bar, but pinnball place with the arcademacine and mayby a girl to and the evening was great, it was so easy then!
just love vector games, can not be emulated by any means, a TRUE VECTOR CRT is amazing, and I so want one !
There are a couple guys actually making replacement Color Vector monitor boards now, you still need a used crt but there's a ton of those in old junk t.v.'s.... so the Vectors are going to survive at least for the foreseeable future!
agreed..... and I used to think that till I very recently saw a emulation system on a 65" microled tv...no back light and a smaller pixel than the old shadow masks on CRT's will I think make these a damn good replacement for vector CRT's...probably cheaper to fix an old vector monitor at the moment though....but it offers hope for the future of old games...
Couple that with the Sinden Light gun that's in development and some damn good emulation systems are in the future...
I can't afford a micro led tv/monitor so I'll live with imperfect impersonation for now.
Normandy is that similar to the old Vextrex? May have spelled that wrong
@@michaelmcclelland2080 yes same tech.
@@LyonsArcade love to see a video on a colour one .
Have my respect. Is not dificult restoring , but today one guy interest ins restauration old pieces like this, is honorable!
gained a subscriber!
Thanks for checking us out Colecao, we appreciate you watching!
Your process makes sense. No need to show every millisecond of "experimentation." Another great video!
Thanks Melanated prose we appreciate it as always :)
What a great job you have! I'd love to work on old arcade games. Have fun!
lol was watching and you said going to tell you the kicker and I already knew the answer lol. nice work.
Love it .. fixed another classic =)
That's what WE DO! Thanks for watching OnefoYo.
I have an Asteroid cocktail table with a similar garbled display issue so I really appreciate watching you troubleshoot this. Hopefully it's the same issue when I get around to working on it.
Thank you, very interesting and informative, loved your videos! thank you
Thank you Vintage Audio Life, we appreciate it!
Are you sure Hank done it this way?🤣
Tell me one more gen, just so's I'll understand....
i put enough quarters in asteriods machines when i was a kid to own several of them. still looks fun
I owned and operated a few of these back in the day. Worked for an old operator and became the lead tech for 15 years before moving on to slot machine repairs. Now I work for myself from home.
Very cool, you know how it is then, you run into weird stuff!
@@LyonsArcade Yup, the worst is working on something that someone else "fixed"...
@@sublimationman TV techs have the same lament.
It has an analog synth that generates all the sounds using 4 or 5 oscillator circuits 👍 Great video
we had a saying when blue smoke would come out of servers and boards looked like that
"Better Put Some Peanut Butter & Jam In The Case Because It' s Toast!"
hahaha Thanks BC stargazer....
I had screwed up my Robotron monitor by moving those beam adjustment tabs. The problem was that they would stick so you try to move one and another would move too. I had got it close using their crosshatch test mode but not back to how it was. So I swapped the monitor with a better one that was the same model. I then put a flat panel in the game I took the replacement from. I had to buy a converter board so I could use the VGA connector on the computer monitor. Since it had a normal on/off button I just kept it on then tied the power to the game so it would fire up when the game was turned on.
Yeah those alignment adjustments aren't bad at all on a black and white, but on a color it's a whole other story, I never converge them on a color monitor because of what you ran into it's almost impossible!
Thanks for putting the module back in and trying it out so we can see what happens.It def sped the game play up…
Thank you for watching MrRon!
The good old days with mile-wide traces and at most double-layer boards.
Yeah it's all we work on :)
The old days when double sided boards was expensive and cheaper to have multiple jumpers on a single sided board than spring the cash for double sided boards.
Good old days? Personally I love being able to get a plated through double sided board with all the bells and whistles for just a few dollars.
Saved another classic. Awesome job again
Thanks Bob, we appreciate it!
I do like the way the bullets shot all the way round space and come back
Very strong "pew pew" 'ers on those old ships :)
There were about 3 months of my childhood where I loved this game more than anything
Well i love the things you do m8 i always put the thumbs up keep it up m8
Thanks Taylors World, we appreciate it!
That move at 39:12 was awesome lol!
Great video once again!
Happy New Year!
I meant to do that :)
@@LyonsArcade Lol!👍
First video game I ever played but not in arcade. My grandfather neighbor son had an ATARI 2600 with this game. Would play it every chance I got. We literally burned out the power supply for his 2600 playing it one weekend.
Turns out I can’t play the arcade version do to my vision the way it is. The arcade one being just faint outlines I can’t focus on. Where the 2600 version are solid colors I can see well enough.
It great seeing you fixing this stuff. I’ve always been fascinated in electronics. Sadly my eyes prevent me from messing with it anymore but still enjoy seeing stuff fixed.
"Good lord! This thing is on crack!" Thanks for the LOL
Haha thanks hydorah, we appreciate you watching :)
Great video! And you're local to me! Will definitely have to try stopping by next time i'm down in Rock Hill.
Come on down, Adam!
So when I was little, this was the very game that made me realize what a rich neighbor was. I never new anyone who would have a full size arcade machine in their house. Enter the rich kid in the neighborhood, man did I love playing that game in his house for free!
It reminds me of that show Silver Spoons :)
@@LyonsArcade - Man, I was SO jealous of Ricky Schroeder. I would've given my eye teeth to have an arcade machine at my house.
Those vector graphics are beautiful. They kinda shimmer like Moon light, luv it.
Yeah, nothing quite like it!
I suspect the speed up board used the start LEDs to run at normal speed when in attract mode, so the game didn't look "too fast" until it had your coins!
Noice! Pretty ballsy plugging in that burned chassis. I like your “just plug it in and see what happens” attitude.
Thank you Rick!
*Regarding your position issues, in the future, probe the output of the first TL082's after the DACs, with an xy scope. You can get an image there (which you can't do directly from the DAC output, as it's a current signal and not a voltage signal, so you have to go through the first TL082 to get a voltage signal.) If you get a good picture with those two points, you know the issue is downstream from there. Analog issues are common with these.*
Thanks Andy when I break out the scope i'll check that out!
Hell yeah,good job!
Thanks Mark, we appreciate it!
all i need now is a repair video on an original upright 'star wars' arcade game and a degree in electronics.
We will be doing a Star Wars repair video soon, it's broke, it's here, I just have to fix it and film it :) I don't have a degree in electronics, though, ask the commenters below they'll assure you I don't know what I'm doing, HA!
@@LyonsArcade lol, you seem to have a handle on things.
I have a arcade astroids game and I looked at my deflection board and I got the two big resistors still on mine I also have all the manuals with it and the technical schematics to they came in handy a couple of times when I had to fix it
Very cool man! If yours is working I probably wouldn't mess with it but if it ever breaks I'd lose those resistors :)
This video finally confirms what I figured out at age 14, which the video repair guy was evasive about, or pretended it was a glitch he'd look into (I knew it, they added the board!)
*'The speed up board'* We got so good at the game that when it came time to empty the coins out there weren't many, compared to normally being full. One quarter and we could play all day. We'd operate the buttons and joy stick like a professional piano player. Sometimes I'd collect so many extra ships they'd line the top of the screen and I'd end giving away the game to someone watching because I'd have to go home. Back then I had the idea of letting kids play contests of these games and the best players could operate remote military equipment. Looks like we're not too far off from that being reality. Drones.
Great video as always! The pot on that speedup hack looked like it may change the vector brightness of the asteroids. Since it also causes them to blink it would make some sense.
I'm not sure but it was a pretty cool little hack!
Thanks for the great video - I for one would love to see some of the bench work. That said - great compromise in walking through the steps you took to narrow in on the root cause and then trace us backwards through the thought process.
I try to film a little bit of it if I can but it reallllllly slows things down where it makes it much harder to get anything done or makes it much harder to edit, but i'm trying to put as much in as I can.
@@LyonsArcade You do a great job and have a business to run. I'm happy with the material you put out and watch them all the time. Like I said - The "Repair Summary" you did was great - Maybe that can be the new thing? :) I hope I get to meet you some day just to say hi in person. Thanks again.
You could get the vinyl, then trim it to but up against the original. Just a thought. Great video!!!
@@shawbros Yep. Right now he has black paint.......and????
Beautiful. I have this game on my Vectrex but this looks sooo different.
You should see it in person!
The screen looked dimmer when the speed mod thingy was turned to the right. Mute point now, Cool as hell video! ;) Looks amazing! LCD is so flat compared to CRT. (No pun intended)
Thanks Ryan, we appreciate you watching.... yes I think that pot was a voltage thing like people have been saying...
Good job tracking down the faulty chip its a wonder there wasnt more damage to the chassis after all that burnout ☻👍
Yeah we got lucky!
Great save Ron!!!
Thank you Dan!
Man. Does that bring back memories. I'd love to have an asteroids machine. Along with pac man, missile command, zaxon, and a few others.
We've had those all through here, great times!
Now that's a nice looking Asteroids! Just don't look inside at that board though lol Anyway nice to see you got this working again!
Believe it or not, the part of the board that got burnt is the absolute hardest part of any board in the whole game to see :)
I can smell that burned board from here!
Smells like Money!
People forget how cool these games play and how additive there are !
OMG.... I've played this a lot in the 80s.
This might be the same one you played, did you mess up the monitor!!????!!!1 Thanks for watching Runnerba!
Nice work in restoring this pioneer of a game! I was never really good at it either in the arcades. Though I didn't play it too much. lol I rolled the score over on my Atari 2600 version though. And yeah I've done my share of jumper wires with bad or burnt traces. And for sure the big reward is being able to test the games and or consoles while playing them! Otherwise how do you know if you fixed it or it works correctly? heh heh
I can hear you smiling, while playing the game ^^
I'm a positive type of person :)
Hey Joe.....that was an amazing fix!!!!!!! I was 7 when this game came out and I loved it. Still do. Have you ever tried MAME emulated games? HAPPY NEW YEAR & BLESSINGS MY FRIEND!!!!!!!
I have played some in MAME for sure, thank you for watching Troy, we appreciate it! See you on the next video.
So much simpler than the color vector board... cool vids!
Thanks JayBird!
I don't know how you repairmen put up with the junk people do to their arcade machines. By the way new subscriber here :). Just watched you fix a joust arcade. Good job
Thanks for watching David :) Basically we know when we buy them there's going to be issues, lol
When I worked on arcade games, I hated Atari’s power supply with the giant filter cap. What a piece of unreliable garbage that was. Edge board connectors were another big problem. And those XY “quadrascan” monitors with the TO-3 transistors mounted to the metal chassis with lousy mica insulators. Yikes!
Hint: if the red LED is lit on the monitor, it means the electron beam has gone static and the beam is blanked to prevent a hole from burning on the phosphor screen in the tube. Also, you can set an oscilloscope to channel 1 = X and channel 2 = Y and watch asteroids play on a scope screen.
Lol that brings back memories, Wired Wound Resistance, commonly called electric fore element, just add over current and lo a cheap coffee warmer. Even if they are in place primarily as a current limiter. Also just as a thought, these machines were made to go in any room condition, so if its a room that get cold overnight the heat from the resistances just provided enough heat output to keep the box warm and prevent condensation from happening with temperature gradient.
The speed up board was a mod used to speed up the game play and the rate it ate quarters in the day. Thought about installing one in our arcade in the 80’s.
Thanks for the info Geoff!
Used to get over a MILLION points on this game. You can get points but leaving one slow rock and hunting the little ship. I miss this game. I used to work in arcades.
I"m going to try that hunting strategy one of these days and see if I can get my points up, thanks :)
Love your videos. I noticed that the other resistor was elevated off the board. This is done because it gets hot and would burn up the board. The replacement tuched the board and burnt it up.
I would have loved the speed hack back when I was a kid and played this game. After you beat it and the score turns over it goes to zero score and your at level one again. It's so slow feeling when your good.
I wouldn't know about that, haha Thank you for watching Pixelated!
My favorite game of all time.
Joe what up long time hope you are good this video pop up on my RUclips class to see your still upright and breathing always your fan RG
Hey Randy! How you been man? Thanks for watching!
good work Joe´s classic
Thank you Wilder!
nice to see i used to play this cabinet back in 1982 i always remember the volume being reallly loud and when the little ufos's came it shit the hell out of you
Yeah the sound on these early games was really simple but it really worked with the gameplay! Space Invaders was another one like that....
awesome clip i was wondering the reason to why you did not make or order a small section of the missing diffusion PCB and connect it with pins to the fried board?
It looked and sounded just as i remember it to have been
Thank you for watching watershed wonders1!
If this type of thing was made today. You'd get no documentation and the company would tell you that you'll need to replace the board or have to send it in
Definitely.... if you think about modern LED monitors that's how they are, no documentation and they don't want you even opening it :)
@@LyonsArcade kinda sad how things have changed from being able to fix it yourself to not being able to do a damn thing to it