So I never thought I would actually get one of these...

[imstarryeyed]

Greetings Bob, I just saw this thread.  I am the person that helped you on the 7800 game as a consultant as I own a Baby Pac Man.  It was a great time and I loved working on that team!

I read this thread and I have done the same thing with the playfield.  I will say there are lots of diodes that can get fried that govern the lamps and solenoids.  I would say find the diode to the lamp or flipper or solenoid and do a check on it while the machine is off.

 

You should be able to use a standard multimeter with a diode test to ensure you get flow one way but not the other.  If the diode goes out it will stop the part , lamp , solenoid from working.

 

I had read you can hear the Pac Man music on boot up, just an FYI that is a very good self test, but a working machine you will only hear very little of that song.  A good bootup will be like a few notes and it will stop.  The longer you hear the song the more the system if failing its self test.  Just an FYI.  When one of my ROM chips leg got broken I would get General Illumination lighting and  no screen but would hear the song play for a very long time.

 

Its a good idea to ensure your chips are not too old and to check them, the leg of one of mine got disconnected from the chip and it caused my unit to fail.

 

You can turn your unit on and gently put a little pressure on individual socketed chips to see if it boots up when troubleshooting those as well.

 

Baby Pac Man can be quite fussy at times but it is ultimately worth the trouble!

 

Please let me know if you have any other questions and I will do my best to help you!

 

 

 

[PacManPlus]

@imstarryeyed  Thank you!  I was wondering when you'd show up

 

I'm home now, and we actually have electricity! (Came on last night)

Work will resume on this soon.

 

 

[imstarryeyed]

15 hours ago, PacManPlus said:

@imstarryeyed  Thank you!  I was wondering when you'd show up

 

I'm home now, and we actually have electricity! (Came on last night)

Work will resume on this soon.

 

 

That is great, keep us posted with your progress and questions and I will do what I can to assist.

 

[PacManPlus]

Thank you!

 

Quick update:

• The monitor ended up being more quirky / wavy than originally found.  So I replaced it with a 17" LCD capable of Standard Definition (it takes RGBSync as input).  I'm currently 3D printing the bracket to mount it with.  13" *working* tubes are becoming VERY difficult to obtain.  I tried the same trick with a 13" TV that I did with the Pac-Man cabaret that I rebuilt (those used a 13" monitor also), but for some reason the picture looked absolutely horrible on it.  So, LCD it is.  It isn't perfect, but the picture is still much better than it was.
• I'm in the middle of replacing all bulbs with these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AQB8JFQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Picked up 80 (8 packages) of them.  Once I have them all in, I'll work on the 'some lights permanently *on*' issue.
• Haven't looked into whatever I did to the left flipper to make is stop working, but at this point I don't believe it's a fuse issue.  I've looked them all over and they all seem to be ok.  I bought replacement fuses just in case.

 

Bob

Edited October 11, 2022 by PacManPlus

[PacManPlus]

LCD Panel installed - the 17" Panel fits PERFECTLY inside the window:

 

 

Soon I will try to figure out what is wrong with the left flipper, and the 'staying on' lights.  After that, it's just the cosmetic stuff.  I've already run the glass and the plastic pinball playfield pieces through the dishwasher (air dry, no heat)

They look good.

 

 

 

Edited October 12, 2022 by PacManPlus

[PacManPlus]

Had a close call last night.

 

Trying to find an internal power source for the LCD panel (it only uses +12v), so I took a multimeter and went searching.

It looked like I found 11 Volts on the new MPU board here:

(Please disregard where it reads "+12v" underneath it, as I didn't want to modify the existing connector to get the 12 volts.)

 

I found that the left pin was ground, so I connected the barrel connector wire to this header.

To my horror, when I turned the machine on, I heard electrical sizzle and a puff of smoke, to which I quickly turned it back off.

 

For some odd reason, the affected area was the VIDIOT board by the RGB connector:

 

The white box around the resistor is what fried.

 

At this point I'm frantic.  I unplugged the monitor, thinking I fried the monitor, the Vidiot board (appropriately named for me at this point), or both. 🤯

I then plugged the monitor's power back into it's separate plug, and turned the machine on.  Oddly enough, *everything still worked*.  I manually checked every pinball part, roll over, bumper, etc. and the only things that didn't work are what didn't work before (i.e. the left flipper and two stuck 'on' lights).  The monitor was fine, I was able to play the game (as much as I can without the left flipper).

 

Suffice to say, I'll be figuring out another way to get 12v to the monitor.

 

Which leads me to another issue:

The two 'stuck' on lights, are the green bottom left 'SPOTS CENTER ARROW when lit' light and the 'N' from the 4th column 'PACMAN' lights.  According to this document: https://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php/Baby_Pac-Man

both are controlled by the Q12 SCR.

However, I removed the green/black lead that goes to Q12 from the header, and they didn't go out   Then I tried unplugging the *entire J1 header* and they still didn't go out (even more  ).

 

I'm so confused now, nothing seems to be what I've expected, and I'm not exactly new to electronics.  I'm afraid to touch anything.

Although I do need to figure out that left flipper issue...

 

Ugh.  

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

17 minutes ago, PacManPlus said:

I then plugged the monitor's power back into it's separate plug, and turned the machine on.  Oddly enough, *everything still worked*.

Any landing you walk away from is a good one

17 minutes ago, PacManPlus said:

Ugh.

Totally understood.  Been there, done that, completely share your sentiment.

 

Dumb question: it sounds like this monitor has its own external power supply that plugs into a standard 110V outlet.  Is this correct?

 

If so, there may be a way to work around this: put a remote-switched 3-outlet adapter in the cabinet.  Plug the cabinet's main power and the LCD's PSU to it, then run the outlet adapter to the mains.  This'll make it possible to turn the whole thing on and off in one shot without having to fiddle with multiple power switches, etc., and if you turn it off you know that everything is off.  Granted, you may have to run an extension to the outlet depending on where you want to locate the machine, but that's no big deal.

 

FWIW, this is pretty much the modern version of how I handled powering my MAME cabinet, its speakers, and its monitor back in the day.  Only difference was that my setup involved X10

[PacManPlus]

2 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

it sounds like this monitor has its own external power supply that plugs into a standard 110V outlet.  Is this correct?

Yes, I was trying to bypass it so it would power on with the rest of the unit.

 

There is an outlet on the bottom where the rectifier board is, but it's always on.  I think I have a way of getting power, although at this point I think that this is now my order of priority:

1. Left flipper not working

2. The 'always on' lights

3. Alternate power source for monitor

4. Cosmetic issues (side art, CP overlay, buttons, T-molding, etc.)

 

Luckily, the coin door is in great condition for it's age.

 

Thank you!

[PacManPlus]

Ok, some updates, fixes and additions:

 

I now have a working game:

1. Left flipper not working - I finally saw that this was actually me.  I'm used to momentary buttons which are normally open.  The leaf switches by the solenoids that control the flippers are normally closed.  For some reason, the left one I lightly bent so it was open, thinking that's how it was supposed to be.  It took me this long to see that the left leaf switch was open and the right one was closed.  So, I lightly bent back the left set of leaf switches... and Viola!  it now works!
2. The 'always on' lights - This was a bad diode.  I replaced the diode with a new one and the lights are working fine.
3. Alternate power source for monitor - Got this going as well.  I used the 'isolation transformed' power source for the original monitor, and added the correct connector to the two-prong power cable to the original power brick to the monitor.  It works like a charm.
4. Cosmetic issues (side art, CP overlay, buttons, T-molding, etc.) - This is still on my list.

 

However, some new things have popped up:

1. The five Drop Targets in the back do not drop all the way when hit.  They drop about half way.  I can push them down manually, but after they pop back up and are hit again, again the go only halfway down.
2. Two more lights have come up always on: In row 4, the first 'A' in PACMAN and the 'M'.  These are on a lamp board like this:
   
   So I don't think it's a simple diode swap.  I'm getting MCR106s to replace any bad 2N5060/2N5064 there are, so we'll see if that helps.
3. Cosmetic issues (side art, CP overlay, buttons, T-molding, etc.) 

 

So that's the new list.  But again, I have a playable game now!

[Jinks]

Congrats on your battle with the

video pinball machine that is now working! 

 

Very happy to know that big whoosh never blew you away. 

 

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by Jinks

[Dauber]

Awesome work, Bob! Don't know if this was common lore, but I found this out at Midwest Gaming Classic when I saw nateo's wife play the game (she impressed the hell out of me, too; might have to hit her up for lessons!)...but you can actually tilt the game while playing the video game portion! The machine they had at MGC wasn't level, so it kind of tetered back and forth, and while Mrs. nateo was playing, she inadvertently set off the tilt detection!

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

4 hours ago, Dauber said:

Awesome work, Bob! Don't know if this was common lore, but I found this out at Midwest Gaming Classic when I saw nateo's wife play the game (she impressed the hell out of me, too; might have to hit her up for lessons!)...but you can actually tilt the game while playing the video game portion! The machine they had at MGC wasn't level, so it kind of tetered back and forth, and while Mrs. nateo was playing, she inadvertently set off the tilt detection!

 

Tanya and I found out you can tilt the game while playing the video game portion when we were at Ground Kontrol in Portland. One of the drop targets was permanently stuck down and the ball was constantly getting trapped in there not allowing us to continue the game. Somehow we wound up having to get the ball out during the video game portion and TILT came up on the screen to our surprise!

 

We were hoping to get some more practice in on the game but the stuck drop target made the game unplayable unfortunately so we had to abandon the machine to play other things.

 

- James

[PacManPlus]

If you guys ever find yourselves in SW Florida, give me a call!  

[+GoldenWheels]

The real thing? Pfft. Some guy made an awesome 7800 version where thankfully I can (if I so choose) play only the pinball part!

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

19 minutes ago, PacManPlus said:

If you guys ever find yourselves in SW Florida, give me a call!  

 

We would love to go back to south Florida again soon! Maybe coincide it with a gaming expo or another event. 🙂 We'll let you know!

 

- James