How to start with PCB's?

[neorichieb1971]

Bloody hell.. The worst i've had is a bubble bobble bootleg where the sfx chip wasn't seated right. Its been soldered at some point so I won't touch it to fix it, but If I press hard on it the sfx works.. so just a dodgy connection. Every board i've bought works. I was given a CPS1 board for free once and it didn't boot. I gather it killed itself.

I'm lucky in some ways, because I bought most of my boards on this very forum. Some guy from Europe just sold me a Alcon board and it looks brand new. I think its from 1986

[THE]

I'm pretty sure if you would have held a Irem/Toaplan/Konami/Capcom day, you would not have those troubles at all
Namco hardware is imo very troublesome...thanks god I don't like a single game of theirs.

Only two of hundreds of PCBs broke on me while they lived with me in the last 15 years, Magic Sword (Capcom) no sound and In the Hunt (Irem) sprite glitches due to connection problems between both subboards (quite common for M92), works if laid down backward.
Knocks on wood...

[Magic Knight]

I have 165 PCBs, these are the ones that don't work:

Air Buster: Trouble Specialty Raid Unit - graphics glitches sometimes
Bubble Bobble - fire disappears/half appears in one column of the screen.
Burger Time - sound is fuzzy
Dragon Spirit - mystery graphics problem
Dynamite Dux - graphics glitches when shooting the rock monster at the end of stage 1
Galaga - bootleg, the background stars are almost invisible
Gaplus - aforementioned glitches
Green Beret - fire buttons don't work
Guwange - graphics glitches
Sky Kid Deluxe - as mentioned
Splatter House - mystery graphics problem
Tutankham - one graphics ROM is faulty, and needs to be replaced.

Most of these are either easy to repair, or not worth repairing, so things aren't so bad. In the past though, I've had many games with problems.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I have 165 PCBs, these are the ones that don't work:

Air Buster: Trouble Specialty Raid Unit - graphics glitches sometimes
Bubble Bobble - fire disappears/half appears in one column of the screen.
Burger Time - sound is fuzzy
Dragon Spirit - mystery graphics problem
Dynamite Dux - graphics glitches when shooting the rock monster at the end of stage 1
Galaga - bootleg, the background stars are almost invisible
Gaplus - aforementioned glitches
Green Beret - fire buttons don't work
Guwange - graphics glitches
Sky Kid Deluxe - as mentioned
Splatter House - mystery graphics problem
Tutankham - one graphics ROM is faulty, and needs to be replaced.

Most of these are either easy to repair, or not worth repairing, so things aren't so bad. In the past though, I've had many games with problems.

Theres some great games in that list. And this is just a list of the dead pcbs not your working ones

Theres some of my all time favorite arcade games in that list. especially bubble bobble and green beret which are 2 of my favorite spectrum games (green beret on the speccy is the shit and better then the arcade original imo) i played as a kid. (plus im playing green beret aka rusn'n attack on mame atm aswell)

i hope the new green beret isnt a pile of dog poo, the trailer doesnt fill me will much hope as it didnt seem to be anything like the original, just some sneek-athon with the rush'n attack name tacked on

[Magic Knight]

Green Beret was one of my favourite Spectrum games too, got it on the Konami Coin-op Hits compilation. The five games on that were five of the first PCBs I picked up. Along with Green Beret, it comprised Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Mikie, Hyper Sports and Ping Pong. Ping Pong was the hardest PCB to get in the end. I already had a slightly faulty Green Beret and wanted another, so I got one recently, but the sound was bad. I sent both of them off for repair, the first one seems fine now, and the second now has this controls problem, but the sound is fixed. I can sell it to you if you want, via the repair shop. Repairs will be free.

Other than that, the games are all generally fine. Sky Kid Deluxe should be a straightforward repair, the Namco System 1 games are fine generally, I have an original Galaga so don't need the bootleg, and the others aren't a big deal.

[Ed Oscuro]

Green Beret was one of my favourite Spectrum games too, got it on the Konami Coin-op Hits compilation.

I saw that compilation some time ago, how big is the box? Just outta curiosity.

[Magic Knight]

Green Beret was one of my favourite Spectrum games too, got it on the Konami Coin-op Hits compilation.

I saw that compilation some time ago, how big is the box? Just outta curiosity.

Double cassette sized, and there are two cassettes. That size of box became basically standard for full-price 8-bit games in Europe. Full-price being £7.95 to £9.95 usually. This compilation was £9.95. An amazing bargain.

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek ... id=0011294

[dmauro]

:0
It's probably for the best that I ended up shying away from PCBs. Here's what I did going the PCBless cabinet route:
http://forum.arcadeotaku.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3661

It has its advantages (play non-arcade games like Gradius V, much cheaper, no mucking about with dying PCBs, easier to swap games, easier to store games, hi-res versions of Cave games in 360 ports).
And it has its disadvantages (some games not ported/MAMEd, requires building custom A/V hardware, many ports/MAME games aren't as good as their PCB counterparts).

The important thing is to read about this for a few months before actually investing in anything really expensive.

[cools]

The important thing is to read about this for a few months before actually investing in anything really expensive.

Boring. Two feet straight in the deep end is far more fun.

[ZOM]

Agreed, getting your mailbox full of colorful collection claim letters sure keeps that blood pressure high enough to not get bored with life.