Asteroids Deluxe Restoration

02.05 - Finished?

Finished up a couple of things this afternoon. First and foremost, I was able to get the P2 start working by rearranging the connector wires. I also bought some 1/4" carriage bolts and wingnuts (which I spray-painted black) to secure the control panel.

The rest of the project is cosmetic: paint the coin door, add a lock to the coin door, replace the t-molding, fix some paint chips on the front and side.

01.13 - Redemption

Finally, finally! After nearly 10 months, the Asteroids Deluxe lives again. Special thanks to Bill Eqsuivel for shipping a new power regulator from San Jose, CA.

Now that the game is working, I need to flip some dip switches and move the cabinet into the bar. So...I guess it's time to move on to the next project. A Galaxian? A Galaga? Sinistar? Star Castle? So many options...

11.22 - Testing Resumes

I've finally resumed testing on the power regulator board replacing my old analog multimeter with a Fluke 87 III. Now, I can more accurately not understand what the problem is!

I'm still running into the same issue with the video eventually fading out. The +5VREG test point on the power regulator reads 7.6V for a while and eventually ramps up to 8.5V so I think part of the problem lies on that board. I'm sure there are still problems with the video board (since we replaced a burnt cermaic resistor), but since there were fried components on the regulator my hunch is that resolving that voltage issue will put me a lot closer to getting this machine back in working order.

06.22 - Video!

Finally got around to pulling the video board to take a closer look at it. There was obvious damage to one of the large 3.9 Ohm ceramic resistors on the board (43X0401-051). Radio Shack didn't carry anything that large so I scoured the internet and finally found the part for $1 at Surplus Sales of Nebraska. Since the minimum order was $10, I grabbed a few extras in case I burnt them out and also a spool of solder.

After putting the resistor back on the video board and replacing it in the cabinet, I'm able to get video for a few seconds before it fades. The bright spot is still in the center of the screen and it connects to each of the on-screen graphics (i.e. asteroids, ships, etc.) by a slightly faded line. I made a couple of short videos of the problem: Self Test (5.8M); Self Test (6.5M); Play Mode (7.9M).

06.13 - Lights!

After closer inspection of the speaker/light fixture, I noticed that the bulb on the back was a blacklight instead of a plain old flourescent. A quick trip to Home Depot got me a new 15W 18" blacklight and 2 15W starters.

Tonight, I installed the starters and powered the machine up and...LIGHTS! Beautiful lights! Now, I just have to wait for my GE47 coin door bulbs and some time to fix the monitor.

The game still plays great blind, it's just a matter of time...

06.04 - Electronics Repair

My friend Trent came over to help fix the problem with the power supply. Last week's inspection revealed a problem with the 2n3055 transistor and a 100 ohm resistor on the power supply. Looks like the thing got pretty hot when it finally fried.

After replacing those and resoldering a couple of other joints, we got a red light on the motherboard and a lot of static sound from the speakers. A flashing red light on the P2 start told me that at least something was working. Once I pushed the button, the game started playing blind -- that is, still no monitor. The annoying static bell sound from the speakers ended up being a switch on the coin-door...looks like an alarm of some sort?

Now that we have the game booting, it's time to look into the problem with the lights and the monitor.