[asteroid deluxe, the ship disappears randomly]

I'm having a problem with my asteroid deluxe, the ship disappears randomly near the end of levels when most of the asteroids are gone and the screen doesn't have much left to draw. When I press the fire button the ship appears temporarily and I notice once the game warms up it happens less often.  I found another person experiencing a similar problem who posted this video but I haven't heard any solutions yet...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrCOjoLAdGM

Any ideas why my Asteroid Deluxe is doing this?

I've spent more time searching the web and found a few others with this problem, More Info:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/83327-13-tech-weirdness-testing-asteroids-pcbs-asteroids-deluxe

From the link above:

A buddy of mine asked me to test some Asteroids boards
in my Asteroids Deluxe (cabaret) cabinet and I noticed
some strange things and thought I'd run it past RGVAC
to see if this is normal or something is, in fact,
wrong with these Asteroids boards.

The first Asteroids board plays and sounds great, except
after most of the asteroids are destroyed there is an
area in the middle of the screen (where the ship starts
and just above it, maybe 2 inches wide) that just seems
to disappear and then reappear a second or two latter.
I played several games and this repeated (it was easy to
do with only one small asteroid left and I would spin the
ship).

The second Asteroids board had some tiny and sometimes
echoed "normal sounds", like the system would start the
sound, stop and then continue it. The "dun, dun, dun"
was normal (sounding and volume level). That sounds like
a board problem to me, but weirdly enough it did the same
video goofiness as the above board did. However, it did
it more often and with more asteroids on the screen.

My Asteroids Deluxe (cabaret) cabinet is known, good
tested and has worked fine for 3 years now. I put the
AD board back in and never had any of the display issues
mentioned above. Is this a problem with the boards or
something the monitor doesn't like about the signal the
boards are putting out??? I'd like to get one of Clay's
Asteroids/Asteroids Deluxe/Lunar Lander kits, once
completed, and will need to run a Asteroids board in this
cabinet. Obviously, I'd like to know what is going on.

Just for the record, the AR1 was rebuilt several years
ago and has worked fine since then, so I believe voltages
are fine. I noticed that typical resistor is burnt again,
but I know what causes that and verified the harness is
fine now.

Any ideas?

Scott C.


I haven't tracked it down for sure yet. I've had this been going on for
years.

I know for sure i've got a deflection board that gives this behaviour
regardless of the board you put in it, so i swapped out the deflection
board. Game was then perfect with the bootleg board i put in there for
18 months or more.

Then i start to work on the Asteroids boards that have been on the
shelf forever and find a couple of the Asteroids boards make this
supposedly good deflection board do it too!

I have observed (back when i was trying to diagnose it) that when stuff
in the middle of the screen would start to dissapear was always at the
end of the level when there is very little left happening on the screen
(1 tiny asteroid left, maybe none), that you could pretty much always
make things come back on by firing (thus giving the beam something
extra to draw) and that when the stuff dissapears, the spot killer
starts to kick in.

SO, my guess is that on some of these boards the Z output is too weak?
(Or is it the other way round? - too strong), and so they exhibit the
problem more easily, and that with my original deflection board there
was something in the spot killer circuit that would make it show up
even easier or more consistently, however you want to put it...

Sorry, but as yet I've taken no further action with trying to resolve
this. Like yourself, my own personal board and monitor combination
works perfectly, so it hasn't been high priority to get to the bottom
of for me.

Maybe some usefulness in my reply though?

Martin.

Here's a status update. I took the power brick out last night and went through it. Tested the bridge rectifier and it looks fine. I didn't see anything that looked bad, no burnt wires, etc. I smacked the back of the line filter with a screw driver a couple of times and hooked it back up. Fired right up with the correct voltages all around. I guess I have a bad line filter. Will replace when I have some time.

Ok guys,(!) Hope you can help me. This is my first post, hopefully I'm doing this with the correct posting etiquette.

Yesterday I was in the middle of a game of Dig Dug with my kid when I heard a pop and I noticed a flash from inside my open coin door. The game quit but the screen and marque lights were still on. I found that the F3 20-Amp. 32V Slow Blow Glass Fuse was bad when I tested it with the multimeter. I tested all other fuses, none were bad except for F3. I tested power at connection J5 and found that I’m not getting any DC power from the power brick. Early last year I replaced almost everything in the power supply, including: Big Blue, and the Bridge Rectifier. Is it possible that the line filter is bad? Or is this something with the DC side of the bridge Rectifier? What do you expect to see when a line filter goes bad?

The weird thing is that about a month ago the game wouldn't come on because it wasn't getting any DC voltage. That time i triple checked all of my fuses and when I unplugged the main power cord coming from the wall to the brick (at the brick connection) and re-plugged the main cord back in the game came back up with the correct voltages. Any ideas what could be causing this? What should I check? Thanks for your help, if you've seen this before I'd like to hear from you! Thanks! John, love your videos keep it up man!