How To Repair an Asteroids Deluxe Arcade Game by Atari - Part 2 - The Monitor

[@d_shepperd]

Probably more info than you want to know, but this was my game. I was both the hardware engineer and the game programmer, artist, audio, chief cook and bottle washer on this back in the day. What I remember about the genesis of the "easy" version was it wasn't earning very well in Europe. So Mary from Marketing and I made a trip to England and Germany where we were tasked with trying to figure out why. What I observed was the players over there at the time liked to play with a coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Pretty tough to play any kind of fast paced game with that lax attitude about it if you asked me (and they didn't). Anyway I rigged up an easier version that could be turned on/off with options on the DIP switch if I remember right. I can't remember what exactly I changed to make it easier but I suspect it was I reduced the percent of time the saucer fires at the player, how accurate it was at targeting the player and maybe the snowflakes moved slower at first. I could be wrong. I was a long time ago. Yes, antiquity is on target.

[@LyonsArcade]

David thank you for the information. Not that you need it, but let me just tell you you made one heck of a game, it must have been pretty daunting having to follow up Asteroids which I'd imagine by that time had already proven itself a juggernaut of a hit for Atari.... good job, as you know many people prefer Deluxe to the original. Thanks again for letting us know how the difficulty version went down, very interesting!

[@LyonsArcade]

Buy an inexpensive set of monitor adjustment tools here: amzn.to/2u39J1M

[@Jamesamong007]

When you were playing the game on that that little machine it reminded me of a movie where these two doctors were playing pong on a patient's heart monitor after they kept playing with the switches lol.

[@LyonsArcade]

LOL sounds funny :)

[@hannonm]

you went to town on this restore...Kudos

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you Amy!

[@allrock1238]

Played both in my youth and could play Asteroids quite well ,, Deluxe was another story very difficult game root designed to dominate skillful players tactics as I understand it Atari actually released a Rom update to tone down the difficulty a bit , thanks for sharing the repair example video series ..

[@LyonsArcade]

Yes that romset (I think it's in this one) where the satellites come out on the first board is epic tough.

[@MattMcIrvin]

I could never get the hang of Asteroids Deluxe--those satellites are murder.

[@edwardhardesty8702]

nice video i would love to learn how to rebuild these old games please do more repair vids

[@LyonsArcade]

Thanks Edward!

[@Sidman723]

Great video. Tip: when you use radial caps in place of axial ones and you see where a cap lead is crossing an exposed circuit trace use a small piece of heat shrink. That will ensure no one comes along and presses that lead against the trace under it.

[@LyonsArcade]

That's a good tip Isidro thanks!

[@nurrwick]

Hey thanks for sharing this! I've been helping a friend with a Deluxe cabinet and the written materials for identifying problems with them aren't... well there aren't much of them and none of them addressed the display signal chain like you did here. Hopefully we'll be able to do a better job chasing signal from start to finish in there.

[@LyonsArcade]

Good luck Nat, you can pull it off!

[@jeffc2190]

I have the same exact problem with 100 and 101 fuses being blown and no video... but neck glow. I'm going to check the bridge rectifier tomorrow. Thanks!

[@LyonsArcade]

Sounds right to me!

[@evilash570]

Such amazing timing! Im about to restore an asteroids deluxe, thanks for all the tips! Game looks Deluxe!

[@LyonsArcade]

Good hope you get it going :)

[@DangOldHillBilly]

First version of Deluxe does not have auto fire. THANKS for the info on repair.

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you HillBilly!!

[@melanatedprose9134]

Great video! It makes me wish I had played this game.

[@LyonsArcade]

There's still some around melanated prose, you can still play them!

[@ghostlymo]

Hey Joe, where ya goin' with that probe in your hand? Thanks again, love em, keep em all coming!

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you Marsene, see you on the next video!

[@glenpeters2260]

do you have a parts list for repairing all the things you showed in these videos? i have an asteroids that is playing blind. i want to replace the cap's and what ever may be causing this problem. thank you. GREAT VIDEOS!!!!

[@vhm14u2c]

Found one of the x/y scope test vector output vids. ;-)

[@flightofapaullo72]

That scope is totally cool! Man, your videos are awesome!

[@LyonsArcade]

Awww, thanks.

[@hoody2141]

When working on the deflection board do you need to discharge the monitor first?

[@LyonsArcade]

Not on these particular monitors. The reason you have to discharge the monitor is because of the High Voltage going into the anode of the tube, on a vector monitor the high voltage is only on the high voltage cage, the deflection board doesn't have high voltage on it so can be worked on without discharging it. The dirty little secret about discharging monitors... too... is that most of them discharge themselves after being turned off a little while.

[@youvsyou945]

Ok I have a good question for you...it looks like you're pulling the chassis and hv cage without having to remove the monitor from the cab in this AD. Is that what you're doing? On mine, it looks like you can do it if you're careful/mindful of the neck.

[@LyonsArcade]

Yes sir you just pull out whichever you need to work on they operate separately .

[@youvsyou945]

​@@LyonsArcade Man, thanks so much! That's great! I have the Electrohome GO5-802 in mine too....there's that flat metal panel on the frame if you go in through the back, I actually have to look through the coin door or through the control panel access...are you pulling them and loosening the screws on the hv cage from the front of the game or the back? Hey, for real...man thanks so much....your videos are awesome. One of my fav. subs!

[@samthemultimediaman]

awesome job! The black light effect on the asteroids deluxe cabinet is really cool, did they make a tempest deluxe?

[@LyonsArcade]

They didn't make a Tempest deluxe unfortunately. They made the upright, and the cabaret both of which I have videos of on here... and also made a Cocktail which looked really cool.

[@peterdahlman]

Nice work! Got a slow started Road Blasters... sometimes it just shows a bunch of random garbage on the screen. If we leave it on for a while and then switch it on/off it will boot up. Changed the PS, still same. Feels like it would be a bad cap or two? I don’t know anything about atari systems. Anybody got a hint? :)

[@LyonsArcade]

Peter Dahlman my first suspect would be that big blue cap screwed down beside the power supply. Turn the game on, set your multimeter on ac and measure the ac voltage across the two screws on top of that cap. Anything more than about half a volt will make Atari games do exactly what you describe...

[@peterdahlman]

Joe's Classic Video Games , that big Blue is gone. New power supply in :p so that’s out of the equation.

[@Mik3Murphy]

Seems de-soldering still needed to extract pins, not sure the advantage of cutting pins for chip removal. (Novice here, great videos BTW.)

[@LyonsArcade]

What typically happens is you can't remove all the solder from all the pins perfectly. So the chip won't fall off the board. People then try to pry the chip off the board with a screwdriver. When you do this, there's a high likelihood you lift the traces off the board. So 1 way to insure you don't lift any traces is to cut the pins off the chip, then remove them 1 by 1 so there's no prying involved. The other option is to perfectly remove all the solder from each pin... which is very hard to do.

[@Mik3Murphy]

Makes total sense, thanks!

[@mahmahmahmuh]

Joe needs a desoldering gun and a hot air soldering station.

[@francoisc6422]

Super good !!!

[@LyonsArcade]

Thank you Francois!

[@paulingalls2133]

can you still get the rom sets?

[@LyonsArcade]

Yes almost all of the roms for anything are in MAME.

[@artcry8460]

Mieszkam w Polsce, w latach 80 przekręcałem licznik miliona punktów w salonie gier. Mój nick ONZ:) Nie było maszyny której bym nie zaliczył. Wszędzie były moje rekordy 999 990, 3 lata się uczyłem, wrzuciłem w tę maszynę górę pieniędzy. marze by mieć taki automat w domu. Dziś gram na emulatorze MAME 32 w Asteroids, jest prawie identyczny.

[@edwardhardesty8702]

i subscribed and left a thumbs up

[@LyonsArcade]

Thanks Edward, we appreciate it :) We'll have more repair videos soon.

[@paulingalls2133]

you have web site?

[@LyonsArcade]

Yes Paul, we're at www.LyonsArcade.com . Thanks!

[@katilynnschwab2485]

Let me turn off the lights. Said arcade classic joe

[@TMack86]

Yo!! i got to get my ass up there and see my buds! :) Only at joes!

[@LyonsArcade]

I heard you called!

[@scrapman502]

flooded? No. It's just 40 years of dust build-up. You should see all the dust bunnies in the bottom of my centipede cabinet.You should be grateful that you've never had to fix a cabinet with a rat's nest in it. (or maybe you have?)

[@LyonsArcade]

Oh I've seen a few :)

[@jumpingeneral]

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