On Monday, January 11, 2021 at 11:01:56 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:

On 1/11/2021 10:19 AM, Daina Pettit wrote:

I am working on an Atari Superman and found some curious problems. The game
boots up and plays fine.

1. Displays flicker and are very dim. Most of the time it's hard to tell what the score is.

2. The MPU 9VDC test point shows 6VDC. Some of the other voltages are a little low (by less than 10%) so I didn't worry about them. Not sure what the 9VDC circuit does. On the schematic it seems to do nothing. I've got to be missing something here.

3. The speaker has a rather loud annoying hum all the time.

4. The owner said they were told that the capacitors were weak and that they should turn on the game and wait for 5 minutes or so for it to warm up
before playing. I didn't see this problem.

In looking at various documentation I couldn't find anything about the above
4 items. Any ideas?

Daina

The Superman I just finished up not too long had the wait 5 minutes for
it to boot up. I replaced all the electrolytic caps since they are what
42 years old, big ones included (the 6800uf @ 75v is expensive $32).

Once I replaced them, those issues went away. Ended up sending the
boards to John Robertson to get my sound issues fixed. So the info John posted, you should definitely check out.

And now I have another one to fix! Just ordered all the caps again :/

Paul

New to this thread I have a Superman machine that wants to add points 1500 when you touch the flippers and 500
when you lightly touch the playing field

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/26/2023 3:46 PM, William Altman wrote:

On Monday, January 11, 2021 at 11:01:56 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:

On 1/11/2021 10:19 AM, Daina Pettit wrote:

I am working on an Atari Superman and found some curious problems. The game >>> boots up and plays fine.

1. Displays flicker and are very dim. Most of the time it's hard to tell >>> what the score is.

2. The MPU 9VDC test point shows 6VDC. Some of the other voltages are a
little low (by less than 10%) so I didn't worry about them. Not sure what >>> the 9VDC circuit does. On the schematic it seems to do nothing. I've got >>> to be missing something here.

3. The speaker has a rather loud annoying hum all the time.

4. The owner said they were told that the capacitors were weak and that
they should turn on the game and wait for 5 minutes or so for it to warm up >>> before playing. I didn't see this problem.

In looking at various documentation I couldn't find anything about the above
4 items. Any ideas?

Daina

The Superman I just finished up not too long had the wait 5 minutes for
it to boot up. I replaced all the electrolytic caps since they are what
42 years old, big ones included (the 6800uf @ 75v is expensive $32).

Once I replaced them, those issues went away. Ended up sending the
boards to John Robertson to get my sound issues fixed. So the info John
posted, you should definitely check out.

And now I have another one to fix! Just ordered all the caps again :/

Paul

New to this thread I have a Superman machine that wants to add points 1500 when you touch the flippers and 500
when you lightly touch the playing field

I'm not familiar with Atari games, but from a general electronics
point-of-view I would measure the ground voltage on all the boards from
a cabinet ground to make sure they are all 0 V (or very, very close).

Checking voltages at the boards would be the next step.

When you say "touch the flippers" I'm assuming you are touching the
flipper bats vs. actually pressing the flipper button switch?

- Kerry

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)