Taito cocktail with (Ms) Pacman Questions??

[Ponty]

Hi Guys
Picked up this Taito cocktail and have some questions???
Came with a Pacman board and Im assuming that it was original with the table as the screen has major screen burn
Questions -
What make is the board or is it just a generic one
Why has it got 2 harness connectors - was connected to the right side one in pic
Looks like 2 chips are missing or are they not needed
Im assuming the wire hack with the pot is for volume
Lastly... The top with the routed edging is it a taito or from another table
Thanks in advance if you can help

[jbtech]

Hi Ponty,

The machine looks more like a Space Invaders as it has the control panels with space for a fire button.

I don't think Taito ever licensed Pacman either but Pacman is notorious for rapid screen burn as the maze is there during attract mode and never moves. This photo, found online demonstrates that nicely...



I'm not familiar with the PCB, sorry - can anyone else help?

The wire hack does look like a poor attempt at a remote volume pot, the pot was originally right next to the audio amplifier.

I have a Taito Missile Command TT which has similar routing on the top, under the glass which is originally masked black.



Hope this answers some of the questions, regards John

[dragonlee]

PAC MAN Japanese Version -1981 Kyodo

[Ponty]

PAC MAN Japanese Version -1981 Kyodo

Thanks for the info
Do you know why it has 2 harness connectors and what the 2 chips missing would be?
Cheers

[dragonlee]

Thanks for the info
Do you know why it has 2 harness connectors and what the 2 chips missing would be?
Cheers

only uses one harness.
it’s a copy of a galaxian hardware as product of a 2 layer board.
There’s two pcb board on eBay for sale and compare your board to eBay.
Its needs a filter board if you running a jamma adaptor.

[wiredoug]

at first that looks like jamma pinout on the bottom and maybe scramble pinout on the side. (sort of like a built in jamma adapter) but in fact this https://www.mikesarcade.com/cgi-bin/...&page=Pac.html suggests its actually AC and DC wiring support. cool.

[Autosteve]

Not unusual for boards to have vacant sockets. As for "hacks" done to the board other than the obvious butcher jobs, these were often carried out as a builder recommendation. When you bought the game board from an importer, (NIB), the board worked but quite often the importer would notify you of updates the maker of the board recommended for reliability. Paperwork and reasons where given and often a piece of wire or some caps or something were in the "upgrade pack' the importer supplied free of charge to anyone they had on record of buying the game board when new. It was up to you whether you installed the mod or not. We usually fitted them but some games were already finished making good money so the mods weren't fitted and the board was retired.
That Taito table was never fitted from new with a Pacman by the way. If it was, it wouldn't be needing an adapter and no Taito table was wired in Jamma. That table was made over 5 years prior to Jamma being thought of.
The recess under the glass was for a screen shroud. A popular mod for these tables was route the hole out larger and fit a 20" tube with a 20" shroud.

[Ponty]

The only info I have on the board is there is one on ebay currently for sale which has the 2 missing chips (see pic)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/PAC-MAN-Jap...-/174075780268
I did message the seller to get some info but hasn't replied
If anyone else can help let me know

[jbtech]

Hi Ponty,

Is your machine working, or not? I don´t think you said either way.

The row of ICs with the labels are the game ROMs (EPROMs in this case which are eraseable and reprogrammable) - just mentioning that in case it wasn´t already known - no offence to anyone intended.

The row of ROM sockets are often not fully loaded on a game PCB depending on the game and the version of ROMs fitted so it´s not necessarily a problem...

For example, often a game board is designed for a particular size / model of ROM and during production larger capacty ROMS become available so the PCB can be adapted to suit the larger ROM and then fewer ICs are needed to make a full set.

The EPROMs fitted to your board can be read with an EPROM programmer and verified against known ROMsets to prove if they are working, in the correct order and complete or missing part of the set. If the board was still fitted to the machine it´s more likely to be complete but if it was loose there´s a distinct possibility parts have been removed...

If your machine isn´t working there´s three major areas to try and narrow the problem down to:

Power Supply
Monitor
Game PCB

Have you already tried it? if so was there any sign of life at all ?

Let us know and I will try to help, there would be other members who are closer to you and can help as well.

Regards, John

[Ponty]

Hi Ponty,

Is your machine working, or not? I don´t think you said either way.

The row of ICs with the labels are the game ROMs (EPROMs in this case which are eraseable and reprogrammable) - just mentioning that in case it wasn´t already known - no offence to anyone intended.

The row of ROM sockets are often not fully loaded on a game PCB depending on the game and the version of ROMs fitted so it´s not necessarily a problem...

For example, often a game board is designed for a particular size / model of ROM and during production larger capacty ROMS become available so the PCB can be adapted to suit the larger ROM and then fewer ICs are needed to make a full set.

The EPROMs fitted to your board can be read with an EPROM programmer and verified against known ROMsets to prove if they are working, in the correct order and complete or missing part of the set. If the board was still fitted to the machine it´s more likely to be complete but if it was loose there´s a distinct possibility parts have been removed...

If your machine isn´t working there´s three major areas to try and narrow the problem down to:

Power Supply
Monitor
Game PCB

Have you already tried it? if so was there any sign of life at all ?

Let us know and I will try to help, there would be other members who are closer to you and can help as well.

Regards, John

Thanks for the info
Yes surprisingly it works
Checked all the wiring and power still ok
Screen lit up which is good
I did plug the board in and just got a blank screen
Ill keep working on the board hopefully I can get it up and running

[jbtech]

Great, at least the power supply and monitor seem to be working, 2 out of 3 aint bad, as they say.

If the game board is outputting anything, even a blank screen (and not just the monitor's background raster) that's a good start, it means at least the sync generation part of the game PCB must be working otherwise the picture would be rolling / tearing.

There's lots of troubleshooting information for the US Midway version of Pacman but I'm not sure if it's all relevant to your PCB,...

There's a couple of sites which refer to a PAC-1 , PAC-2 board set which seems to be a match for yours, for example this site:

http://lawnmowerman.rotheblog.com/#pac12Bootleg

There's a picture of a similar PCB to yours which is fully populated with EPROMs - but the description mentions they are all 2716 (2k Bytes each) whereas in your photos at least some of the EPROMs seem to be 2532 or 2732 (4k Bytes each) which would account for fewer EPROMs needed in the set.

Anyway, searching for information on "PAC-1 PAC-2" pacman PCBs may give you more relevant results.

Hope this helps, regards John

[Ponty]

Update
Well ended up sending the board to Jomac and he got it going
And turns out to be a Ms Pacman!
So next was to see if it actually worked in the cabinet so plugged her in and Bingo!
The screen is actually not bad after some tuning and degaussing picture is clean and good colour
Next was to see if I had sound and controls worked
Coin slot wiring didnt work so jumped a wire to the harness and another win - sound (volume hack also works)
Also joysticks both work if slightly loose after 40 years of use
So overall shes all good
I do have some issues with the moving characters having some dodgy sprites around them and also sprinkles of white dots over the screen
so will look into that
So the plan is to keep it in this cab as the screen is good even with the burn in which you cant see when playing and restore the cab back to a decent state
Will update