Party Zone garbage on screen

[mamejay]

Hey team,

I finally fired up my Party Zone after a few years of sitting there doing nothing. I now get garbage on the screen and no other signs of life.

I have reseated connectors etc to see if I can get her going but no go.

I did notice a burnt out connector but I am not sure of this is from years ago or recently. It doesn't seem fresh. I cannot remove that connector now as its like fused with the socket.

 

Anyway has anyone seen symptoms like this before? Any advice?

 

Thanks

[Arcade King]

Needs a good service mate, a all too familiar sight I'm afraid.

I'd start by checking all your voltages 5v, 12 unregulated and regulated.

[ocyen]

Looks like LED4 is not lit, so you don't have 5v. Did you try reseating every connector on the power driver board? If so, might be time for board refurbishment as already suggested.

[Railways]

The connect points with the purple wiring hard soldered to the board and the "fused" connector at J121 are only GI which I think wouldn't affect a boot up.

 

I've had a similar problem recently with the the boot up and DMD on my TAF and it ended being the piggy back ribbon cable that goes from the CPU and ends up at the DMD board. I suggest you reseat those paying particular attention to getting them back on in the right configuration as they can at times be fussy.

[hotty]

also give your ribbon cables a squeeze with flat pliers sometimes it helps with dodgy ribbon cables

[mamejay]

Thanks everyone. I will get the meter out and give it a good once over and start checking fuses and voltages around the place. The kids are old enough now that they are asking to play "ping pong". True what they say. Don't play your machines and they start to fail.

[Gemini2544]

Hard to tell by the photo but LED3 looks out too so no 12 volt.

[mamejay]

OK. Got the meter out and started testing fuses. F113 on the driver board was blown. I had none on hand so I wired it up just to test for second (I know you are probably screaming at me now)

Anyway she fired up fine. Only thing is my wire started to melt. I immediately switched off. I have concerns that there is something else wrong as I would suspect the fuse would blow quickly compared to a 22AWG wire.

Anyone know what F113 drives and why it could be heating up?

Thanks

 

[Limorange]

Seems to fuse the +5volts.

 

[ocyen]

F113 fuses your 5 volt circuit. If the fuse was blown then that is why the machine wasn't booting up.

 

Never short circuit a fuse holder; always use some kind of over-current protection. If you have a fault such as a larger voltage shorting across a component on the 5 volt circuit, you'll send that higher voltage through low-voltage components further down the line, potentially destroying them.

 

Start looking at the components on the 5 volt circuit. Also check your connectors and associated header pins, namely J101.

 

[mamejay]

I have ordered more fuses so will wait till these arrive and go from there. At least I know its alive.

[hotty]

Get yourself a 3A and 5A resettable circuit breaker with a couple of alligator clips from jaycar for this type of trouble shooting, save your fuses until you found the issue causing it.

Edited October 12, 2020 by hotty

[Rich]

I don't know what part of the machine the schematic is for, but with the fuse out I'd check the incoming voltage then my first suspect after the fuse would be the bridge rectifier.

[hotty]

That part of the schematic is on the power driver board that supplies the 5v to your CPU.

 

Also might be a good idea to unplug the CPU from the that when you start fault finding with live power. You can check the bridge without power by using your multimeter and buzz out the diodes the power used from the multimeter should chirp or only be able to read in one direction if good, also have a look at the capacitors C5 especially see if there is any leakage around them or they look bulged out on the top if so there's your culprit cos if that's shorted its a dead short circuit to ground.