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Atari Tempest Cabaret Cabinet


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Put in the new rectifier and some new 4a fuses for good measure. The rectifier now reads 11.4 across AC and then -14.3 across DC. Not sure if that is good or bad? Doesn't sound good, as I know that DC is supposed to be 10.6 right?

 

EDIT: John tells me it is fine, hooking it all back up properly and doing another power on test sans the monitor, see if I get the 5V LED lit on the PCB.

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Put in the new rectifier and some new 4a fuses for good measure. The rectifier now reads 11.4 across AC and then -14.3 across DC. Not sure if that is good or bad? Doesn't sound good, as I know that DC is supposed to be 10.6 right?

 

EDIT: John tells me it is fine, hooking it all back up properly and doing another power on test sans the monitor, see if I get the 5V LED lit on the PCB.

 

Come on Patrick, you can do it, lets see this cab working. :)

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IT'S ALIVE!! IT'S ALIVE!!!!!! MWUHUHAHAHAHAHA!!!

 

Just played a game, sound works, monitor works, spinner works. And you know what, for a game made one year before I even walked this Earth, it's a decent bit of fun!

 

The monitor is a bit flickery, not sure if that is just vectors, or if it needs a good tube/chassis replacement/rebuild.

 

Everytime I turn it on or off it also makes a pretty scary popping sound, once when I turn it on, twice when I turn it off. Everything works, but those noises worry me a bit, none of my other machines make anything like it.

 

Huge thanks to everyone involved and a massive thanks to @Johns-Arcade with his guidance over the phone last night and this morning, his rebuild of the AR2 PCB and the generous loan of his working Tempest PCB, this was all made possible. Also a big thanks to @raysco whose skills with a multimeter made the troubleshooting go a lot faster :) Also to @dezbaz for all of his advice in fault finding!

 

Now I guess it's time to look into getting a new tube in this baby and making the restore 100% :)

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IT'S ALIVE!! IT'S ALIVE!!!!!! MWUHUHAHAHAHAHA!!!

 

Just played a game, sound works, monitor works, spinner works. And you know what, for a game made one year before I even walked this Earth, it's a decent bit of fun!

 

The monitor is a bit flickery, not sure if that is just vectors, or if it needs a good tube/chassis replacement/rebuild.

 

Everytime I turn it on or off it also makes a pretty scary popping sound, once when I turn it on, twice when I turn it off. Everything works, but those noises worry me a bit, none of my other machines make anything like it.

 

Huge thanks to everyone involved and a massive thanks to @Johns-Arcade with his guidance over the phone last night and this morning, his rebuild of the AR2 PCB and the generous loan of his working Tempest PCB, this was all made possible. Also a big thanks to @raysco whose skills with a multimeter made the troubleshooting go a lot faster :) Also to @dezbaz for all of his advice in fault finding!

 

Now I guess it's time to look into getting a new tube in this baby and making the restore 100% :)

 

Happy to help mate, and glad another vector game is running again. Enjoy your new toy!

 

Regards,

 

Johns-Arcade.

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  • 4 years later...

Well, being that I went and collected my Tempest monitor from @Johns-Arcade again today, this thread is ready for a long overdue update.

 

To put it simply, this Tempest has been f*cking cursed. I shit you not. Totally cursed.

 

When John moved up to the Gold Coast, I took the cab down to him as soon as he was ready to do the repairs. John overhauled the entire monitor, put in a bunch of the various mods that stop Tempest monitors from self-destructing, and it was all peachy. He did excellent work, for an excellent price. I had a working Tempest, and it was beautiful.

 

The first problem was when the monitor only displayed the bottom half of the screen, the entire top half was just black, nothing there. Some Googling told me that this was likely cracked solder joints on one of the monitor boards.

@Ryan555 fixed this one for me, it was indeed cracked joints, and he fixed it right up. No worries.

 

Then the monitor had some other small issue, this was all so long ago, I can't even remember. @SpudJones fixed that one for me.

 

Now, onto the true curse. The monitor fading out and image disappearing after a while. This was an intermittent problem that was impossible to replicate when I needed to. Sometimes, the monitor would run for an entire night, no worries, perfect. Then I would turn it on the next day and the monitor would slowly fade out, lose focus and then eventually the entire image was gone. The game was still running, you could still play it blind, but the monitor was just gone. The image would slowly fade into non-existence, losing green first, then blue, then red.

 

Turning the machine off and then on again would cause the monitor to come back for a bit, then fade out again. No rhyme or reason, no standard amount of time before it did it, just a totally random fault that reared its head whenever it wanted to. I took the cab down to John at least 4 times, trying to replicate the fault so he could test stuff and measure voltages. Most times, I would drop the cab off, and then head off back home while John did his thing. One time he ran the cab for 48 hours solid, with no bloody issues, I think he thought I was at least a bit insane. Try as I might, I could never get the Tempest to create the fault in front of John so he could do some testing, f*cking cursed Tempest. He replaced various things, ran the cab for 24 hours, then I would come and collect it, and it would inevitably do the fading out thing again when I got it home.

 

Anyway, the last time I took it down, which was a month or so ago, we finally managed to replicate the fault and the monitor faded out and John saw it. He did some testing, replaced the neck board, no luck. So he held onto the monitor for a while and replaced the deflection board and HV board. Tempest is now back with me and hopefully, very very hopefully, it is now rock solid. There is not a single original monitor component left except the tube, everything else has been replaced.

 

I just want to thank @Johns-Arcade for his work on this POS cursed machine. From the very beginning of buying a totally dead Tempest that did not power up at all, he stepped me through getting it fixed time and time again. Aside from the initial cost of the first repairs, he has never once charged me again, despite me always offering cash for parts and labour. After he initially repaired it, and the fault started showing, he simply said, I've charged you to fix it, and it's not fixed, so I will fix it again until it is.

 

Totally top bloke and when I look back on the saga of this cursed Tempest, it makes me laugh.

 

After all of this, I don't even really like Tempest :lol But I love how it impresses people at games nights. Everyone is drawn to the colour vector monitor and comments on how amazing it looks.

Edited by namastepat
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Then the monitor had some other small issue, this was all so long ago, I can't even remember. @SpudJones fixed that one for me.

 

The image would flicker and the game would intermittently die - which was solved by cleaning all the connectors with a fibreglass pencil and reseating everything.

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Good job. I think everyone should go the direction you took just once at least. Take on one mad project. It will almost do you in, but what doesn't kill you can only make you stronger, and better a arcade repair. lol. :) Nice one!
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