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Taito Speed Race resto


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Another minor update. Speedrace is still at a standstill, not much else to be done until my replacement IC's show up which should be Monday. So I turned my attention to the Atari, I fired up my shiny new EPROM writer and burned some replacement ROMS and soldered in the necessary jumpers. Wacked them in along with a fresh CPU and..... no dice. Same result as before, flashing light and randomly firing solenoids which scares the bejesus out of my dog, now she goes to hide in the bathroom whenever she sees me start to tinker. So with the potentially easy fix ruled out, I thought I should see what was going on with that 6800. I have good VSS's and VCC where they're meant to be, so out came the oscilloscope and hey, what do you know - instead of a healthy 1Mhz at clk1 and clk2 I have a constant 2ish volts.... I suppose not much is gonna be happening until that's sorted. Flipping through the manual it looks like that issue probably resides in either the crystal, counter C11, flip-flop B9 or the timer at B10.

 

That's probably enough thinking for me today, time for beer.

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Ok, the replacement chips arrived today and no joy, same results as before. Damn you IC tester for giving me false hope. So a little frustrated.

 

I have noticed one thing though. The 555 that had been replaced previously is actually labeled as 'AN1555', is this the same as NE555? I've been googling around and can't seem to find an answer....

 

So after some further probing I think I might have found an issue with the 555 that is connected to the player sprite positioning pot. I have a hi/low toggling reading at the trigger

and a low at Ctrl, but the output stays low....

 

2 out of the 3 555's in bank 10 have blown at some point, so maybe its 3 for 3 now...

Edited by SeaJay
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Happy days people!

 

Got that 555 swapped out and now I have a fully functional Speedrace board.... But I still have that one problem with the weird looking sprites... I've been eyeing off those rows of diodes, would I be correct in thinking that they are how the graphics are 'programmed' into these TTL games?

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Ok, I figured out the buggy sprite issue, turns out it was a cold solder joint on one of the bypass caps (no, not one of the ones I replaced)...

 

Now for the stupidity. I'm not sure why I didn't do this before but I decided to clean the board as there were spots of flux here and there. But the thing I didn't realize is that isopropyl alcohol is conductive. I plugged the board back in and fired it up. It kinda worked but the sound was messed up and the throttle was dead, however now the crash noise/screen flash works... Obviously now I'm waiting for the board to dry completely before trying again with fingers crossed that I didn't fry anything....

Edited by SeaJay
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Good news, cleaning off all that flux seems to have solved the remaining issues. The game is running great. I just have one question- What is the 'advanced play' button to the right of the steering wheel supposed to do?
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  • 2 weeks later...

I managed to get a few things done over the last two days. First thing was carefully reinstalling that freshly repaired board, then carefully proceeding to remove pretty much everything else. CRT, score and time displays, coin mech panel, lock box, fluro assy, etc.... It's weird, but I almost feel this sense of pity for this machine. So much abuse and neglect over what must have been at least 3 decades... Unsurprisingly, every bulb was blown, the fluro tube dead, along with the starter. Every switch is dodgy, The throttle, advanced play, replay, coin... all work to vary degrees of reliability when I have the multimeter on them. The coin mechanism rejects all coins, which then get funneled by some mutilated tin into the lock box. Which is fine really, but I'd like to get it to trip the coin switch, then at least I'll have a place to dump my change. The switch that is in it now is missing whatever mechanism that's supposed trip it. Strangely enough, every single thing was missing exactly one fastener.

 

 

bef.thumb.jpg.714a3e20a4be6bdbc160e48ba1499c99.jpg

 

 

Two days later, this is where we are at. Replaced fluro, starter and globes, cleaned and reinstalled the speaker grill and signage. Derustified the visible bolts and clearcoated the heads. I took out the coin mech panel and lockbox lid, took them to bare metal, primed, painted and cleared some more. I removed the glass and cleaned up everything a fair bit.

 

 

AFTER1.thumb.jpg.210487f997dd6f8fdda80d6e8b5b62bc.jpg

 

 

Screwed it all back together, except the CRT chassis and then realized I can't ignore the faded, cracked front laminate, the rusty foot rest and the crappily repaired throttle pedal. I didn't want to get too far into this but if I don't fix it all now it's going to bug me forever... You know how these things go. I'm probably going to just, fill, sand and paint the orange laminate on the front. The stuff on the sides, I'm still thinking about that one.... The foot rest is easy, clean/paint. Hardest part will be getting the screws out. I'm also missing about 75cm on the aluminium trim on the side panels, I figure it shouldn't be too hard to track down something that will be close enough to replace the lot of it.

 

 

AFTER2.thumb.jpg.5ee67bc6be236ed736da1d5c3330d3ef.jpg

 

CBF doing anything too hard tonight. I think I'll polish that steering hub and clean up the Fuji steering wheel I'm going to put on it.

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This where I got up to today. Repainted the front laminate, foot rest and clear coated the wooden rim on the wheel. I took apart the coin mech for a clean/lube, then rigged up a lever to trip the switch. Turns out this thing is 40c a play but there are a lot of dip switches on that credit board. I'd like to get to play on one coin... Need to get a new set of locks too, naturally. I just need do a few things with the CRT before it goes back in, I don't think I'll bother with chasing down dying caps, the picture looks fine when I run it out of the cab. I think my problems were just interference related to the power cable which was dangling pretty close to my dodgy test AV signal wire. On the whole, I think it's coming up pretty nicely. I could have gone further with things like new glass and repainting the black panels on the cab, but I think it's kinda cool to keep some of the original character.

 

IMG20181028181448.thumb.jpg.186e90fb9eb6ae1998d4e6fa9c84c20c.jpg

 

Does anyone have a clear pic of what is supposed to go on the steering wheel hub? I assume its a emblem of some kind. I was thinking about getting something made up...

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Nice work mate, that's scrubbed up beautifully.

I'm sure I've seen that aluminium molding on tables from the 1970's. Maybe try looking in some retro stores for it.

 

This is what's on my Speed Race Twin control panel.

I think Speed Race had a checkered flag, I'm sure I have an image saved on a hard drive 'somewhere'...

 

d4cCHm3.jpg

 

Edit...

 

Here it is.

 

JDmgDr2.png

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Thanks, I'm pretty happy with it so far. It's almost at the point were it is something that can be in the house instead of under a tarp in the shed... That aluminium trim, I must have seen that a million times on old furniture, would be nice to find a usable strip somewhere. Barring that, I'm sure I can find something new that will look close enough. I don't know anything about cabinetry but it looks like a standard type of sizing to me.

 

Cheers for the pic. I really like that art. Top down, line drawing of a 70s' F1 car, that's cool. I think I'll copy that, but with a 'taito' logo in the centre. I had some custom stick-on center cap emblems made in Germany for a set of rims not long ago. I'll shoot them an email, I'm sure they could laser something out for me.

 

Yeah, think I'm going to go with a 'twin' style design. I might get them to make up one like the original also, just to go with the original wheel...

 

Unless anyone has some spare parts lying around?

Edited by SeaJay
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[ATTACH=CONFIG]137854[/ATTACH]

 

Great work in restoring your Speed Race. This is where mine is at. I was wondering if you could do a close up of the control panel as my steering is connected to the control panel by 4 large (ugly) bolts but yours seems clean. Just want to see the difference. If you need any other pics please ask. Thanks

239369694_IMG_5725F.thumb.jpg.73a205b66c9b0ce7ec79a2cd8971cae9.jpg

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]137854[/ATTACH]

 

Great work in restoring your Speed Race. This is where mine is at. I was wondering if you could do a close up of the control panel as my steering is connected to the control panel by 4 large (ugly) bolts but yours seems clean. Just want to see the difference. If you need any other pics please ask. Thanks

 

IMG20181028221722.thumb.jpg.75c408f2d8e19ddd04bfcd8a09bb9188.jpg

 

There's not much to see. There are no visible bolts holding the steering assembly in place. It looks as if they were recessed into the panel before the vinyl was applied. Seems like someone has been quite unkind to your cabinet at some point...

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Yes they had. Thanks for the photo.:)

 

No problem.

 

Could be fixed if you are planning a full restoration though. They sell black vinyl at Clarke Rubber that looks identical to the stuff on the control panel, but you'd probably need to dismantle the entire cab to do a proper job of laying it on...

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IMG20181029191922.thumb.jpg.9069aa007f4e0ea9d71381897c30c331.jpg

 

I think I'm pretty much Speed Raced out for now. I have the tube back in and everything seems to be up and running properly. Still have a few minor things I'll take care of eventually. I need some locks and the side trim first, then some other things like the green plastic on the screen, it still looks shitty despite my best efforts. And I'll probably get around to looking at the CRT board at some point in the future, the picture is pretty good but isn't perfect. It looks slightly 'compressed' to the LH side of the screen which I suppose is actually the top, if that makes sense.

 

As it is, It'll do for now. I hear the call of an Atari pinball board with no CPU clk signal beckoning.

 

Which reminds me. Turns out I was almost on the money with my diagnosis on the Taito board. That last dead 555 that I swapped seems to run that missing clk signal via the SN7407 that I thought was the issue. I just had to follow it one more chip back. Good learning experience though. Thanks for your help, everyone.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Thanks dude, I still have a few finishing touches to make but it's almost there. The Atari has been taking up most of my spare energy of late, but I did order a set of locks for this thing today and I have been keeping an eye out for some matching trim to finish off the exterior... Once that's all done I'll pull the CRT and check out the board and fix the green plastic on the screen, then it will be perfect
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  • 1 month later...

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