Archive for December, 2008
Happy Holidays
Posted by BP in No rug pattern on December 31st, 2008
I hope everyone out there is having a prosperous holiday season. Mine has been very busy, and as a result, no time to work on the Robotron.
Hopefully, I will get a chance to work on it tomorrow. I have pulled the power PCB and I am going to try to resolder the connections for the power harness. I have heard that this can do wonders, and truth be told, the solder joints on the board look none too good right now.
Current status, 12/16/2008
Posted by BP in No rug pattern on December 16th, 2008
OK, here is the current status of the Robotron.
I plug it in and turn on the power switch. I hear the hum of the power supply as the machine fires up, the 3 LEDs on the power supply board all light up solid, and the numeric LED on the ROM board flashes with a “u” or a “c”, depending on how you look at it. There does not appear to be any kind of numeric pattern to the flashes.
The screen just displays a green screen with a strange pattern.
I have posted a video to YouTube that shows the LED on the ROM board and the screen. Here is the video of my sad Robotron:
Also, I have posted some pictures to Flickr of the inside of the machine, if you would care to look:
Oddly enough, one time when I fired up the game, the monitor still looked as it does in the video, but the machine was repeatedly playing the sound that it makes when you are at the high score entry screen.
I have the game’s instruction manual, and a set of the drawings for the game. (Not that I can make any sense out of the drawings, I have a very limited knowledge of electronics. Please keep that in mind if you make any suggestions.) In the instruction manual, it tells you that if the rug pattern does not appear, that one of the first things you should do is check the fuse F2 on the power supply board. I did this, and the fuse appears to be good as I got a tone on the continuity checker for my volt meter. However, on a whim, I took the fuse out of the board and touched the probes to the empty clips, and received a tone. Is that supposed to happen?
Wave 1
Posted by BP in No rug pattern on December 15th, 2008
Thanks for checking out my Robotron Resurrection blog. In this blog, I hope to chronicle the steps that I will be taking in order to nurse my Robotron machine back to health.
It worked great after I bought it at an auction in Indianapolis. And then the movers got their hands on it. It hasn’t worked right since.
And now, I think it has sat dormant in the basement for long enough. I will post some information about the current status of the machine. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.
Thanks. BP




