3-25-96 ALL THE LASER GAMES I KNOW, AND ALL THE INFO I'VE GATHERED. -by MIKE TREU verbal (414)-735-6602 "I am internetless" When Dragon's Lair was out back in 83, it actually came to the small town I grew up in. I played a LOT of video games when I was younger; what else was there to do. Dragon's Lair was by far, the most addicting, amazing, fun, arcade game ever! I can't emphasize enough how much I loved this game! If I only had 50 cents for every time my best friend and I had said, wouldn't it be great to own a Dragon's Lair. About five years ago, after graduating tech. school for electronics, I really thought about it, and hey, it's my own apartment, and cabinets don't take up THAT much space. Six months later, and about $100 in phone bills, I actually tracked a working one down within a 45 minute drive. They agreed on $1000 (which to me now seems a little steep, but I was new in the field). Two weeks later, I rented a U-Haul and it was mine (about $80 for the U-Haul; 45 miles - I don't recommend it unless you're desperate). That first day I had my Dragon's Lair was the happiest day of my life; by far! No exaggerating either. About six months later Dragon's Lair II came out. I immediately started dealing directly with Leland and bought one. Banks wouldn't give me a loan for any of it, so I still owe credit cards for them today. But I have them!! I'll admit, now that I have a firm grasp of electronics and I know what makes it tick, it's lost a lot of lustre. But, there's no way around it, you can't stifle knowledge. Most of my satisfaction now is wiring kits up and getting them to work; also, other people saying 'Holy crap, you've got an ACTUAL Dragon's Lair!'; and younger kids who never had the opportunity to play a game that still kicks ass by todays standards, and does not have a very close to the original home version (for a little while longer). Since that time, I've made it my life's goal is to track down every laser game ever made, and get it up and running. All except for new games (Mad Dog, Drug Wars, etc.) due to price; rare games (Gold Medal, etc.) also due to price; and gambling machines (Quarter Horse, Laser Shuffle) which I may get for the hell of it if the price is right. Apartments force me to keep them down to kits (no cabinets), but they do work. I've been offered some killer deals on complete cabinets, but I don't have the room, or aren't interested in most of the others to actually get a full cabinet. I don't consider myself a professional at this hobby, far from it in fact. I have however talked to a lot of people, gotten a lot of new friends all across the U.S. (a couple of which I've actually visited several states away), and learned a lot since that first machine. At the time of this writing, I've got working... Dragon's Lair Dragon's Lair II Space Ace '83 Space Ace '91 Badlands Thayer's Quest Super Don Quixote Astron Belt Galaxy Ranger Starrider M.A.C.H. 3 Future projects will be - Time Traveler. - Us vs. Them, just need a disc. - Cobra Command/Bega's Battle need a player. - Cliffhanger/Goal to Go have a manual, minimal schematics, also need Goal to Go eproms. - Cube Quest, will have everything real soon. - Interstellar, will have everything real soon. I would love to give credit and recognition to everyone I've dealt with and keep in touch with, but having done this for a while, I've met people who are kind of squirrelly about giving out their names. Initials should be O.K., until I verify it's O.K. to print your name. The rest, you know who you are. And these are by no means in order. DH DS DC JP KVF RW MS VF RP Callan Hendricks Dave Manthey Derrick Mungovan This list is somewhat loosely based on a file I had gotten from a friend off the internet by Dave Shoemaker. Addendium. On November 30th, 1995 I actually got to speak with Rick Dyer. Up until then, I had heard rumors of people speaking with him; and I really didn't believe them. Well, I tracked him down and after about 8 phone calls with him not being there, I called in the morning and bam. No bullshit. He seemed like a really nice guy, and did answer all my questions. He didn't seem real enthuesed about someone idolizing him, but I may have sounded a bit mental (being shaken just in the fact that 'holy shit, I'm talking with Rick Dire!'); and I may have been a little jostled in my questions. So throughout my file, you will see sprinkles from that conversation; believe it, it happened! Can't tell how I tracked his number, he probably would get cheesed. I know I mention later that I'm not fanatical enough to hunt these people down, but it really wasn't that tough (I was just floored I got through his secretary!); and I had some legitimate questions no one has been able to answer - until now. PROBLEMS I'VE RAN INTO ---------------------- BADLANDS: This was the first kit I bought. I was trying to wire the genlock/demodulator into my Dragon's Lair monitor, and I accidentally hooked the monitor ground directly to a power pin. Poof, magic smoke. Brought it into work and got real lucky in that one transistor blew up (pretty easy to see), another one was just blown internally. The one blown internally was the transistor that directly controlled the reset line on the micro. Stumbled onto the fact that it was stuck in the wrong state. Whew, big sigh of relief. ASTRON BELT: I used to have one of the standard arcade power supplies that did not have a -12V on it; so to supply -12V, I had to use a seperate power supply. Well, using mini-alligator clips on an edge connector is risky, and sure as shit, the -12V accidentally touched the +12V. Rule of thumb stay away from beers too when doodling at home. This turned out to be the -12V cap blown, and the only TTL chip connected to -12V was blown (IC96). After fixing this monkey, the picture came on, it was double width, showing only the left half of the screen. It turned out someone before me had soldered a resistor to a pot on the board which affects this (can't remember the label, but it's the only pot on the motherboard; and it's in pretty mush the center of the board). I have no idea why someone would do this, but some of the goofy shit you see on boards, who knows where some tech's brains are. I had another board that I must have done the same thing too. This one I popped the 10K ohm resistor on the output of the right channel on the amplifier board, and the mother board stopped working after that. I don't know what I did that cause it, but it smelled kinda icky. Anyways, symptoms of the motherboard were; at powerup, the screen was gray, with ascii characters all over the screen, and the disc doesn't spin up. I've seen this before, but the disc managed to spin up anyways (then adjust VR3 on the demodulator board). Turns out IC96 was blown up. So I'm guessing I shorted the +12V again. Oh, the very first time trying to hook this mother up, had a bitch of a time. I had the board up and running fine, the intro was going, and both graphics and the laser picture were up, but I couldn't get it to accept any input (credits / coins). It turns out one of the chips that the control outputs (up, down, coin1, start, etc.) go into has a pull-up resistor pack going to every other pin. The resistor pack is supposed to be tied to +5v. Well, every other +5v point on the board is tied together at the edge connector on the motherboard (so you only need to apply power to one point, rather than the 6 pins the schematic shows +5v going to); except this one! I should know better than to assume stuff. I am using this Genlock/Demodulator boards in my DL with a monitor that doesn't match (the DL I bought had the monitor completely gone.) This combination works great! Another quirk with the demodulator; sometimes the disc spins up, but the screen is dark gray (with no ascii characters). Try adjusting pot VR3 full clockwise, then back to original position. In actuality, VR1-VR4 are all dependant on whether you get a picture or not. Another quirk with the demodulator; This happened with Galaxy Ranger. The graphic overlay freezes, while the disc plays straight through (you will see for example the disc playing, with an overlay of your ship with a shot frozen coming out of it.) Pot VR3 is adjusted too far. Doodle around with it. Too much the opposite way and the graphics move normally, but you ship turns into a fuzzy blob. This list is constantly getting updated every day. Oh, and if bluntness and/or swearing bother you, don't read this. (beauty disclaimer, eh...) STARRIDER: When I first got this guy, it absolutely would not spin up. I had it sent from Kansas, and the person that sold it to me assured me it worked when he sent it. I didn't get to doodle with it for a couple of months, and when I tried it then, it worked. First off, you have to be patient with this guy. You will see color patterns go from right to left (about 6 of them), then a 'rug' pattern on the screen, then the first high score screen. One thing is that the disc player has to spin up before any of this happens. It will take about ten seconds before it attempts to spin up the player. My 8210A is a little flakey, in that it doesn't always spin up the first dozen or so attempts. If you listen to the player, you will hear the laser trying to focus (a weak clicking noise) before spinning up. I actually jump start it once in a while by opening the lid, and twisting the centerpost (starting the disc spinning); be careful not to push down on the disc when spinning it (or it will touch the bottom of the player when spinning and scratch the hell out of the disc). You don't need to turn it really fast, but then close the lid while the disc is spinning. I don't know if this method does any good, but I can always get mine to fire up by doing this. MACH3: This is one of the quirkiest boards I've hooked up. Very fussy. I ran into a lot of problems with corroded connectors. The ferrite bead board is definitely worth mentioning - They used an extremely cheap part with the small ferrite beads. On one of my boards, I went out and bought a roll of ?26AWG? wire, and replaced all the wires in the beads. I have two more that will need the same thing (solder does not stick to these pieces of shit any more!). So, three out of three boards makes a majority. Also, make sure you hook the left and right audio channel from the disc player to what it says in the manual. They are NOT both audio outputs; one is audio, the other is some kind of a modem signal that helps control the motherboard. If you swap them you get major disc errors. I'm currently having disc errors on the bomber game, when you get to the radiation zone, but I don't know what's causing it (I only have one disc player, so I can't swap that monkey). If anyone can help me deceipher this symptom, please let me know. Since I didn't have the horkin' transformer, I simply unplugged the output connectors on the power supply board, and tied my standard supply (with -12Vdc) into these. I tied +12V and GND across C21 on the power supply to power up the audio ampifier section on that board, but that's it. This seems to be causing a little video interference (audio and video are not mearnt to share the same GND), but I'm sure a ferrite bead between the two should clear that up. The horizontal sync output to the monitor needed about to be inverted, but nothing major. My Dragon's Lair cabinet only has one button on each side, so I also had to rewire a Genesis flight stick (took out the multiplexer inside) for the extra buttons. It's kind of a uncomfortable not mounted to the control panel, but not real bad. USEFUL GENLOCK/DEMODULATOR INFORMATION -------------------------------------- !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Be amazingly careful when doodling with monitors! There are ALWAYS high voltages on picture tubes (12,000 VDC on some!); even when they are not on - they do stay charged up; sometimes for years! I have been a technician for 7 years, and I am still leary about working on the things! If you don't know electronics, I wouldn't fart around with them. And I will, by no means, be responsible if you use any of my info and touch the wrong thing, because IT WILL KILL YOU. 120VAC feels real ugly, I would not be real anxious to feel 12,000DC. If you're not sure, don't try! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, keep in mind I've only worked on RGB's for about 3 years now, and that 95% of the information I've got here I gathered on my own, futzing around. If any of it is blatantly wrong, please tell me. I wouldn't want to go on the rest of my life thinking I knew something when in reality it was utter crap. First there are three types of signals that TV's/monitors use. 1)NTSC - National Television Standard something; this is what runs on coax, and goes right to your plain jane TV. PAL is worth a blurp since people from other countries may read this. PAL is NTSC in other countries. Different scan rate, when viewed on NTSC, the vertical hold needs adjusting, or the screen flips top to bottom; and the picture will be shifted about an inch down and to the right. 2)Composite - This is what plugs into the RCA jacks on your VCR, and what comes out of your genesis or nintendo that requires a switchbox to convert it to NTSC to watch on your TV. 3) RGB - This is what video game monitors use (O.K., all you video game techs stop snickering and laughing; imagine having to learn this shit on your own!). These separate the video signal into 5 or 6 seperate wires. RED GREEN BLUE and a SYNC. Sometimes this sync is horizontal and vertical on one wire; otherwise they will be separated into two wires. They are backwards compatible in that if you have a board that uses two seperate sync's, you can twist the two sync's together and use them on a monitor that uses a combined sync; but not the other way around. Basically connectors on these monitors will always have R, G, B, a ground pin, and one or two sync pins. Okay. The big hassle with laser games comes in when you have a laser-disc player, it outputs NTSC. This signal has to be converted to RGB to view on a video game monitor. This calls for a genlock/demodulator board (we'll call it G/D). Demodulator means it converts NTSC to RGB. Genlock is a term used in computers for a board that overlays graphics onto a video siganl. Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, Time Traveller, and Thayer's Quest are the only four games that I know of that do not use a genlock (so the video board is really just a demodulator). All other games need to overlay graphics from the motherboard with the video output from the laser-disc player. This is not a big deal, as long as you have the original G/D that went with the motherboard, and you use the same brand of monitor as what was originally designed to go with the G/D. Now in the typically rare case you don't have all original stuff, that's when you run into problems (or at least extra work). This is my main hobby. I only have one cabinet (Dragon's Lair) that I patch kits into. Don't worry, this doesn't deface it. I always use matching connectors, so nothing ever gets 'trashed'. First, I would like to mention that some G/D boards are interchangeable with re-wiring, and it really isn't that difficult. Some boards however are not interchangeable. Example - The monitor usually gets the sync from the laser-disc player, then matches the motherboard to the player's sync. Cobra Command and Starrider are two odd-balls. They do just the opposite, uses the motherboard sync, and match the player to it. This makes them pretty uncompatible with other stuff. Second, when using different brands of monitors, the sync's can be different. Some use inverted signals, some use different timing than what your G/D may output. What I've learned is, use common sense, trial and error, and patience. When your sync's are locked correctly, you shouldn't need a whole lot of adjusting, and the picture should lock on vertically, and horizontally (no real fine tuning should be necessary). Using a 7404 IC (inverter), or a 7407 (buffer), you can get them to lock in. If the sync doesn't lock, hook your 7404 or 7407 up to the +5 on the board, then run you sync through them. In the case of a buffer, you may need more than one gate. One tip I've found is, if everything is locked, but there is a black vertical bar in the center of the screen, with the right half of the screen on the left side of the bar, and vise-versa; you need to run the horizontal sync through an inverter. I've made the mistake of going through about 5 buffer's instead, which brought the picture in normal, but it warped about an inch of horizontal width about 3/4 up (then I tried one inverter and bam, dolemite, looked jimmi-jam). Some of this stuff is fairly in depth, but if you're having sync problems, and this doesn't make sense, verbal me (I will probably be able to help). OKAY, NOW THE LISTING!!! ------------------------ ASTRON BELT 83 Midway < Sega Uses the Hitachi / Sega VIP9500SG disc player. Galaxy Ranger and this use the same motherboards. Astron Belt came out first, Galaxy Ranger second. I remember playing Astron Belt in the arcades, but I never got to play Galaxy Ranger. The sound board is a bit of a pain. It uses 35Vdc, which it gets off the main transformer through a full-wave bridge. If you're jimmy-rigging it like me, you don't have the original transformer. So, I found a chip that can step up DC voltages. It can actually take the +12V on the board and crank it up to +35VDC (and it works!). News Flash!!! Use the +5V to crank up to +35V. The +12V causes some picture interference, but the +5V doesn't (this dc-dc step-up can actually operate as low as 2.8V! I've tried it! The spec's say 1.5A too, but I'm sure that's dependant on the input wattage.). The Hitachi player's interface has the same labels as the Sony LDP-1450 player used in Dragon's Lair II, but I tried swapping them and no dice. I'm pretty sure the baud rate doesn't mix. On the Sony you can actually set this; and I've tried all possible combinations, did not work. Since I tried that, I've heard the commands are different for the two players (thus completely incompatible). I've also got some sound boards that look different from the one's I use. The manual gives the assy #834-5272 (which is the one I use). The odd boards have the number #834-5315, and the cut pin 3 on CN3 is actually there (the amplifier board dosn't fit unless this pin is cut). I tried bending the pin up just to plug the amplifier board in, and it didn't work on two of these odd boards. So, I don't know what these things are. Another wierd thing about this game, it says in one of the cabinet's parts lists that you need a Hitachi, LDV-1000, or a LDV-1001 player. These do require different motherboards, and I only have the Hitachi style motherboard. Maybe the other style sound board I have is for the LDV-1000 motherboard; sure would like to get one of these, just to see it! One tidbit someone pointed out was the fact that the disc for this and Galaxy Ranger are pressed on both sides, in case one scratches. This game overlays a graphic spaceship onto real life (kinda cheesy looking) space backgrounds. Kind of neatly done in that you have to shoot spaceships, tanks, etc. from the real life background. You also have to avoid shots by the enemies, and make left/right movement decisions. Some of the scenes in the background are ripped off from Star Trek:The Motion Picture; Buck Rogers; and some of the planet scenes look like they are directly from a 1975 Sid & Marty Krofft show, or Mighty Morphin in todays terms. On easy mode, this game can be finished on about three credits. ATOMIC CASTLE 84 LDCS Never heard of this guy. I think KLOV may have just gotten this name out of a magazine. If this is the case, Eon & the Time Tunnel is another title. Would like to know if it is a real game (hopefully not as rare as gold medal, although KLOV does state there is only one in existance; who has it!?!?). BADLANDS 83 Centuri