Friday January 27, 2012

Techdose Blog



Mouser Order and Other News
Once again, nearly $200 poorer from a Mouser Electronics order =) Among the order was most of the parts for Ed Cheung's Williams Pinball Tester.. will prob need to order a few things from Digikey still since not everything was available from Mouser. Also getting a 0.084" pin extractor too so I can *finally* work on that Mr. & Mrs. Pac-man pinball that's been sitting on the back-burner for well over a year since it uses weird 0.084" AMP connectors on its power supply board. Couldn't find the extractor tool cheap so just kindof held off thinking I might be able to pick up one used. They go for like $50 on some websites. But Mouser finally showed them in stock for $27 so that's not too bad. All these specialty tools and parts really add up!

In other news, I'm considering spinning off the arcade/pinball content into a new website. I'm not sure how soon that might happen, but seems like that's the most logical progression since I'm still heavily into the pinball hobby. Plus, the pinball content is starting to become the dominant content on Techdose, so why not be able to theme the website entirely for that content and have a domain that makes sense, more coherent organization of the content, etc.

I'm also realizing I can't start 50 different projects and get far on them by bouncing around between them all. I've usually thrived on trying to do more than humanly possible, but it's not realistic. Focus is going to be very important for 2012.. so, I think some of the unnecessary projects like the "Data East MPU Repair" from my previous post are just going to be tossed from the idea bin. Cleaning up that board could easily take up 30-40hrs that could be better used on PCB design / creation, or fixing up a few pinball machines. It's hard to let ideas go, but when you're full of ideas then you got to learn to say goodbye to some :)

Posted Jan 26th, 2012 9:53 PM by AceBHound
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Project Overload =)
I'm kindof on project overload at the moment. Way too many things in the works including a few household projects.

1. Williams Pinball CPU Tester
Bought this from Ed Cheung at the end of last year. This is a great little board Ed engineered to help diagnose Williams System 3-11 Pinball MPU boards. I have some of the parts like dip switches, led lamp matrix arrays, lcd display.. but I'll need to order a bunch of parts to complete it. Nice thing is, this will help make repairing any Williams pinball boards much easier.

2. Smart-Ball Alley - Audio Issue
Still have the audio issue with the Smart Ball Alley (skee-ball style alley with dot matrix display). I replaced the power amp & also the preamp but that didn't fix the issue. The next component to replace comes right before the preamp & is the digital-to-analog converter IC (TDA1543). I ordered some of these off eBay end of last year but haven't had the chance to change it out & machine is kindof buried in the garage.

3. Mr. & Mrs. Pac-man Pinball Machine
I actually have a few of these. They're in various states of non-working condition :) Corrosion to clean up on the MPU boards, wire harnesses that need to be redone. The big thing holding me up is this Molex/AMP pin extractor tool I need for the 0.084" wire harnesses. It's a pricey tool and I'll probably get one when I put a combined order in with an electronics site.

4. Haunted House Pinball Machine
Just got this end of last year. It's blowing its display fuse & I think it's a power supply issue but haven't had the chance to take a look at it. Looking forward to getting this one up and running.

5. Pinball LED Display Project
This project was moving along fast last year but I had a few design considerations holding me up. Hopefully get back to work on this one over the course of this year & be able to order some PCB boards.

6. Memory Adapter
I'm planning to do a few memory adapter designs with Ramtron ICs. Probably more for my personal use but depending on what I come up with I might offer a few for sale. This project will probably come before the displays since it's a much simpler PCB board design.

7. NFL Blitz Arcade Game
Got this arcade game sometime mid-year last year. It had a failing hard drive and I had to rescue the data off of it. Need to fix some of the micro-switches and the monitor is a little shaky so could probably be re-capped. I haven't re-capped a monitor yet and don't know if I'll end up doing this one since it's not a game I'll be keeping & the shaking really isn't all that noticeable.

8. Data East MPU Repair
I have this Data East MPU out of a Laser War pinball and I was thinking of doing a time-lapse video of the repair. The board's just been sitting though, I'm torn on whether I want to put in all the time on this repair, but at this point I'm thinking if I work on it a little at a time it won't be so bad. Probably have to replace 1/3 of the components on the board, but it would be neat to show that you can repair just about any board with some effort.

9. Hot Tub Repair
The heating element in my hot tub (a Jacuzzi Quanta from the early 80s) died end of last year. So that added a new project for early this year. Got the old heating element out, now just need to order the new one and get it installed.

10. Various House Projects
Have some rooms to paint in our house still. Have a bunch of other projects/repairs on the house planned for this year that will take up some time.


That's by no means a complete list. There are many other pinball machine projects waiting to be worked on, including some that my father and I will get a chance to clear-coat the playfields on for the first time. Also, many of my personal pinball machines have developed little issues that will need to be fixed just from use over the last couple of years. It's part of owning pinball machines though, I just haven't had the ability to move the machines in a place where I can get into them to fix their issues due to space issues toward the end of last year.

There is no shortage of things to do this year, which is good for web-site ammo =) But my first priority will be getting more organized at the beginning of this year so the projects go much smoother.

Posted Jan 22nd, 2012 2:09 PM by AceBHound
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Rocksmith Thoughts / Mini Review
I had a chance to check out Rocksmith for the XBOX 360 the end of last year. If you haven't already heard of it, it's a unique game which allows you to hook up an electric guitar (or theoretically an acoustic-electric) and play songs similar to the Guitar Hero games. Since it came out it's been reviewed pretty highly. I definitely wanted to check it out since I've enjoyed playing guitar off and on and figured it might be a great way to get back into playing some. It's the first game I've been really excited about in a while.

After having the game for a few weeks, I decided to sell it. It's not a bad game, but it suffers from the same problem anyone will have when trying to learn a musical instrument. You need the time to dedicate to the instrument & if you don't have time, you'll get frustrated at how long it takes to progress anywhere. There are also a few issues others have mentioned like having to tune the guitar before *every* song and the interface/menus being slow. The biggest issue I had with the game play is how they zoom/pan the neck of the guitar -- it's very easy to lose track of what fret you should be on and very frustrating at times.

It's not a bad game by any means and if you have time to dedicate to the guitar outside of the game, then it might be a good way to supplement your guitar lessons. Just don't plan for the game to teach you how to play or even keep you motivated if you're just beginning guitar. It quickly gets more complex than someone new to guitar can handle and starts becoming more frustrating than encouraging. For beginners, it's probably better to just print some free guitar tab available on the internet and practice riffs over and over. Maybe Rocksmith2 will address some of the short-comings for the beginner, but at this time it seems like Rocksmith may be better suited for the advanced guitar players who can memorize a song easily and won't have to depend on the note positions shown on-screen while playing the game.

Posted Jan 21st, 2012 8:39 PM by AceBHound
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New Computer Decisions
I'm in the market for a new desktop or laptop (or both). Not quite sure which way to go, I've always had both a desktop and laptop for the last 10 years or so and have generally had my desktop serving something -- be it music, virtual machines, or media center content. But I'm starting to think about what I "primarily" use an appliance for and base decisions more on that. So if I'm not a heavy gamer, why spend $1000+ on a PC that will just sit idle wasting 250-400 watts of electricity 24/7 if I'm leaving my computer on all day for convenience.

This whole keeping a computer on 24/7 bit has me looking at the new Mac Mini's.. less than 13 watts when idle, the power supplies are rated 85 watts and they usually over-spec those so the Mac Mini is tempting for sheer power saving reasons. For power, the 6-core AMD processors are cool, but the cheaper AMD Phenom II processor runs at 125 watt (processor itself). That seems a little crazy but imagine it's cause the 6-core thing is new and they'll keep shrinking the cpu dies down and get back to power saving on those. I can argue having as much power as possible for a cheap price, but just as easily argue reasons to go with the most energy-saving computer that's faster than what I currently have. This one will take some figuring out..

Posted Jan 11th, 2012 8:46 PM by AceBHound
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Happy New Year!
It's time to say goodbye to 2011 and welcome in 2012! New Year's Eve is a great time to reflect on accomplishments, experiences and life lessons made over the year and to start thinking about how to adjust goals for the next year if this year didn't go quite as planned.

For me, 2011 was a great year for "growing" in my electronic abilities. I got involved in some personal electronic projects and learned to diagnose and repair a lot of pinball/arcade circuit boards. There are in fact *many* other projects and repairs I unfortunately didn't get a chance to document for this website, but I can be personally proud of being much more knowledgeable and less timid about repairing a variety of things, even common house hold repairs.

As far as this website, traffic has grown quite a bit since I've been adding original content. Unique hits have more than doubled since 2009. Traffic isn't everything, but it's neat to see the website grow substantially like that. My focus is and will continue to be adding unique content that is helpful to both electronic hobbyists as well as the consumer crowd. It helps the website grow, it keeps the content fresh & I hope it helps a lot of people. It's great to think that through this website I might spark someone's interest in an electronic or technology related career/hobby.. or get someone to question "why" or "how" something works. If we just accept everything for what it is and never learn the evolution of it all, the history will be forgotten.

So thanks to all of the readers and visitors of this website! I wish you all success and prosperity in 2012! Let's have 2012 be even bigger and better!

Posted Dec 31st, 2011 1:18 PM by AceBHound
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Previous Topics

12-31-2011
Model 78 Skee-Ball Information / Repair Info

12-05-2011
Smart Ball Skeeball - Update on Audio

12-01-2011
Smart Ball Skeeball - Audio Circuit Troubleshooting

11-20-2011
Smart Ball Alley LIVES!

11-13-2011
Alleys, Pinballs, Arcade Games Oh My!

10-23-2011
Electronic Component Substitution Guide


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