Thanks for letting the music play out at the end. I had a 3rd daughter, and now she loves this song too. All 3 babies go crazy to this song.

Good to see you back. One of those videos you want to scream at the player wishing it was live. I've repaired dozens of Williams games and power supplies. You should get the 0.156" pins with the orientation lug (the bit at the back) but as long as your headers have the keying pin it'll be fine.

Welcome Back Buddy. Just an observation John, be carefull where you are stripping and trimming your wires. A few times ive noticed your trimming them over other PCB's or PSU's inside cabs or on your desk. These copper fibres can cause shorts. I know everyones an expert dude but ive seen a board blow after a guy I knew was re-crimping and trimming over a PC Motherboard paying no attention to where the clippings were going you tend to the same. Always wear long sleve shirts to to insulate your arms from contact points when reaching into the cab.

John, I installed the Williams Switching power supply kit in mine, after that darn linear PS kept giving me problems after two rebuilds. I kept it in the cabinet, but added the kit along side and now it is 100% reliable. It's great to set it and forget it....

Welcome back! Already have the many songs of Journey in my head again!

Heres how you fix this John. #1 Replace the power IDC's on the ROM board AND the MPU board. That one fried +5 wire on the IDC that you replaced is the +5 supply to the MPU. Its probably in bad shape on the other side as well. Replace the male headers as well. #2 replace those three caps right below the power connector on the MPU board. Those old caps will drop their associated voltage as much as .5 volts. #3 get rid of that plastic 20 amp bridge on the power supply board! Put an all metal 35 AMP bridge in its place and call it a day. Half of that bridge is used for +5/+12unreg and the other half for -12. So two of those diodes take a beating. If its got ANY plastic bubbling up around the edges it should be replaced. #4 I do this on all WMS video's I fix now. If you look at 4J1 on the power supply board you will notice that pins 2, 4 and 6 are empty and 1, 3 and 5 are populated. Well, on the power supply board pins 1 and 2 are connected together, pins 3 and 4 are connected together and pins 5 and 6 are connected together. Hmm... I add a 16ga wire from the transformer terminals that 1,3 and 5 are connected too and populate the empty pins on the power supply board. Think about it, bad connection from the get go is going to yield poor supply voltages down the road. This one is optional. Remote the 35amp bridge to the heat sink that the VR's are on. The 20amp plastic bridge runs REALLY hot and so does the 35amp metal bridge. Why not give it a little help cooling off. I can send you a pic of what I'm talking about if you need it. Same goes for anyone else in this thread. Theres also a adjustable +5 mod for the factory supply. A quick google search will lead you to it. Be sure to read it through before doing it. And if you have not done it replace the pin header and connector that connects to the heat sink assy. Use Trifurcon pins in the female molex. Oh, +5 from a switcher isnt a bad idea. You wont have that memory corruption that 86'ing the linear can cause because the linear will still be there to supply the +12 that locks the CMOS down at power up and power down. Just time your grounds together and connect +5 ONLY to the switcher. I have an adapter I build that I can send you if you want it. :)

A tip when desoldering double sided boards like that, particularly with thick power traces, is to, put the gun on the pin and leave it there for a few seconds for the solder to flow on both sides of the board _before_ pulling the trigger. Otherwise, if you press the trigger straight away, you may have only melted the solder on the near side and you end up with more rework.

John, during the "viewer mail" segment, I couldn't help but think the 'Rat Pack' was laughing over your shoulder at the difficulties you're having with the Robotron... how rude!!

John, you do good work with creating new connectors and such. That's my one inexperience... I bought some stuff and will be rolling my own soon for my Smash TV and Total Carnage though!

You really need to get a replacement locator for that "borrowed" crimp tool. Locators make a world of difference! Push button on locator, drop contact in hole, release button. Holds contact at right angle and depth and provides a wire stop function to prevent inserting wire too far. .

Get a switching power supply, in every TNT Amusement Cab they always replace them, saves you a lot of hassle. I know you have been trying to get down to TNT, did you know Todd has a few Moppet Cabs? Glad you are back.

Finally a new episode, welcome back John!! :-)

Hi John! Check the connector pcb traces on the pcb TOP side, especially to the black wire pin. Could likely be that you pulled the through hole plating when desoldering hte connector. This could explain the issues and why the top side pcb traces are flaky.

Great vid pal.., Guaranteed nothing's straight forward when you have a shit load of catching up to do. keep chipping away at it bro.

Check the connections on the 4j4 header to the heatsink transistors, a small resistance in these connections will cause the regulator to be off. There are voltages listed in the schematics for testing. You can leave 4j2 disconnected while testing. Those cut wires are because the Dram was changed to a newer version which does not require -5v and 12v.

I think the switching power supply from arcade shop is the way to go. I used it in a Joust and it's a trouble free fix.

Watching someone solder in real time, oh how I missed this channel : )

Cap kit usually does the trick for me on these supplies. Haven't had to put in new headers...yet

You can bump up the + 5 volts by removing resistor R10 on the power supply, did it to mine and it fixed it. It's in the manual also for reference

It depends man, I think it's worth a shot to try to rebuild the power supply if it costs you hardly any money to do it and if that fails then you should just say fuck it and buy the new one. Glad to see you back on KZfaq man.

Woot! The channel is alive!

Really miss the AO podcast. My all time fav was when Jow and Yourself did the, "Jackson Maids' three" Any chance the podcast will resurface??

Hey John, have you considered that it's the wire itself? If the rebuild fails, try replacing the wires for the harness you made.

Welcome back John :D

fantastic

if wiggling the cable makes the 5v unstable consider replacing the black wire as well (not only the crip connector) because the cable could be broken inside and as a result of that have a certain wiggle-dependant resistance causing the voltage drop. if replacing the wire would not solve the issue I'd certainly just make a video about replacing an old arcade power supply with a switcher... ;-)

Hello John, This is in reguards to your ROBOTRON 2084, Was not sure if you found out about that arcadeshop.com are now selling complete WICO 4 IN. JOYSTICKS, plus the replacement handles and even the leaf switches, I just received 12 of the COMPLETE 4 IN. WICO JOYSTICKS, they are going on games in my collection, including my COCKTAIL ROBOTRON 2084 btw, I matched them up to my 36 yr. old original wico joysticks from robotron and they are identical to a tee. well talking to them at arcadeshop, the wico 4 in. joysticks complete are flying off the shelves, they are selling a lot of them, and thought about letting you know so you may want to buy a set for your upright robotron. your videos are awesome.

WELCOME BACK!! WOOOOOO!

great vid as always once I saw robotron part 1 I was like damn I know alot of people are purists but I would go with the new switching power supply and be done with it

Although it would be more reliable to switch out for a new switching power supply, I know you'll likely want to fix the original. I can't blame ya for wanting to preserve the original power supply though.

BIIIIIIIG Outro John

yay your back Jhon.

Yes, complete wico 3.5 in. And wico complete wico 4 in. Joysticks, plus they sell the replacement handles and yes, they sell the replacement leaf switches also.

After rebuilding supply, replace those three caps where your power comes into the CPU board. They're likely giving you some of that drop. Mecha has a thread about this on KLOV.

YAY! You're back! ^^

Man go ahead and stick a switcher in there! Williams Linear supplies are so flakey and the switchers don't introduce hum or monitor ripple into the game like some of the other switching adapters out there. Namely the MCR adapter. I went through this same exact issue with my Moon Patrol. Rebuilt the power supply, still problems. Put the switcher in there....No issues! Rock solid for years. I have a switcher in every one of my Williams games (Turkey shoot, Defender, Robotron, and Moon Patrol). I will also give you another beneficial piece of advice.....Don't buy the adapter from Arcade Shop! Save some cash and just make your own out of some of those male .156 pins! Just solder the wires directly to the corresponding pins and use hot glue and heat shrink to fill the gaps and make it solid. That's what I did with all my games and you can make it look neat and professional. Good luck!

YES! New video!

do you know where I can find a transformer for the robotron at?

Try cleaning those contacts like the cartride connector, i did had a gameboy wich didn't work but once i cleaned the cartride pins, it suddenly sprung alive.

i kinda guessed that it might be the wires after the connector didn't fix it. wires can go bad now.

Hey john im going to need to the same thing with my power supply board on my robotron do you have a list of the stuff need to bye to do the repiar

I would replace the ground wire entirely and eliminate the possibility of internal breaks within it.

He Lives!

glad you're back.

Yay your back

Yes, Facebook is huge for trafing and quick information. Less clunky compared to KLOV.

OH HAI JOHN

Switching Power supply for the Win!

At 54:25 "The game is playing right now.",,I get excited, but then I see it;s a part #1... Like how you know a episode was a two parter because the ending was nowhere in sight and it was about time for the episode to end.

After an hour and a half I still don't know if you got it fixed and if so what was the problem.

Yes, finally! The world is Gray without John providing such quality content!

1:12:07 - I like to hear John's dirty talk.

how did you cured so fast, on Friday switch play, you're constantly coughing and sneezing.. what have you done to cure it???

Get the new power supply, assuming you hadn't bought one or fixed the old one already.

John you need a new harness for that game....sounds like broken cables.

finallllllyyyy

lol the video that turned up on the notification squad tab was called robotron fix 1

Hey John have you seen the new Donkey Kong Jr. remix yet ?

I paused the video and went to enter. it asked me to log in with Facebook, then said that my Facebook account was not eligible to enter.

get the new switching power supply from arcade shops 👍

I love this channel and have been watching every clip for the last 6 years, but hearing AY-chiptune Journey-songs on repeat for an hour got a bit annoying in the end. Is the Journey-machine supposed to play those songs in attract? I thought only the tape-machine was playing in attract (like every 3 minute or so) on your earlier videos?

You're back !!

Hey John, I think I know what going on with your Robotron 2084 arcade game Error Codes 1 & 2 ,Error code 1 relates to Ram Error and Error 2 relates to Rom Error

Your alive yay

Clint Torres, John is that a real name?

I'd just get the switching power supply, why not go with a newer more reliable solution.

why you dont replace the Italian hat to usa? are you American or not?

26:00 which game started playing don't stop believing?😂😂😂

get the linear power supply, enough headaches bro

Update 2024 the channel WAS going to die, and the hanger DID kill the channel.

I think you suffering issues when you change the header pins they need to be soldered on both sides? not just the bottom side, they might not be making contact properly on the other side of the PCB traces especially if the plastic is touching the board when you come to soldering? On that type of strip you can put it in the other way round so just put them through the long way, so you can solder both sides then push the plastic down to the bottom. If the connector strip can only go One Way just push all the pins through to the top on a flat surface so the plastic is at the top! then push the plastic back down afterwards. it does sounds like maybe a capacitor issue, sounds like a high ESR, check them all for the ESR values

I missed you!!! Oh by the way Todd from TNT AMUSEMENTS called you out in his last video to come out.

go to the arcade shop

why don't you show The hangar anymore

fWe can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to make it better than it was before. More stable... More reliable... A full 5 volts.

WHAT?! CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE JOURNEY ATTRACT MUSIC! SPEAK UP!

Hmm... I'm not sure why you didn't check the output voltages first off man ??!! This is 3 games in the basement now that you've tried to fix & have failed ??? Why aren't you concentrating on fixing one game at a time, instead of jumping from game to game when you cant fix something ? 3 episodes of trying to fix those game, but nothing fixed !! Seems to me your all over the place with the basement now John & don't I care what you say bud... The hanger is effecting these videos !! and now with a 2nd location, its only going to get worse I'm afraid !!! History of this channel is proof !! I hope I'm wrong :-(