Restoring Centaur's true voice.

Ahhh, this takes me back to the 80's when I did sound equipment repairs for various music shops in Edinburgh. It was fascinating to see echo & 'reverb' move from springs & plates through tape loops, analogue bucket-brigade delays then memory chips. I still have an old Boss analogue delay/echo pedal from that era which uses BBD technology and still works perfectly. Nice job on that replacement echo card btw..

Gordo

What is it you were thinking of sending?

Big Clive

Where do we send stuff for you to “explore”. Nothing explosive unfortunately.

I have a couple of replacement capacitors ready to be fitted.

Big Clive

That is such an awesome fix! I like the heat reduction thing, especially with things of "that era". Speaking of which, The big metal can electrolytic cap at C26 on the power board caught my eye. It looked to be discolored on the bottom, and the plastic looked a little less clear which at least implies a bit of electrolyte may be leaking, at least over time or has in the past. Is that a Sprauge cap by any chance? I see many of them in the industrial stuff I do repair evaluations on and I tend to distrust them based on past experience. Not that they are always bad, but they always set off alarms in my head for some reason...maybe it's the fishy smell of electrolyte that sometimes accompanies them. ;)

Michael Thompson

I do remember Dragon's Lair when it appeared at the arcade. It initially had huge problems with the laser disk though.

Big Clive

When I got this machine it had the up kicker problem. There was a relay next to the area that was disconnected and when I connected it the solenoid fired hard and then when the relay opened it drew and sustained an arc (that must have been why it had been disconnected). I simply wired all the contacts in series to create a wider gap and it's been fine since. Sinistar was just evil. I remember the fright I got when it's face scrolled onto the screen.

Big Clive

Ah, so you restored it using one of the Holtek chips... There's a crazy thing build out of that: <a href="https://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/forsale/phonictaxi/ptaxi.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/forsale/phonictaxi/ptaxi.html</a>

Jamie Magin

Heh - Haunted House was always one of my favorites. In fact, when I worked for an arcade company, that pinball got me my first computer programming job. Someone bought a used HH machine from us, but the kicker that threw the ball back up to the main level from the "basement" wasn't kicking hard enough and the ball would fall back down over and over. My boss sent guys out to try to slap a cheap fix on it, but it kept failing. Then he sent me out, I spent a little of his money for a real contactor to replace the little brass fingers and solenoid arrangement, and it worked perfectly. I saw a copy of "Byte" magazine at the house where I was working on it, and started talking to the guy about computers. About six months later, I was fed up and quit the arcade job. The following week, the HH owner called me up out of the blue and asked if I wanted a job as a programmer. He said the way I took ownership of his pinball problem and just fixed it impressed him. Turns out he was the head of IT for a big insurance company that was just getting into PCs. The rest, as they say, is history. :) Also... "Sinistar LIVES!!"

Daddy Bearcat

Although it might not be a exact replacment (I think the newer ones are lower voltage, 4096 stage BBD ICs aren't unobtainum, even Coolaudio (owned by Behringer) makes one.

Jamie Magin

Thanks for doing this, I have watched it a few times,. Do you remember watching the arcade game on Laser disk Dragon's Lair <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znO_m00s8II" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znO_m00s8II</a> I could never play it my reactions were too slow. The first voice adventure game I bought was the PC version <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_Dragon" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_Dragon</a> There was only a small bit of speech on the PC version. Then some one gave me Leisure Suit Larry , very odd games how did they get away with the subject back then. I was also useless at Pinball I do remember buying games by WEIGHT ;-) if the box felt heavy in my mind there may be a few disks and a decent instruction book for example King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (DOS) 10 or 12 floppy disks John

John Harrison

I always wondered how much extra wear it created on the machines, but compared to an actual game it wouldn't be much. If you noticed a pop bumper getting a bit zealous on that video it's because I noticed afterwards that a rubber had broken and got under it's switch skirt.

Big Clive

By printed circuit board package I meant the design software. In this case Boardmaker 1. I often go straight to copper with my designs because I have the facilities to do so.

Big Clive

I didn't actually spot that, and that's despite building a voice vandal kit many moons ago.

Big Clive

The chip in the original Centaur board was a much higher fidelity and longer duration version of the MN3002.

Loscha

Many years ago when I was in high school (1980) I built a Radio Shack audio delay kit that used a "MN3002 512-stage Bucket Brigade Device". It was an analog chip with lots of storage capacitors. Perhaps your pinball machine used something similar. <a href="https://ptpimg.me/wuzg2n.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://ptpimg.me/wuzg2n.jpg</a>

You briefly mention doing this on a printed circuit board package; do you mean using a generic board, or ordering one from a fabricator? I'm curious about your take on how and when to use perfboards and generic boards vs when to DIY or order a one-off. Maybe fodder for a future video?

George Dorn

I note you chose the same chips as the Maplin kit "Voice Vandal", which was recently remade. Sorry if you mention it in the video, I'm unable to watch that until later. Nowadays you'd either use someone's board with a PT2399 echo chip or just buy an inexpensive echo pedal and wire it up inside. <a href="https://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/forsale/phonictaxi/ptaxi.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/forsale/phonictaxi/ptaxi.html</a>

Loscha

If you set MPU switch #30 to "off" it will disable Attract Mode and not interrupt your videos. I thought it was a nice touch actually. Perfect timing. I thought Centaur had one of the best attract modes of its time. Always made you stop and watch, which I guess was kinda the point.