Tony's Arcade

People wonder why I have so many gray hairs on my head. Honestly, it has to be because I get too focused on a task. This Pac-Man board (as well as Star Castle!) had been driving me CRAZY. The funny thing is, the more time I put into fixing a game, the more I realize how stubborn I am, and if I had just done some basic troubleshooting in the beginning… ah well, on to how I fixed this Pac-Man board! In my previous post on this subject, I had fixed the board up to the point where I could play the game, except there were missing characters (as in Mr. Pac-Man himself and the ghosts) on the game screen.

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After much research, I finally got my act together and started to restore the Pac-Man cabinet. The cabinet had been painted black in it’s former life, with light blue speckle paint. Time to take that off!! After taking off the control panel, marquee, and monitor bezel, it was time to strip the paint. I also noticed that the marquee had been broken in a few places and was held together (on the back side) by sticks and duct tape. That was going to have to go.

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I received my repaired Star Castle MPU board from Mark Shostak, and plugged it in with the sound board I had repaired. After installing the speaker I mentioned in my last post on this subject, I noticed that a few sounds were missing. Ugh! So, I busted out the Star Castle Operation and Maintenance Manual. The sounds that were missing were the “Soft Explosion,” “Loud Explosion,” “Thrust,” “Sheild,” and “Fireball.” Looking at Block Diagram One, I noticed that all these sound effects are related. Also, the “Background Sound” was staying at a constant high tone, instead of lowering its frequency to a low pitched tone when you begin the game.

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