It's alive! Sort of...

I had some time to work on the asteroids game. I've pulled it all apart, cleaned it up some, and assembled it on my "work bench".

You can see in the upper right corner my Zektor ZVG. I use it to drive a 19V2000 vector monitor so I can play all the vector games using VectorMAME. This is also a convenient way to test monitors out with known good signal sources.

Atari Audio Regulator 1

Notice the Audio Regulator, it's an AR2, though an Asteroids cocktail needs an AR1. The AR1 was producing the correct voltages until it was under load (connected to the other board), then the +5V supply dropped to about 1V, which isn't going to work. I remembered I had an AR2 laying around, and it's pin compatible with the AR1 (though much larger and produces more voltages from different molex connectors). This brought the board right up.

My next step was to hook up the scope and see if the Asteroids board was indeed working. After looking at the 6MHZ test point (good) and seeing good stuff on XOUT and YOUT test points, I opted to set the scopy in XY mode. I could see a very crude Asteroids display. Next step was to plug in the 19V2000, and Asteroids was alive!

Now I'm not out of the woods. I have to get the AR1 working, and the cocktail doesn't fit a 19V2000, I need to get the 15 inch monitor working. But a lot of things are working.

I think the AR1's problem is the 2N3055, that's the big power transistor on the heatsink. The LM305 is regulating voltage, it's just when load is applied that the voltage drops, so hopefully this will be a simple fix. Before I compose an order to Bob Roberts I'm going to snoop around and see what else I might need so I can make one order. For now I can use the AR2 (though sadly I don't have any sound), and the 15" monitor will now be my main electronics focus.

I should mention I have two Asteroids mother boards, and one of them is not working, so at some point I'm going to need to work on that problem as well.