Re: Asteroids proper grounding and monitor DC reg bug.

js@cimmeri.com wrote:
>
>> John wrote:
>>
>> At this time Gottlieb pins electronics were designed by Rockwell
>> engineers and that explained why they were having trouble with coil
>> failures - Rockwell designed a proper system using a star ground, but
>> they allowed no redundancy.
> So, did the Gottleib pins work initially, and only have trouble after
> something in the ground system degraded? What degraded?
>
> JS
>
>
Well (drifting off-topic only in a sense) - yes, Gottlieb games would
work fine for a couple of years/months and then they would start eating
coils. One would go to the location, open everything up, look around
wiggle stuff, replace the coil, then the game would again work for
months/years and again a coil would fail. What turned out to be the
problem was the ground/common molex pin connection on the regulator
board for both the first and second systems - adding jumpers on the
various boards all to a common ground plane fixed that . Gottlieb did
not get it right until the early 90s, their later 80s systems had other
ground issues that kept causing operators problems.

I later realized that this would apply to XY monitors...in particular
GO-8 as set up in SEGA games - the power supply ground/common is not
very good!

For the curious I have a page devoted to Gottlieb ground issues:
http://flippers.com/gottlieb_ground_cures.html

John :-#)#

-- 
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9 
Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, VideoGames)
                 www.flippers.com 
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out"
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