Re: Cinematronics Tailgunner Start Light

From: Matthew Rossiter <matt_at_rossiters.com>
Date: Wed Apr 14 2010 - 10:30:38 EDT

It stays high when no coin is inserted.

On 4/14/2010 5:33 AM, Cinelabs Info wrote:

Matt, What is the state (high or low) of J3 pin 9, when there is no coin inserted?

 

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Matthew Rossiter <matt@rossiters.com> wrote:

If I take out the 2N3904 NPN transistor and put in a 2N3906 PNP transistor - the start light works as I would expect (off when there's no 'Press Start' message).  The manual specifies a typical *red* (mv50) led by the way.  Just to give it that extra cheezy space control panel effect.

I guess the guys over at vectorbeam wanted that light to be on solid the whole time.  I wonder if Cinematronics was the deciding factor for not including the light when they acquired Tailgunner just to save a coupla bucks?

Oh well, looks like I'll make a compromise and put in the pnp transistor instead.

Matt

On 4/13/2010 1:47 AM, Andrew Welburn wrote:

Try wiring your LED the other way round, that'll give you the inverse lit sequence.

Cool hack tho, i love adding the bits that the designers intended, but the manufacturing side didn't because of cost-cuttinng/time saving.

They probably designed it this way because all atari TTL games of the 70's did this to indicate credits (as there was no on-screen credit annunciation). If you don't want to confuse your players, make your machine act like all the others around you...

I know TG has on-screen credit display, but maybe they coded that in after the pcb design was done? or maybe they just wanted to do both in order to blend in with the times... after all, asteroids also does both...

Andrew Welburn
www.andys-arcade.com

----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew Rossiter" <matt@rossiters.com>
To: <vectorlist@vectorlist.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 3:41 AM
Subject: VECTOR: Cinematronics Tailgunner Start Light

Question#2:  I don't think the inverter circuit is working properly because the LED stays on solid and then blinks when a coin is inserted.  I would expect the led to be *off* when no coin is inserted - then blink when coin is inserted.  Is that right?

Thanks,

Matt

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** Unsubscribe, subscribe, or view the archives at http://www.vectorlist.org ** Please direct other questions, comments, or problems to chris@westnet.com Received on Wed Apr 14 10:31:04 2010