Question from Mike: Hello, I bought an Atari Missile Command cocktail model, not working, about a month ago. The game had seen some serious neglect. It was essentially dead when I bought it but I could see a shut down pulse / flash, like turning off an older TV, when powering the game off. Since then I figured out the power supply / audio regulator board was bad, replaced it with one I found on eBay. The game came to life with the replacement and I actually could see part of the attract mode work but would reset within few seconds. Self test was working too, it said everything good except “Bad Chip.” I noted in the self test information / manual that bad chip = bad custom sound chip. Found a new one of those from an arcade repair place in TX and when I replaced that the game worked fully, minus the player one trackball needing attention (I had already serviced the player two trackball) and I played several games with no issues waiting for player two’s turn.

Ok, this is my question. After I had it working I went back to working on other issues like the player one trackball and etc. The next time I turned it on, it still worked BUT I now have parts of the attract mode that will NOT completely disappear as it should upon starting a game. Also, it does not completely disappear properly to show a proper attract mode now either (it did prior). I have since serviced the player one trackball, both now work fine. I get parts of “player one or player two” on the screen. This is also with the game running that will also NOT disappear after the screen flips. So, the game is working but certain “visuals” like the alternating player one and two and the attract mode / high scores stays up with a running game. I have no idea why this happened.

The power supply seemed one of the cleanest parts of this game. PCB was clean too and I had already checked for the cracks, scraps, scores, etc., though I am going to do that again and recheck it tomorrow though I don’t know why. Today, just in case, I changed out BIG BLUE. No difference. Same problem. Monitor is clean, no wavy effect or flicker or anything out of normal there (other than noted above), colors all look good and crisp. I have proper game sounds too, no issues but I do get a brief tone / hum that lasts maybe a second or two now switching to self test mode and ONLY then then it stops. Self test does NOT indicate anything is wrong. I am relatively new to all this but have some electronics training though albeit rusty as I have not done anything like this in 30 plus years. I have done all I can think of. Any ideas? Otherwise, I guess it is time to buy professional help and board repair with someone more skilled and with more test equipment and tools than I have currently. I am just frustrated as I had it working 100% and I would like to do this myself. The only odd thing I can think of, maybe, is a static charge hit something though I have been careful and generally aware of that possibility. I don’t know.

Thank you, Mike from Marquette, Mi