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Arkanoid Machine Help
Question from Craig: Hey Guys, Craig here from Australia. I have purchased an 86 Arkanoid machine, admittedly not working in so far as the screen had only 2 inches of view. I have looked at the tutorials online and figured it was a vertical issue. I am a complete novice, and my soldering skills are pathetic, but I hope to be better with some help locally. You will see from a pic that I attempted to put some extra solder on but it didn’t work out so well. The solder is very old and I was unable to melt it (is that normal).
Looking at the attached, can you suggest anything else. There appears to be several dark spots on the board, and I am happy to replace the capacitors where needed. Wondering if you think this is the issue. I will also have someone re-solder the vertical IC if you think this will be helpful. I would also love it if you can show me on the pic where the Vertical IC is. I am learning but a bit green at this stage.
Appreciate any help and sorry for so many questions. Cheers Craig
1 answer
Response from Jonathan: Craig,
First off, thank you for the pictures. It looks like you have either the Toei CM-R14 or R20 chassis. Keep in mind that this is just a guess and we would highly recommend checking out all of the chassis pictures on the What’s My Monitor page on Bob Roberts site and comparing them with your chassis to double check our suspicion. We’re not real familiar with this chassis in particular but we would definitely start off the repair by Installing A Cap Kit and checking for cold/cracked solder joints (especially around where the yoke wire plug into the board) as these can be a common cause for this issue.
If you continue to have the vertical problems after installing the cap kit and touching up the bad solder joints then you might indeed have a vertical IC issue. Unfortunately I’m having trouble finding it in your pictures which probably means it’s mounted to one of the heatsinks (i.e. large aluminum plates) on the board. See if you can find a chip-like structure mounted to one of these plates that has several pins (usually around 9 or so) attached to the board. This is the vertical IC. It should some sort of identification number on it that can be referenced by a company such as NTE Electronics Inc. to find a suitable replacement. Hopefully once you’ve taken all of these steps your monitor will be back up and running like new.
BTW, yes it is common for older solder not to melt when you put your iron to it. You might try adding just a bit of new solder to the tip of your soldering iron while it’s on a solder point to see if it helps melt the existing solder.
Hope that helps. Thank you for your questions and good luck with your repair.
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