Quoted from sharkey1331:Hi folks!
I'm restoring a Blackout I picked up recently from a co-worker. It had been in his basement for years and years, and he originally got it out of someone's basement.. The boards were a little bit of a mix & match- for example the sound/speech board was out of a Gorgar. I swapped in Blackout sound and speech roms, and the test button now makes all the right sounds, and speech calls. The MPU had the correct roms in it already. The power supply is an older one (had the extra yellow capacitors on it) but produces all the correct voltages. The driver board was missing some transistors, and also has a crispy looking area that was repaired- the two kicker solenoid drivers. Both kicker coils look original, but not burnt at all. I've finally gotten all lamps to work, and now all solenoids except for the knocker and some of the sound board driving transistors are working. Game plays great!
I know I've got missing transistors still for the sound drivers- in the solenoid test, only 9 and 10 make sounds on the sound board. The other solenoids drivers at the bottom left of the driver board (4 of them!) are literally missing the TIP120, the 2N4401, or both. The game makes some sounds, but they are not always correct- for example, seems most sounds are the tilt sound if I hit a drop target. The green targets and kickers make the correct sound. Bonus count down is correct too. Here's my question: Surely there are more sounds than the 6 or so transistors? So, does the sound board have a matrix thing going on, for example, if it receives solenoid 9 input, play sound a, if it receives solenoid 10 input, play sound b, and if it receives both 9 & 10 input, play sound c?
Just curious,
Jason
The sound selection is binary number represented by the combination of the solenoid outputs of the Driverboard. You won't get the right sounds without all the transistors in place... Each of the solenoid outputs is one of the digits in the binary number. Without some of the driver transistors, some of the binary digits are locked at "1". They can't be grounded to "0" since the driver transistor is missing. This prevents some of the sounds to be properly selected and a different sound with a 1 in that digit plays.
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