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a few roms untested courtesy of nick [ sulzerned ] nicks_bits.rar

On the subject of glasses, here is an article from 1980 on Applied Screen Print LTD.

Would love to do it again. It was a very interesting job and there was a lot of work and people involved during the process,but the job demands a minimum of 2 people not including an experienced glass cutter, silverer and stencil photographer and drawer/writer. That's how it used to be done. It has probably advanced significantly since then with digital photography etc. Would be interesting. But I suspect be a very expensive process now. On leaving my apprenticeship,I worked for another silk screen printer and they did mostly reel bands,and used a different technique again in a reverse order of the norm using white rather than clear bands. Where the print was on top of the band rather than underneath! So black was the last colour rather than white! It was very confusing and easier to make mistakes with registration. I didn't work there long though. The company I did my apprenticeship with was called Visual Arts Studio Sanitorium Road Cardiff. Wonder if it's still going? Ha,loved working there as our factory ran alongside the Radyr freight only railway line and used to see and hear the class 37s going past on the coal trains whilst I was printing hundreds of Eachway Nudger glasses lol😆😆😆

Each colour including the silver mirror was printed through stencils that were applied onto the silk screens and every different colour was done one colour at a time and allowed to dry first before the next colour was added. We used automatic and manual silk screen printing machines. The automatics,you fed the glass in one side and the glass would come out printed on the other. All we had to do was to check for registration I.e,everything fitted into the right places on the glass and machine. The manual printers,we would lift a silk screen,place the glass underneath,and used a squeegee to print across the glass over the silk screen. Did this job as an apprentice 1980-83 in Cardiff. Did tons of JPM stuff.

I'm back, just had a couple of days away R&R.😀

BEFORE YOU GUYS ALL FALL OVER, THESE ARE NOT THE FACTORY SCHEMATICS.... If such a thing exists no one is letting anyone know that they have got them .. so as I have a shedload of them to look at , and I was really fed up guessing what did what, I decided to sit for a few hours and work out where everything was.. I have scanned in the drawings I did as well, now remember, they are drawn by me, I checked , checked and checked again that they were right but guys better informed than me will know better - The point is, I at least have a good idea of what everythings doing and I hope you boys and girls can make some use of them!! img20190119_13231434.pdf img20190119_13261455.pdf img20190119_13293437.pdf img20190119_13313123.pdf img20190119_13334240.pdf img20190119_13361830.pdf img20190119_13383039.pdf img20190119_13431475.pdf

A 12K CPU wouldn't boot and it was sufffering from the usual battery vapours to the CPU. Most the tinning was flaking off of the legs which can cause short circuits across the CPU pins. It also falls down into the chips underneath and shorts them out too! The CPU was pretty lose in it's socket so the old green one had to come off. The CPU itself needed all the legs cleaning to get rid off what was left of the tinning on the pins and to get the black stuff underneath off. One of the pins fell off as it was corroded through so I put the CPU aside to test it later, not expecting it to work of course. Next was the RAM which was more or less welded into it's green sockets with corrosion. With a lot of careful persuasion they came out eventually and these were also put aside thinking they were probably knackered. In with another two new sockets, new CPU and test RAM and power up. Nothing... not surprising really I suppose. A quick check on the DATA bus shows the buffer chip to be OK but not so the ADDRESS line chips, only a couple of pins are actually passing any signal through. In with two new 74LS244's and power up and Bingo she lives. So, it's back to the original RAM and blow me that works too. Solder a new leg on the CPU, plug it in and ..... nothing! Well you can't have everything. Next was an I/O board which wouldn't boot. Checking around showed that it was stuck in RESET. With the board on the bench I found there was about 70 Ohms to ground on the RESET line. This goes to two transistors and 7 chips. Removing the transistors showed they were blameless so the next thing was to unsolder every pin 15 of the 7 chips to see which one was dragging it down. That turned out to be IC14 (74LS259). With a new one fitted it burst into life.

Ah cool, thanks for the info. I'd love to get Breakthru And Blockbuster emulated, BlockBuster was a good money earner in the day!

I think you need to spend time on internet looking at components.Any old machine will have relays,how can you not know what they look like.If you own a brenco 240 volt,that is household mains voltage,im surprized you are still typing without a leo sayer hair do.

It's looking like a problem with the main board. If the eprom card, sound card and cpu card are all from a guaranteed working machine. It can only really be the motherboard. I had one like this the other week it seems like a boot/reset fail. I'm not hearing an 'alarm'? So not sure about that. Be careful how your touching those chips and parts too mate you should wear an earth strap. One bit of static can kill a board. P.s one of those reels looks familiar to me!

Yes I have been caught like that, and so have some on here as well, you buy one and it looks good, not blacktoped or counterfeit, works fine, so you buy more and like you have found only one or 2 in the batch work and they have very counterfeit traits! The trend is when they reprocess them they are either lower frequency chips with tops ground off then remarked as faster devices with laser markings which are not even in the correct font! Or they are pulls reprocessed but in grinding the legs there is no static protection so the die is damaged by static right away, or the chips limp on for a while then fail shortly after once you have bought them! Either way counterfeits are now rife!! It’s a big problem getting good decent chips which will have a long life!

P1 sets the game type. They identify with a suffix. They are K is arcade d is data Y is % key fitted s is standard. Etc etc

Send me the files and I will post out tomorrow

Here you go, just for you

Very interesting read chris One could only hope you were doing this today... That would be cracking business to have If one could get around the copyright

Which years were you there Chris and I will have a look if there is anything on the company?

Yes,as Andrew says Glasses were done in bulk orders. I printed thousands of fruit machine glasses and the reel bands too. It was all done on silk screen printers. First you'd have a clear glass mirrored and the silver parts on the glass were printed ,and the rest washed off. Then it was black print Then course in turn Finally while backing. Any backlit symbols or hidden words were printed in Grey or black at the end.

Some people over exaggerate prices on eBay mate. I try not to go there tbh. Yes,I have spent quite a bit on some of mine. And yes,I have done a bit of work and had a lot of help with keeping them going too. I always fancied a collection of machines that I used to enjoy playing,and I also enjoy sharing via YouTube and to those who know me personally and care to visit who can play for FREE by arrangement. Quite a few do the same for me,and that is what this is all about. One happy community of old fruity fanatics he he he😆😆😆

Hope ron is ok,i sent a mech last week and he always messages me when he gets it,but ive not heard anything,and nessaged him yesterday and no reply.Bit weird.Anyone know if he is ok at all.

looking at yours and mine avatars, i can tell were going to get along just fine! lol.

Tend to agree .barcrest did seem reluctant to progress too quickly .j thought their most stagnant period was between 1987-89 as in my opinion the machines were all from the same mold like action bank /flash cash /tic yak cash stc and were a little more basic in looks and fruit symbols along with less sounds which were more standardised .the 90 s produced the Yamaha sounds followed by sampled sound carts and a new look not that I liked them much especially at 20p play (wouldn't mind an original luxor).my fav mpu4s are the 84-86 era .

A couple of boards in progress. The first one had a burn up of the PSU connector and was looking a bit sorry for itself. Straight off with the battery and change out anything corroded. The PSU lead was really beyond repair and plug A too! Luckily there was no track damage. Once everything was done, powered it up and it worked. Wish more were like that. Looking much better now. Sorry the pics were taken different ways up. The second board was in better nick but on switch on although the Alpha fired up with a battery alarm nearly all the lamps came on too. It then got as far as the game serial number then froze after 10 secs or so with an error bleep but the alpha had already frozen so no error code. At present I'm suspecting the 8279 chip which I hope to get a spare soon so I can prove it one way or the other. It's really annoying when you've used your last spare. I must remember not to do that in future! Watch this space

Do they just let you out at weekends dude.Not knowing ron is as likely as not having a mobile phone

Probably not as rare as a Barcrest Take Five.

Ron = Legend......