The Broken Joystick

OK, I’m a total idiot. I was hooking up the output of my Centipede to my test rig incorrectly – I was hooking up the RGB,GND, SYNC to SYNC, GND, BGR (image above is what you get)! Once I hooked it up right I could see the game playing. No sound or mushrooms though.

I went to bed and tied it again the next day and everything worked as it should. it had sound and mushrooms. WTF? I didn’t touch it. I’m happy it’s working but worried it will die on me again. Sigh.

I also tested the monitor from the bartop and it works great and has an awesome picture!

I had 5 switching power supplies of unknown state. A guy at work (Scott) who also collects, tested them all for me. Three worked so he kept one and I kept two – so now I have two extra working power supplies. YAY! I may need one to fix Tapper.

I picked up a Toobin at an arcade auction a few years ago and the sound never worked. i finally got off my butt this past week and decide to fix it.

Summary: Toobin has no sound and coining up doesn’t work (nothing happens when you coin up). I set the game to free play so could play it but I got no sound. Some googling and searching through RGVAC told me that the 6502A chip on the soundcard controls the sound and the coinage. Bought a new 6502A chip for less than $10 shipped from http://ataricade.com, popped it in the sound card, and I now have sound! W00t!

Just wanted to thank everyone for helping me get my Toobin sound working again. Specifically – all the RGVACers that helped me understand the differences between a 6502 and a 6502A, George Rowlands for pointing me to http://ataricade.com as a source for the 6502A, Francis at http://ataricade.com for excellent customer service, Mark at Basement Arcade for posting the Toobin manual, and all the people over the years that answered Toobin tech questions that lead me to figure out what was wrong. Hopefully now this post will help people in the future too.

Does anyone know a source for gator stickers on the side? I think I remember seeing someone repro’d them a while back. I see gamestencils.com had them but is out of stock it seems.