Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade
 | |
| A Coleco Pac-Man at the Computer History Museum, showing the game select labels round the left stick and the Skill 1/Off/Skill 2 switch | |
| Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Coleco Industries, Inc. (made in Taiwan) |
| Type | Tabletop electronic game |
| Released | 1981[1][2] |
| Intro price | US$59.97 (Toys "R" Us)[2] |
| Units sold | 1.5 million by November 1982[3] |
| CPU | Hitachi HD38820A28 or HD38820A29 (HMCS45A, 4-bit PMOS)[4][5] |
| Memory | 160 × 4-bit RAM; 2,048 × 10-bit program ROM, both on the microcontroller[5] |
| Storage | — |
| Display | Futaba DM-34Z vacuum fluorescent display with a colour overlay[4] |
| Sound | Piezo buzzer under a plastic cone, 1-bit output[4][6] |
| Power | Four C alkaline cells, or the Coleco Perma Power #2298[1] |
| Dimensions | 8¼ × 6¼ × 8 in overall[7] |
| OS / Firmware | — |
| Successor | Coleco Ms. Pac-Man Mini-Arcade |
| Model no. | 2390[1] |
The Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade is a battery-powered tabletop version of Midway's Pac-Man arcade game, sold by Coleco from 1981 as model 2390.[1] The case is a scaled-down arcade cabinet with two joysticks, and the game appears on a multi-colour vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) driven directly by a Hitachi 4-bit microcontroller.[4][5] It holds three games: Pac-Man, a two-player Head to Head Pac-Man and Eat & Run.[1]
History
[edit | edit source]Coleco had the game made in Taiwan and sold it under licence from Midway.[4] The instruction guide is dated 1981.[1] In November 1982 Electronic Games reported that 1.5 million had been sold, and that Coleco held advance orders for 4 million units of the first four Mini-Arcade titles: Pac-Man, Galaxian, Frogger and Donkey Kong.[3] The Handheld Museum records a Toys "R" Us price of $59.97.[2] Gakken sold the game in Japan as Super Puck Monster.[4]
Ms. Pac-Man followed in 1983 as model 2395, in a cabinet of the same design.[8][6]
Games and controls
[edit | edit source]Setting the Skill 1/Off/Skill 2 switch to either skill position turns the game on; Skill 2 is the harder game.[1] A game is then chosen by pushing the left (player 1) stick in the direction printed on the control panel.[1][4]
| Stick direction | Game | Players |
|---|---|---|
| Right | Pac-Man | 1 |
| Left | Head to Head Pac-Man | 2 |
| Up | Eat & Run | 1 |
| Down | Demonstration | – |
In Pac-Man the player has three Pac-Men, with a fourth at 10,000 points, and the game keeps the best score until the power is switched off. In Head to Head each player steers a Pac-Man with his or her own stick and the score display shows the difference between the two scores, with an arrow pointing at the leader. Eat & Run scores only when Pac-Man brings power capsules back to the base in the centre of the maze. Neither of the last two keeps a best score.[1]
Hardware
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Board and microcontroller
[edit | edit source]The main board is marked "Coleco 75690" and carries a single integrated circuit, a Hitachi HD38820 microcontroller in a 54-pin flat package.[4][9] Two mask versions are known, HD38820A28 and HD38820A29; MAME treats A28 as the first revision and notes that it does not show the whole maze at power-on.[4][2] The HD38820 belongs to Hitachi's HMCS45A group: a PMOS part running from −10 V, with 2,048 ten-bit words of program ROM, 128 words of pattern ROM and 160 four-bit words of RAM. Its PMOS outputs withstand up to −50 V, which lets it drive a vacuum fluorescent display without separate driver chips.[5][10]
The power section of the 75690 board has a small transformer that supplies the display, two transistors, two zener diodes and two electrolytic capacitors.[11] A later board, marked 75721 Rev. E and dated 1982, uses a round black transformer and places the transistors differently.[12] Sound is a one-bit output from the microcontroller to a piezo buzzer in the base, under a plastic cone that makes it louder.[4][6] HotHardware found the sound loud, with no way to turn it down.[13]
Display
[edit | edit source]The display is a Futaba DM-34Z vacuum fluorescent tube: MAME documents a DM-34Z 2A, and the tube in the Handheld Museum's teardown is marked DM-34Z 2B.[4][11] Its phosphors are cyan and red, and a coloured overlay sits over the glass.[4][13] Coleco's display key shows red maze walls, monsters and power capsules, yellow dots and a yellow Pac-Man, with a five-digit score, a Pac-Men remaining indicator, GAME OVER and BEST legends and two score indicator arrows above the maze.[1]
Eight vertical filaments run the height of the tube. The maze is divided into nine horizontal rows, each under its own grid, and the score area has two more grids, eleven in all; the board silkscreen labels them G1 to G11.[11] MAME's driver agrees, with eleven grid lines and 26 anode lines.[4]
Cabinet
[edit | edit source]The cabinet carries stickers on the top, front and both sides, a plastic sticker on the control panel and an instruction sticker underneath, and each joystick has an egg-shaped knob held on by a screw. One or more of the stickers is often damaged or missing, and the knobs often go missing too.[2] The Computer History Museum gives its example's overall dimensions as 8¼ × 6¼ × 8 inches.[7]
Power
[edit | edit source]The game runs on four C alkaline cells, or on Coleco's Perma Power battery eliminator/AC adaptor #2298, sold separately.[1] The game has no power socket. The Perma Power is a non-adjustable 9 V adaptor with five tips. One tip is a 9 V battery snap that plugs into one of four dummy C cells, and the dummy cells go into the battery compartment. Its plugs are centre-positive.[14][11]
Coleco's guide warns that weak batteries cause an erratic display or erratic play, and tells owners to switch the game off to avoid draining them.[1] Power connected with reversed polarity can destroy the transistors in the power section.[11]
Known faults
[edit | edit source]- Worn joystick contacts: each direction is a thin metal leaf switch, which can wear through, break or stay pressed.[9][15]
- Battery leakage in the compartment and on the wires to the board.[16]
- Broken battery or speaker wires inside the base.[9]
- Failed power transistors after reversed polarity. A KLOV member replaced a Pac-Man's missing switching transistor with a TIP41C and the game worked again.[11][17]
- Rows or parts of the display missing, from corroded tracks or cracked solder joints between the display, the board and the microcontroller.[11]
- A broken display tube, usually at the glass exhaust tip.[11]
Pac-Man-specific notes are in Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade Maintenance, Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade Troubleshooting and Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade VFD Repair. The procedures shared by all of Coleco's VFD Mini-Arcades are in Coleco Mini-Arcade Maintenance, Coleco Mini-Arcade Troubleshooting and Coleco Mini-Arcade VFD Repair.
Documentation
[edit | edit source]The wiki hosts Coleco's 12-page instruction guide, no. 76879A; see Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade Documentation. The guide says the game has no user-serviceable parts. Within 90 days of purchase Coleco repaired or replaced a faulty game for a $5 handling charge; after that, and up to a year from purchase, it repaired the game or exchanged it for a reconditioned one for $15.[1]
Related pages
[edit | edit source]- Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade Maintenance
- Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade Troubleshooting
- Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade VFD Repair
- Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade Documentation
- Coleco Mini-Arcade Maintenance, Coleco Mini-Arcade Troubleshooting and Coleco Mini-Arcade VFD Repair
- Coleco Ms. Pac-Man Mini-Arcade
References
[edit | edit source]- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 Coleco Industries, Pac-Man Instructions and Game Rules, guide no. 76879A, model no. 2390, © 1981: cover (model number, four C cells, two skill levels, one or two players); p. 2 (the three games, controls and features); p. 3 (batteries, Perma Power battery eliminator/AC adaptor #2298, weak batteries, demonstration mode and the red grid shown at switch-on); pp. 4 to 6 (Pac-Man play, display key and scoring); pp. 7 to 9 (Head to Head Pac-Man and Eat & Run); p. 10 (special information and care); p. 11 (warranty and service policy). Hosted as File:Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade Instructions 76879A.pdf.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Rik Morgan, Handheld Museum, "Coleco Pac Man": 1981, VFD, four C batteries, model 2390, CPU HD38820-A28 or HD38820-A29; the stickers on the top, front and sides, the plastic control panel sticker and the instruction sticker underneath; the egg-shaped joystick knobs held on by a screw; original price $59.97 at Toys "R" Us. handheldmuseum.com.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Electronic Games vol. 1 no. 9 (November 1982), "Mini-Arcades 'Go Gold'", p. 12: 1.5 million Pac-Man Mini-Arcades sold, and Coleco's advance orders for 4 million units of the first four titles (Pac-Man, Galaxian, Frogger and Donkey Kong). archive.org.
- ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 MAME source,
src/mame/handheld/hh_hmcs40.cpp, driver notes for Coleco Pac-Man (cpacman,cpacmanr1): PCB label "Coleco 75690", Hitachi HD38820A28/A29 in a flat package, 1-bit sound, cyan/red Futaba DM-34Z 2A display, colour overlay, game selection with the player 1 stick, the Japanese release as Gakken's Super Puck Monster, and the note that the first version does not show the whole maze at power-on; the chip table at the head of the file. github.com/mamedev/mame. - ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Hitachi, Full Line Condensed Catalog (HLN1000, 1982), "4-bit Single-chip Microcomputers HMCS40 Series", pp. 105 and 106: PMOS parts have high-voltage outputs for direct drive of vacuum fluorescent displays; HMCS45A supply −10 V, power dissipation 150 mW, maximum I/O terminal voltage −50 V, ROM 2,048 × 10 bits plus 128 × 10 bits of pattern memory, RAM 160 × 4 bits, 44 I/O lines, 54-pin flat package. bitsavers.org.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Rik Morgan, Handheld Museum, "Coleco Game Repair (Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger & Galaxian)", page 1: teardown of a Pac-Man; the other Coleco games of the same design are almost identical apart from their controls; the two hood screws under the control panel sticker, the five base screws, the speaker cone over a piezo buzzer, and the red (positive) and blue (negative) battery wires. handheldmuseum.com. Owner's repair report.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Computer History Museum, "Pac-Man tabletop game", object 102673501, photographed by Mark Richards: Coleco Industries, overall 8¼ in × 6¼ in × 8 in. The record gives the date as 1985. computerhistory.org.
- ↑ Coleco Industries, The Official Ms. Pac-Man Instructions and Game Rules, guide no. 91758, model no. 2395, © 1983: cover (model number, four C cells or Perma Power #2298); p. 2 (games, controls and features, with the player 1 stick on the right); p. 3 (batteries, weak batteries, demonstration mode); pp. 4 to 8 (play, display key and scoring); p. 9 (special information and care); p. 11 (warranty and service policy). Hosted as File:Coleco Ms. Pac-Man Mini-Arcade Instructions 91758.pdf.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Rik Morgan, Handheld Museum, "Coleco Game Repair", page 2: the four wires to the main board (B+, B− and two PZ speaker connections), the three board screws, the joystick parts, worn or stuck leaf switches, and the two lens screws. handheldmuseum.com. Owner's repair report.
- ↑ MAME source,
src/devices/cpu/hmcs40/hmcs40.cppandhmcs40.h: the HD38820 is the PMOS member of the HMCS45 group, in a 54-pin flat package or 64-pin DIP, with 44 I/O lines, (2,048 + 128) × 10-bit ROM and 160 × 4-bit RAM; pin diagram of the 54-pin package. github.com/mamedev/mame. - ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 Rik Morgan, Handheld Museum, "Coleco Game Repair", page 3: no-power faults (supply wires, power switch, the two transistors and reverse polarity), no picture with sound (broken glass, the exhaust tip, the display supply transformer, bad joints at the display), partial display faults, the eight filaments, the nine playfield grids and two score grids, and the repair of a corroded grid trace; with photographs of the 75690 board's power section (transformer, transistors T1 and T2, zener diodes ZD1 and ZD2, two electrolytic capacitors). handheldmuseum.com. Owner's repair report.
- ↑ Rik Morgan, Handheld Museum, "Coleco Game Repair", board-variation page: a second Pac-Man board marked Rev. E, with a round black display transformer and relocated transistors. handheldmuseum.com.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Robert Maloney, "Retro-Gaming with Coleco", HotHardware, 30 September 2004, pages 2 and 3: the Perma Power or four C cells, the inside of an opened unit, the mottling of the decals on the author's Pac-Man where the glue has seeped through ("a common issue with these units"), the Pac-Man's loud sound with no volume control, and the differences of the Ms. Pac-Man (maze variations, the moving bonus fruit, the character graphics). hothardware.com.
- ↑ Rik Morgan, Handheld Museum, "Coleco Perma Power": model 2298 (1982), a 9 V AC adaptor with five tips, one of which is a 9 V battery snap that plugs into one of four dummy C cells; centre-positive. handheldmuseum.com.
- ↑ AtariAge forums, "Handheld/Tabletop repair options", thread 158637: worn joysticks on the Coleco Pac-Man, the thin metal joystick contacts, swapping the player 1 and player 2 parts to locate a fault, and microswitches as a replacement. forums.atariage.com. Community repair discussion.
- ↑ Steven Read, Mini-Arcade, "How to fix a handheld game": battery corrosion on VFD tabletops that run on C or D cells, speaker wiring and the speaker baffle in Coleco tabletops, contact cleaning, and checking batteries and adaptor voltage before condemning a game. miniarcade.com.
- ↑ KLOV forums, "PACMAN Coleco repair : component information", thread 199101, August to September 2011: a Pac-Man whose switching transistor was missing; the owner identified it as the transistor that works with the display transformer and fitted a TIP41C NPN transistor, after which the game worked. forums.arcade-museum.com. Community repair report.