Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade Maintenance
The Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade is built like Coleco's other VFD Mini-Arcades. Batteries, opening the cabinet, the speaker, the joysticks and reassembly are covered in Coleco Mini-Arcade Maintenance, which is based largely on Rik Morgan's teardown of a Pac-Man for the Handheld Museum.[1] The notes below are specific to the Pac-Man: its boards, its two joysticks, its power and its stickers. Fault finding is in Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade Troubleshooting and display work in Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade VFD Repair.
Identify the board
[edit | edit source]Two Pac-Man boards are documented. Note which one you have before ordering parts or comparing it with photographs.
| Board marking | Display transformer | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Coleco 75690 | Small rectangular transformer beside two electrolytic capacitors | Board in the Handheld Museum teardown; HD38820A28 microcontroller; transistors T1 and T2[2][3] |
| 75721 Rev. E, © 1982 | Round black transformer | Transistors in different positions, one of them red[4] |
The microcontroller is a Hitachi HD38820A28 or HD38820A29. MAME treats A28 as the first version of the program.[5][6] The display is a Futaba DM-34Z; MAME documents a DM-34Z 2A and the teardown tube is a DM-34Z 2B.[6][3]
Power
[edit | edit source]Coleco's Pac-Man guide asks for four C alkaline cells or the Perma Power battery eliminator/AC adaptor #2298, and tells owners to switch the game off after use to save the cells.[7] The game has no power socket; the Perma Power feeds it through dummy C cells in the battery compartment.[3][8] The red battery wire goes to the board pad marked B+ and the blue one to B−.[1][2] Reversed polarity can destroy the transistors in the power section.[3]
The sliding battery door is often missing. Jarrad Lewis's 3D-printable cover is made to fit the Pac-Man and the other Coleco Mini-Arcades of the same shape.[9]
Joysticks
[edit | edit source]The Pac-Man has two sticks. The left stick is player 1 and also selects the game; the right stick is used only in Head to Head Pac-Man.[7] On the 75690 board the leaf switches under the two sticks are S1-1 to S1-4 and S2-1 to S2-4.[2][3]
- The right stick is not used in the one-player games, so if the game is only played alone, a leaf switch from the right stick can replace a worn one under the left stick.[2][7]
- To find out whether a hard or unreliable stick is at fault in its stick parts or in the switches, swap the stick parts between the two sides. An AtariAge member did this on a Coleco Pac-Man and found the fault moved with the parts.[10]
- Microswitches can replace worn leaves, though they are hard to fit so that they work well.[10]
Power section
[edit | edit source]
On the 75690 board the display supply is built round a small transformer, transistors T1 (a small three-legged type) and T2 (a tabbed power type), zener diodes ZD1 and ZD2, diodes D1 and D2 and two electrolytic capacitors.[3] Coleco's guide has no parts list, so read the capacitor values off the parts themselves before ordering replacements, and check them for the signs in Capacitor Failure Symptoms.
Stickers and knobs
[edit | edit source]A complete Pac-Man has stickers on the top, front and both sides, a plastic sticker on the control panel and an instruction sticker underneath, and an egg-shaped knob on each stick held on by a screw. One or more of these is often damaged or missing.[5] The decals on HotHardware's Pac-Man had mottled where their glue had come through, which the article called a common issue with these games.[11] The control panel sticker hides the two hood screws; peel back only its upper corners when opening the game.[1]
Related pages
[edit | edit source]- Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade
- Coleco Mini-Arcade Maintenance
- Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade Troubleshooting
- Coleco Pac-Man Mini-Arcade VFD Repair
- Coleco Ms. Pac-Man Mini-Arcade Maintenance
- Battery Explosion, Capacitor or Corrosion Damage
References
[edit | edit source]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 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.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 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.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 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.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 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.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 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. - ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Jarrad Lewis, "Coleco Tabletop Arcade Battery Cover", Thingiverse 4405062 (2020), archived on the Internet Archive: a 3D-printable battery cover that fits Frogger, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaxian and Donkey Kong. CC BY 4.0. archive.org.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 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.
- ↑ 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.