Serious Tron Progress! Almost There…

Been working on the Tron for the past week or so. Pulled the board out and resoldered all of the connections. That didn’t work. Then, I checked voltages at each of the chips. That didn’t give me any clues where the problem was. For a problem like this, I love posting to the KLOV forums. I posted this particular problem, and here was some of the advise I was given: Klov Advice. It helped quite a bit, but still wasn’t quite enough to get through this issue. Some of the things I learned thorough this discussion would apply to other board issues, so it was worth it.

Anyway, I actually ended up getting ahold of another boardset that was untested. I tried that boardset out on it’s own and it also had issues. I then spent the next few hours swapping out individual boards and got a complete, working set! I finally have the awesome stereo sounds coming from the speaker!

Then I started testing the actual game itself. I was able to start out a game correctly. Light Cycles played perfectly. Then I played the Tank Screen. It worked great too! Next was the MCP Screen. My arm didn’t rotate with the spinner properly. It rotated clockwise only. Same with the Grid Bug screen! Bummer. I’m so close.

I then made a post in the KLOV forums again. Here’s what I found out: KLOV Spinner Discussion. Excellent advise! As you can see, further examination of the optical encoder board from the spinner showed me that there was a problem with the optic sensor itself - it was cracked:

Arrow Electronics has some of these in stock. I’m going to order one on Monday if I am not able to find one in some of my old parts I have laying around. Hopefully, this will be the last hurdle and I can begin the actual cabinet restoration this weekend!