Coleco Tabletop repair

[dr. kwack]

In the last two weeks I have gotten 3 Coleco tabletops and 1 Entex unit that have been defective. These came from eBay members with great feedback. Here's the rundown:

 

Coleco Pac-Man - DOA. Tried new batteries and got nothing.

 

Coleco Frogger- one row of LED lights is out making the game a pain to play.

 

Coleco Galaxian- same as Frogger. Bottom row of LED's is out. I can't see my ship!

 

Entex Defender- DOA. Fresh batteries and got nothing.

 

It seems to me that these guys are being damaged in shipping. Is there anything one can do to fix them? A loose wire perhaps? I tried cleaning contacts on the two DOA's and still got nothing.

 

Any suggestions- (besides the obvious- stop buying them from eBay )??

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Yeap...you can fix them. At least the ones with the row of LEDs not working.

 

You have to understand that the VFD display is a sealed enclosure. So if any part of it lights up..then it all should be able to light up. Here is the problem.

 

Each row of the VFD is controlled by a line of pins soldered to the main board along the righthand side. What happens is that the pins simply come loose and you just have to hit them with some fresh solder.

 

I recently got a Frogger tabletop from a seller that was new, but did describe one row as being out. However, when I got it, there were actually two rows out at the upper half, lower row was out and the score segments were all hosed up.

 

I cracked it open..and 10min later..I have a fully functional Frogger. It also had a hole in the lower bottom portion of it, but swapped that out with another tabletop with bad stickers and upper casing.

 

The good news, was that I only paid $5.50 for that frogger. And that includes the shipping. Once I received it and it wasn't as described, I complained to the seller and demanding my shipping cost back. Which they promptly did so. So, for the cost of just the ebay win, and some work and solder and heat, I got a fully functional and now near mint Frogger tabletop.

 

It will go to a lucky winner at my show in 2 weeks.

 

In the last two weeks I have gotten 3 Coleco tabletops and 1 Entex unit that have been defective. These came from eBay members with great feedback. Here's the rundown:

 

Coleco Pac-Man - DOA. Tried new batteries and got nothing.

 

Coleco Frogger- one row of LED lights is out making the game a pain to play.

 

Coleco Galaxian- same as Frogger. Bottom row of LED's is out. I can't see my ship!

 

Entex Defender- DOA. Fresh batteries and got nothing.

 

It seems to me that these guys are being damaged in shipping. Is there anything one can do to fix them? A loose wire perhaps? I tried cleaning contacts on the two DOA's and still got nothing.

 

Any suggestions- (besides the obvious- stop buying them from eBay )??

866817[/snapback]

[Mindfield]

The DOA ones might be the leads coming from the battery compartment, or possibly corrosion from old leaky batteries being left in there. If it's loose wires, a little solder will do the trick. You're either going to have to scrape off the corrosion and hope it hasn't eaten right through the metal, or you're going to have to swap out the battery contacts for another set. Or you can make your own; all those metal strips do is complete a circuit across all of the battery cells -- positive to negative to positive to negative, etc.

[dr. kwack]

Hey! Thanks for the advice. I laid hands (and some solder) upon the defective units and brought all but Galaxian back to life! I discovered Galaxian had bigger issues... scraped circuit board and really bad connections.

 

Thanks to all!

[keilbaca]

Yeap...you can fix them. At least the ones with the row of LEDs not working.

 

You have to understand that the VFD display is a sealed enclosure. So if any part of it lights up..then it all should be able to light up. Here is the problem.

 

Each row of the VFD is controlled by a line of pins soldered to the main board along the righthand side. What happens is that the pins simply come loose and you just have to hit them with some fresh solder.

 

I recently got a Frogger tabletop from a seller that was new, but did describe one row as being out. However, when I got it, there were actually two rows out at the upper half, lower row was out and the score segments were all hosed up.

 

I cracked it open..and 10min later..I have a fully functional Frogger. It also had a hole in the lower bottom portion of it, but swapped that out with another tabletop with bad stickers and upper casing.

 

The good news, was that I only paid $5.50 for that frogger. And that includes the shipping. Once I received it and it wasn't as described, I complained to the seller and demanding my shipping cost back. Which they promptly did so. So, for the cost of just the ebay win, and some work and solder and heat, I got a fully functional and now near mint Frogger tabletop.

 

It will go to a lucky winner at my show in 2 weeks. 

 

In the last two weeks I have gotten 3 Coleco tabletops and 1 Entex unit that have been defective. These came from eBay members with great feedback. Here's the rundown:

 

Coleco Pac-Man - DOA. Tried new batteries and got nothing.

 

Coleco Frogger- one row of LED lights is out making the game a pain to play.

 

Coleco Galaxian- same as Frogger. Bottom row of LED's is out. I can't see my ship!

 

Entex Defender- DOA. Fresh batteries and got nothing.

 

It seems to me that these guys are being damaged in shipping. Is there anything one can do to fix them? A loose wire perhaps? I tried cleaning contacts on the two DOA's and still got nothing.

 

Any suggestions- (besides the obvious- stop buying them from eBay )??

866817[/snapback]

866834[/snapback]

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH and I can't make it to win it!!!

 

[Jumpman1981]

I'm having issues as well, on all of mine (I have all of them except Frogger) whenever a sound plays, a part of the VFD flickers rapidly.

They are all different from mild to severe.

 

Donkey Kong: Severe flicker

Ms Pac-Man: Almost Severe

Galaxian: Mild, hard to notice at times

Pac-Man: depends, sometimes it's like Galaxian, sometimes it's like Ms. Pac-Man.

 

I'm sorry if I'm changing the subject, but I can't find any info on this weird issue

Edited May 27, 2017 by Jumpman1981

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Can't say that I've ever seen that happen before. But it sounds like the issue is with power obviously. And you are sure you have fresh batts in the things? Only other ideas are that there are a few caps in these things that perhaps might need to be replaced, or battery terminals need a good scrubbing. I hadn't mentioned it here, but I brought back to life a Galaxian and a Zaxxon about 2 years ago by using the small wire wheel tool on my dremel. Even though the ones on the Zaxxon looked okay, apparently they weren't making good contact still.

[CRTGAMER]

In the last two weeks I have gotten 3 Coleco tabletops and 1 Entex unit that have been defective. These came from eBay members with great feedback. Here's the rundown:

 

Coleco Pac-Man - DOA. Tried new batteries and got nothing.

 

Coleco Frogger- one row of LED lights is out making the game a pain to play.

 

Coleco Galaxian- same as Frogger. Bottom row of LED's is out. I can't see my ship!

 

Entex Defender- DOA. Fresh batteries and got nothing.

 

It seems to me that these guys are being damaged in shipping. Is there anything one can do to fix them? A loose wire perhaps? I tried cleaning contacts on the two DOA's and still got nothing.

 

Any suggestions- (besides the obvious- stop buying them from eBay )??

 

I would first check the battery connector, check the PCB trace were the battery wires connect to verify voltage. Though not quite related to the battery connector trace, I had an issue of my Coleco Pacman having a broken trace directly under one of the controller pads. I put together a review and repair guide for the Coleco Tabletops. Also have a repair for a Mattel battery connector and piezo speaker which is similar to the Coleco; see the OP in the links for an index.

 

Coleco Tabletop Repair - http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&p=695562#p695562

 

Mattel Handheld Repair - http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=629896#p629896

Edited May 27, 2017 by CRTGAMER

[Jess Ragan]

I had a Donkey Kong that didn't want to work properly. It would only respond to joystick input intermittently, and not very often. Never found a solution to that.

[SiberianSpForces]

My Pac-Man had a line on the display out and I just reheated the solder joints for that line and fixed it. The 1p joystick has a contact issue when I press down. IIRC, there's metal strips that touch the dots for each direction. I scraped the dot and that helped, but it's not totally fixed.

[CRTGAMER]

I had a Donkey Kong that didn't want to work properly. It would only respond to joystick input intermittently, and not very often. Never found a solution to that.

 

My Pac-Man had a line on the display out and I just reheated the solder joints for that line and fixed it. The 1p joystick has a contact issue when I press down. IIRC, there's metal strips that touch the dots for each direction. I scraped the dot and that helped, but it's not totally fixed.

 

Check the links in my previous post.

[SiberianSpForces]

I took a look at the 1p control and that metal tab for the down direction was pretty flat. I was able to reshape it and it's responding better. In time, I may have to remove and fix it or just end up replacing it.

[HoshiChiri]

Whoo! Necropost! But a relevant one!

 

I just got me a Galaxian tabletop, which didn't work at first. A bit of Brite boy later revealed the very obvious problem:

 

Yeah- not surprised it won't work with a GIANT HOLE IN THE CONTACT!

 

The unit does work- I put a piece of tin foil over that hole & it fired right up- but clearly, new contacts are in order. Anybody know where I can get some? A Google search doesn't immediately reveal anything.

[Hakogame 箱亀]

On 5/27/2017 at 7:23 AM, Jumpman1981 said:

I'm having issues as well, on all of mine (I have all of them except Frogger) whenever a sound plays, a part of the VFD flickers rapidly.

They are all different from mild to severe.

 

Donkey Kong: Severe flicker

Ms Pac-Man: Almost Severe

Galaxian: Mild, hard to notice at times

Pac-Man: depends, sometimes it's like Galaxian, sometimes it's like Ms. Pac-Man.

 

I'm sorry if I'm changing the subject, but I can't find any info on this weird issue

Total necro reply, but I just watched a video a couple days ago where the host explained that with a lot of these vfd games, the cpu can't drive the display and the sound at the same time, which often results in flicker or a temporarily blank screen.

[Tanooki]

I've had 3 DKs over the years, they've all behaved that way and I'm talking over a time frame of I'm guessing near 30 years over those from different time periods.  My Pac-Man doesn't freak out, so I guess it's a sometimes not?  And Frogger I don't remember, I think it's stable more like Pac-Man.

 

They all "flicker" if you want to get technical, or more realistically dim, when sound+input+motion happen at the same time.  They're cheaply made and clearly tax the setup enough it can't draw enough juice to handle it all, just handle it enough to work and right.  I also don't run mine on batteries, I've got the perma power pack so I can get a consistent full flow off that so weak Cs aren't an argument here.