Tech: Sega Monaco GP
redfive05
I am having toroble finding the cause of the probelm I'm having.... I have
a Sit-down Monaco GP, when you turn on the game, the whole screen is trees and
grass.... no road... but you can see the cars drivind by. If you trip the game
you can't drive the car becase no matter where you steer yoiu'r "off road"
Anybody have any ideas? I have aready cleaned all the connectors on the main
PCB, and I have already re-seated all the chips on the board. I have also
checked the power suplly and all the voltages are correct.
Gary Vitagliano
one soon tat has only one LED flashing.Thanks!
Joey Oravec
: I am having toroble finding the cause of the probelm I'm having.... I have
Sounds like you have lots of problems. So does everybody with a monaco.
I haven't figured out any good diagnosis at all. Monaco is a tricky
system. The boards are DAMN NEAR impossible to work on because of the very
complex harness. The monitor is seriously in the way also.
I'd love to know what the most common failure is. I'm convinced that a
great part of the failure is in wiring. The thing doesn't have a
microprocessor (unless I'm COMPLETELY dense) so wiring is very important
in keeping it working. I had intermittent problems with the coin-up and so
on which seemed to be edge connectors making bad contact. I have another
problem with a boardset which doesn't have the enemy cars. Wiring? Who
knows.
No idea on those ROMS, but 3 out of 4 boardsets I've seen have bad
graphics in different parts, so I imagine those could use some re-writing.
I wish somebody had the code as I don't have (or know how to work) a ROM
reader/programmer to archive it myself on my ONE good copy remaining.
About your steering problem. You can remove the front panel on a Monaco GP
sitdown with two luggage latches in the back and one screw as long as
you're conscious to make sure the front-glass doesn't fall out. There's a
2in x 2in steering PCB in there. When you turn the wheels (power on) they
should blink. If not, you either have a bad photogate or more likely a bad
transistor.
Yeah I'd love to figure out the magic of fixing Monaco GP boards but
they're so inconvenient to diagnose given the location in the cabinet and
complexity of the wiring harness.
--
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(----) http://www.science.wayne.edu/~joey/arcade/
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redfive05
I believe I have the problem solved.... Here's the whole story....
Believe it or not.... This Monaco GP is still in an arcade.... Well, kind
of. I work in an amusement park and there are 4 sit down arcade machines
sitting in the middle of this one building.... The building also has a few
stores in it. Before I started as the Technician there the Tech. before me put
the Games that were ready to die there. This building is the furthest away from
the Games Maintenance office so in the summer people rarely want to go down
there in the heat to work on the machines and in the winter when we are closed
it's too cold to work on them in the unheated building. So anything that is
down there gets neglected. but now that I'm there this is slowly changing,
thought not so easy because I am the only tech. that works in the Games Dept.
and I have over 300 games to maintain. So this wither I got rides maintenance
to put the thing on the fork-lift and bring it up to my shop.
After looking over this machine I found it this machine has problem after
problem that needs to be fixed. It has been doing the problem with the "missing
road" off and on for the past two years that I've been there. So I knew that
needed to be fixed. After looking it over I found that the shifter won't shift
into High, the coin rejecter won't take coins, the game won't coin up... even
if the service switch is pressed, the seat had a rip in it, the color's on the
monitor were all wrong (Too much yellow), and the timer/high score display
doesn't work at all.
So.... on problem at a time....I had the seat Re-upholstered. Then I
rebuild the monitor... all new electrolytic... this machine has been working
for the past 10+ years in the heat for 12 hours a day 3 months out of the
year... I figured new caps wouldn't hurt. After all new caps and a few
adjustments (and a lot of Windex to the front of the monitor) the monitor looks
pretty good. Next, game won't coin up... I took out the main boards and cleaned
all the connectors with a pencil eraser, put the boards back it... game coins
up NO PROBLEM!
So now to the worst problem.... "the Missing Road." I checked all the
connectors then checked the power supply... nothing. checked voltages on the
board as much as I could (No schematics). Still can't figure it out.... So I
called it a day. The next day I went at it again rechecking everything and
checking even more things.... Still nothing. So now I figured I would get
someone else opinion, so I posted my problem on RGVAC. so I went on to working
on a sit-down Pole Position (From the same building, this one is a story in
it's self for another day) after finishing with that one and still not having
an answer about Monaco GP I decided to work on Monaco again.... seeing I didn't
know the problem with "The Missing Road" I figured I would try to make the High
Score Display work.... I turned off the machine unplugged the Display board,
and turned back on the machine... to my surprise, I had road? so I plugged in
the display board.... no road! Unplug display.... road! AH-HAH! I found the
problem to be that the display is made up of 3 boards, a board with all the
seven segment displays, a controller board for the seven segments, and an
interface board to connect the previous two and connect them with the main
board and power supply... the controller board was plugged in crooked, casing
pins to short out causing the display not to work and the main board "go
crazy." after plugging that board in correctly the game is working great and
the display lights up.
I only have a couple of things left to do.... Majorly clean the machine,
fix the shifter, and replace the bulb on the display board... I want ti change
the sockets to sockets that are easier to replace the bulbs... if you're
familiar with the sockets the bulbs are in you know what a pain in the *ss it
is to get the wire leads of the bulb to go in the socket. I also want to modify
the oil gauge and that other gauge to light up like the tach does.
Joey Oravec
: On the steering issue what transistor is at fault? I will be working on
: one soon tat has only one LED flashing.Thanks!
There's only two on the board as far as I remember. I have the schematics
scanned very high res, very large file (e-mail me if you need them)
however it's a 2x2 board and you can just follow it visually easily.
The schematics are especially bad for Monaco unfortunately. They are VERY
difficult to read since they are poorly handwritten and poorly reproduced.
Don't even try to read the wire color-codes. Impossible!