Purchased this cabinet in very good condition from a fellow collector.
Attempted to replace some capacitors to fix an issue with tube going blank after a few seconds immediately after machine was turned on. This problem goes away after the machine has warmed up. Initially it looked like the capacitor replacement had worked but the problem returned a month later. Still not fixed, but there is a workaround by just powering the game off/on a few times once it has warmed up.
2022 – November
Added an EasyCoinup to the cabinet since there is no freeplay.
Had a minor issue with loose chips that caused a ‘streak’ on the screen and resetting during game play. This was likely due to it being shipped from Minnesota. This was fixed by re-seating the chips.
2023 – January
I noticed I’m getting some shakiness / blooming in the video. I started by going to KLOV and creating a post for it along with a video showing the issue. I found another poster who mentioned the issue here and posted this video.
While S&B Amusements was working on the Haunted House, he also checked out the Black Knight 2000 to look into the issue of the randomly firing tilt in the middle of a game. He first found that the slam tilt on the front door was not connected. Then he found that the 3 wires that would connect to that slam tilt were just terminated in the front of the door. He connected one wire to the slam tile to make it work, then tucked the others away with a zip tie. After fixing the slam tile, he found the drop targets on the lower right playfield (which you use to get more of the “right-alley return kickback” credits) were shorting or acting up, which he fixed. There was also a pinched wire in along the right lower playfield, perhaps where it got pinched when the playfield was lift up/down. We read about a second tilt on the upper playfield but could not find one. He said the main tile on the lower right side of the cabinet has a diode that could be bad and I could replace it but his guess was that it was a short. After fixing the drop targets, I have not been able to get it to tilt again so far, but it is still not known to be fixed. Also, those same drop targets were firing up (to get returned to the up position) repeatedly during a game so that might need some tuning. I read this forum post which pointed out that there was an owner who found that “the culprit was the tilt switch at the end of the ball roll path (the one that prevents people from lifting up the front of the game). I fixed it by bending it back“. Another poster mentioned “Well I found the bad switch. It is the extra ball switch on the left ramp. For now, I just put some tape between the contacts so I can play the game (but no extra balls that way). I will dig in further tomorrow. It is a bitch to get to the switch and diode.”
Found that, on starting a game, instead of the Black Knight voice issuing the ‘challenge’, it would instead play the crowd-cheering sound. This is apparently what happens when the voice board is not working. I opened up the backbox and found the soundboard on the top right and pressed the test button at the top edge to test it. It played just the sounds but not the voices in a loop. I turned the machine off, and gently pressed on each chip to reseat them all. None moved, but on restarting it, the voice worked so it appears that a chip was loose.
Playfield lights were flashing and then going out during game play and attract mode. It turned out to be a relay, where a set of metal blades needed to be adjusted to properly make contact and illuminate that section of bulbs
2026 – April
After nearly 2 years of the right side lower flipper not working, I called S&B Amusements to help me troubleshoot this. He found that the relay at the back right corner of the main playfield (there are 3 in a row which are in brackets) was the issue; it was stuck and needed an adjustment. He also soldered the wire connector for the right upper flipper to the post since it’s clip was broken and would not hold the blade strongly. He also cleaned up the end-of-stroke switches on the right side flippers to remove any slop and that got everything working.
Purchased the Asteroids Deluxe cabinet from a seller on eBay.
Purchased a replacement bezel shroud to restore the blue-screen effect. Also purchased an Asteroids Deluxe Monitor Sheet as a fall back in case that didn’t work.
2017 – June
Purchased a Braze Asteroids Deluxe Multi-game High Score Save Kit to keep scores and add the original Asteroids to the cabinet. (It also comes with Lunar Lander but I’m the proud owner of the nicest original Lunar Lander cabinet in existence 🙂 )
2022 – October
Tried to adjust the brightness only to realize the normal brightness dials were not readily visible. It turns out that the brightness and contrast pots are both on the video board, which is access by going through the coin door and tweaking the pots. I wasn’t able to go too bright and it’s misleading at time because the bullets are brighter than all other artifacts in the game so the monitor is brighter than you realize when just looking at the ship or asteroids.
Found that the ship would get blurry or scrambled when being rotated. At other times, it would rotate but it would turn really fast, making it too hard to control the ‘English’ on the shots where you can direct them into the enemy ships after firing.
I ordered a cap-kit I found online from Andys Arcades, but unfortunately what I received was pretty lame. None of the caps in the kit matched the microfarad reading on the existing caps nor those listed in the schematics. Several caps were missing from the kit altogether. I received a note with the kit saying “sorry this is so basic” which I interpret to mean “I keep lots of caps in stock and when someone buys a kit I just throw together a kit on the fly based on the game specs, but when I sold you a cap kit for Computer Space I realized that the game is so old that none of the required caps have values I keep in stock so I panicked and sent you about 1/2 of what’s need with values as close as I can find”. Thanks dude. 🙁
Anyway, I inspected the board and searched really nice updated schematics looking for anything related to rotation. The board looks really clean given its age. I did not see anything obvious but one small cap on the first board (the first is the memory board, the second is the motion board and the last one is the ‘sync star’ board) had a very slight brownish blemish on the top. I used my ESR meter to test it and the values showed it to be off by a good amount. I found a matching cap in my own personal stock and replaced it and to my amazement, that fixed the issue perfectly. Nice!
Cap with touch of brown on top that ended up being replaced
Install EasyCoinup; I had one for it but I had to use it for Star Wars after I destroyed the first one by using too much heat while soldering the wires to the pig tails on the EasyCoinup (they are very very delicate)
Spy Hunter
Check the board voltage. On startup the screen does horizontal scroll for a few seconds. Not sure if this new: the screen takes a few seconds to warm up so it could have been happening all along and I wouldn’t have noticed until I was turning the machine off/on during other fixes and the warmed up screen would show up fast enough to reveal the problem. I replaced the potentiometers on the linear power supply so I should make sure I’m getting the correct voltage at the PCB to be safe.
