Pac-Man Repair Log





Pac-Man arrived in the Repair Station from an almost 25 year slumber!  The game turned on but nothing appeared to be on the screen.  No sounds could be heard.




I thoroughly cleaned and tightened all connections. I removed the PCB and took out each socketed chip and cleaned every leg of every chip.  The chips appeared to be in good condition but the legs were mildly corroded. I cleaned all the ROMs, RAM, VRAM and the Z-80 CPU. I also cleaned the corresponding sockets. I put all the chips back in, reinstalled the PCB and powered the game up again. This time I was met with fuzzy picture but a picture nonetheless!  I thought the monitor may be out of focus or some of the capacitors had weakened. Before I removed the chassis, I wanted to remove the bezel and smoked plexi to be sure I wasn't missing something obvious.

 

I'm glad I did!  The inside of the bezel as well as the plexi was absolutely filthy! Even though the game spent only a short time in a restaurant, it was enough time for an unbelievable amount of grease and grime to build up.  It was hard to shine a light through the plexi due to the buildup being so thick!



I carefully cleaned the bezel and the plexi and reinstalled them.  The plexi had shifted about an inch or during the games lengthy storage but since the gap was not visible during game play, I felt it was best to leave it alone.  I would have hated to damage or break the plexi in order to move it a little more than an inch.




I turned the game on and viola!  A bright screen!  The game coined up and Pac-Man was back to chasing ghosts for the first time in almost a quarter century!  I will probably do a cap kit on the monitor before the game is released to the arcade.