Stargate Mini

Another Craigslist purchase. This showed up in Maryland in February 2009 as not working, make offer. Lucky for me I was the high "bidder" and ended up getting it for only $120!

When I got it home I did a more indepth inspection of the game and was surprised at how clean this game actually was. The boards, inside of the cab and monitor looked practically new.

I checked all fuses on the boards and transformer and decided to see what I got when it was powered on. Upon power up I received 1-3-1 RAM errors, some funky happenings on the screen (like missing and discolored graphics) and random resets. Having ran into this problem with my other Stargate, and having read a lot of common Williams arcade issues, I decided to check the voltages at the 4116 RAMs.

When I tested with my DMM I saw that my +5v was off and I was only getting around 4.3v.A common problem with these William games is cold and fatigued solder joints on the power inputs. I pulled the power supply board and reflowed the solder on 4J1, 4J2 and 4J3. I plugged the power board back up and now my +5v at the 4116s was around 4.6v. Next I pulled the CPU board and reflowed the solder on 1J3 and reconnected the board. When I powered the game on I was getting around 4.94v at the RAMs and all RAM checks passed and I was greeted with '0' on the ROM board.

Reflowing the solder on the power supply board also cleared up the graphics issues on the monitor.

I played a couple quick games and noticed that the reverse button wasn't working. I opened the control panel and cleaned the contacts on the reverse leaf and tested continuity with my DMM. Continuity check passed but button was still not working in gameplay. I went into diagnostics and found out that the reverse switch was 'stuck on' in the switch test screen.

I posted a thread on KLOV to find out was was the cause of the problem. I was instructed to first try to wiggle the ribbon cable on the interface board as they are known to cause issues. I did and a couple of other switches came stuck on. I wiggled the ribbon cable again and they went away except for reverse. Another suggestion was to unplug the interface board and go back into the switch test. If the reverse switch was not stuck on anymore then the problem was with the interface board; if it was stuck on then the problem lays on the CPU board.

I unplugged the interface board and the stuck on reverse went away... problem with the interface board. I pulled the interface board from my upright and tested in the mini and the stuck on reverse went away. Knowing now that I needed an interface board I figured I would take a chance buying 3 untested interface boards from an eBay auction. I ended up winning for $14.99 + $5.99 shipping. The boards arrived a few days later and I was able to get 1 working board out of the bunch.

I also noticed that the sounds were not the same as my other Stargate. A quick post to KLOV with some pics and I was informed that the sound card was not jumpered correct and that it had Joust sound ROMs in it. A suggestion from YellowDog at KLOV was...

Now this is where "something I read on the Internet" may meet reality. If you would rather not restrap the sound card, just burn a 2532 with 2 images of the Stargate sound code sequentially it should work just fine. The code will run out of the lower copy and ignore the upper copy.

I ended up getting a regular 2716 sound ROM (what Stargate uses to begin with) and a doubled-up 2532 to test from Steph at www.hobbyroms.com (he was even nice enough to burn the double-up 2532 for free. Thanks Steph!). When they arrived I put the doubled-up 2532 in place and the sounds were spot on and I did not have to restrap the soundboard and use the 2716.

Next was the bezel... Since my game did not come with one I decided to create one using the readily available upright bezel. I measured the bezel area on the mini cab and created a custom bezel in Photoshop. I have access to an Epson 10600 plotter and printed it on some high-gloss paper. It really came out beautiful.

I cut it out using a straight edge and a razor. A couple of minor adjustment cuts later and...

Traded in May 2010 for a Ms Pac-Man cocktail.