Dreamed that as I was going to bed, I saw a mouse, so I cornered him and grabbed him with my hand. He had weird little sparrow wings and after I petted him he calmed down but his limbs started to stretch and mutate, Tetsuo-style. I put him in a paper sack and found that there were two other mice downstairs, along with other weird creatures like 16-legged mouse-shaped insects and little beetles that looked like pineapples. As I attempted to clean this mess up, emergency alarms blared in my ears and I wondered if a tornado was coming.
Japan 2019 days 2-4
Day 2 started off with an early train to Kyoto. I was oddly queasy on the Shinkansen, unlike during my previous trip. When we arrived, we got on the bus to see the Kinkakuji, known less well in English as the Golden Pavilion. There’s a lot to write about it but the structure that exists now is impressively gold and sits in a very nice area just behind some regular-looking shops and houses.
Also, the old dude directing pedestrians outside had a rad goatee and ponytail.
After we were done appreciating the craftsmanship, we grabbed some Häagen-Dazs from the vending machine near the exit and walked back to the bus.
Creepy top hat guys in the subway station for extra atmosphere.
Next we were off to the Kyoto Pokémon Center to get some necessary Slowpoke items. I saw some rad buildings on the way.
These also existed:
Near the Pokémon Center, Sammy Davis Jr. was there to sell us some men’s whisky.
In our attempt to get back to Kyoto station, a series of miscalculations by my phone led us in the opposite direction and we ended up at the gigantic Higashi-Honganji Buddhist Temple which was awesomely free of charge to enter. I was super impressed at the intricacy of design and their determination to build the temple 4 times after each previous construction caught fire and burned down. I bought a book to learn more about it.
It even has an awesome underground theater room to tell you about the restoration and rebuilding of the temple.
After we checked into our guest house, we needed some food so we had a nice walk to Que Pasa, which I had heard had the best burritos in town and they did not disappoint.
They even had vegetarian and vegan options available and were easily on par with anything in the US. I’m sure we will visit there whenever we come to Kyoto.
On day 3 we were on our way to the southwest end of Kyushu to Kumamoto, to visit someone who did a homestay with us last year. It was a long 3 hour trip from Kyoto but I felt less nauseous than the day before. Kumamon is everywhere.
We visited the outer grounds of Kumamoto Castle, still under repairs from the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake. 
We were able to walk around and see the cranes and scaffolding well as the cracks in the walls resulting from the quake. I’ll have to go back when the repairs are finished. There’s a grand unveiling next month for the castle but I can’t imagine people will be able to visit the inside yet.
We visited a museum and a shopping area near the castle, and as we were leaving we noticed a museum about the history of the castle. Intrigued, we looked around and while we were inside a massive thunderstorm started outside. We bought umbrellas but still had to wait 20 or 30 minutes to be able to start moving in the torrent.
We stopped into a game center where I played a round of Mario Kart and then we went to a Tsutaya where I got a Tempalay CD I had been wanting.
After that, we went to the very cool Ninja Restaurant. Down the long stairwell into a door that seemed to swing open by itself, we were ushered in and sat in a booth with a screen that was lowered every time the ninja waitress left. Let me talk about something really great in Japan. Everywhere you go, there’s mood music. In a mysterious ninja restaurant, coming from the streetlamps in Tokyo, in the bottom of a stone mine museum, there’s always the proper musical accompaniment instead of silence or piped-in pop music, and I really appreciate that. In this case, the music was something you would probably find in a pseudo-historical Japanese TV show or video game about ninjas.
On day 4, we went to Suizenji Jojuen, a gorgeous traditional landscape pond in Kumamoto. It was very hot but worth the trip since the landscape was amazing.
After that we said our goodbyes and moved onto our next objective which was to cross under the ocean at the Kanmon tunnel footpath between Kyushu and Honshu. And we would have made it there too, if not for our camera somehow getting left on the train when we got off near the tunnel. Half an hour later, we got word that the camera would be in the lost and found office at Shin-Osaka Station. Having not much time to lose, we opted to put the Kanmon tunnel on our to-do list for next time.
After reclaiming our camera, we headed to Dotonbori to check out the Glico sign.
Not sure why Spider-man is selling Kobe beef.
Mega Don Quijote!
There we go.
The night of day 4 we checked into another Hotel Nine Hours capsule hotel in Osaka’s Nanba area. In the locker room there was a guy carefully arranging dozens of packed food items (and nothing else) into a suitcase. Exhausted, I went to bed.
Japan 2019 day 1
We got to Tokyo around 4:30 PM and immediately proceeded with festivities
Popped into Lawson to get tickets for the Mass of the Fermenting Dregs concert this Saturday. Extremely excited to finally see them live.
Then we went to our hotel. Never stayed in a capsule hotel before but it was super chill and it had an amazing shower. There were lockers to keep luggage in and all you had to do to open them was scan the QR code on your “room key” (which incidentally was not required to open your capsule.)
The bed and pillow were a little hard but surprisingly I’m less sore than when I sleep in my own bed. Maybe that’s a sign I need a stiffer bed at home.
Other than someone quietly, maniacally giggling every couple minutes when I was trying to sleep around 10PM, it was an extremely relaxing stay.
Now we’re on the Shinkansen to Kyoto for the first leg of our journey.
Dream 8.31.19
Dreamed I was in a vast countryside/farm area. I knew from reading a report from the future that a small dog was angry with me and would pick up a large chunk of concrete, stand on my car, and fling it into my windows. A car-sized meteor hit the ground and bounced slightly, leaving a large impression. I put the dog in my car with a now dented passenger window and went to look for the meteor. When I found the meteor, the area rapidly became midtown and I was having a hard time parking. The meteor had been built into an alcove on the outside of someone’s house with a chair and a fountain.
Space Invaders Deluxe Repair Log
This repair has been in the works for about two and a half years. It was stopped variously by lack of knowledge, lack of proper tools, and lack of time, but eventually repairs were completed and the game is fully functional.
When I started working on it, of course the first thing I had to do was replace the original AC plug end with one that hadn’t had its ground pin removed. Old arcade ops seem to have been very bad about removing them. After that, I also had to switch out the fuse block because the original was so corroded and soft, I’m sure it wouldn’t have done its job much longer.
When I turned the game on, it emitted an explosion sound followed by an earth-shaking hum. I believe this was due to a shorted tantalum capacitor on the sound board.
I replaced all the tantalum caps and the hum disappeared, but the game still showed no signs of life.
I tried a cap kit on the monitor, partially due to age and condition, but partially to see if that was why I wasn’t getting any video.
That didn’t have any visible effect, so while I was at it, I also did a cap kit on the power supply to help future proof the game.
So, at about this point I got a reply from KLOV user Kaizen with an extremely helpful diagram of his readings of all the logic chips on a functional Space Invaders motherboard. The layout wasn’t exactly the same as my Space Invaders Deluxe, but only a couple chips are in different locations so I was still able to compare. The problem was, I didn’t have a spare power supply or monitor handy to rig up a test bench.
While I pondered setting that up, I did some cleaning of the cabinet’s display area, which was full of dead spiders and dust from being forgotten in a building for who knows how long. The marquee area had a big “NO SMOKING” sticker on it, obviously necessary because of how horribly marred and burnt by ash the control panel had become.
I also cleaned up the tarnish on the ROMs while I was at it.
Well, the game sat around for about another year before I was able to get back around to it. What spurred me into finishing the repairs was that I now had an extra power supply due to another project, so I was able to rig up a test connector inspired by The Defender Project and Elektron Forge.
Using my logic probe, I compared the state of each pin to what was on the diagram, which helped me to identify chips that were potential problems. Then after several hours of studying the motherboard schematics, since I am no electrical engineer, I traced the incorrect signals back to two possible chips.
I took a guess as to which one might be causing the other to malfunction, and my first guess was wrong. However, my second guess was on the money: An SN7416N at location E7 on the board.
This is a counter chip that I believe divides the clock signal into other frequencies that are then used by other components on the board. Instead of performing its prescribed function and pulsing at 120Hz and 480Hz, this chip had several pins stuck high, making other chips on the board freeze in an inoperative state. Once that chip was replaced, the board booted up.
However, there was still a problem. The invaders seemed to be leaving afterimages of themselves on the screen whenever they moved closer to the player.
I initially thought this was a RAM error, and the version I had on hand of the Space Invaders Test ROM seemed to agree with me. But that version was known to initialize the RAM test incorrectly, and thanks to advice from blinddog and Lurch666 I was able to nail down the real cause of the problem: A bad 74175 chip on the bit shifter.
The bit shifter is an ancillary piece of hardware that is responsible for the movement of the invaders on the screen because the CPU is too slow to handle moving them while keeping track of the rest of the game. If the shifter is malfunctioning, it can cause errors like this. It can also apparently cause the game to end prematurely when all the aliens decide to rush you at once after you’ve been playing for a few seconds. I got lucky because the 74175 chips are fairly easy to find, but the AMD 2510s (which are controlled by the 74175s) on the right side of the board are not so common. I replaced both 74175s because there’s not a really good way to tell which one is bad while they’re in circuit.
Now, while I was figuring this out, I still had some cabinet maintenance to do. At some point in the distant past, the original white blacklight in the cabinet was replaced with a regular purple blacklight. This massively dims the illumination behind the playfield, rendering the moon base diorama almost invisible.
By carefully reaching behind the monitor area, I was able to remove the old light from its fixture and replace it with the correct one. After that, I had a good picture on a game that played properly.
But the party wasn’t over yet!
There were two things left to fix up: The control panel and the marquee.
The marquee was easy. All of the original #1895 automotive bulbs had long since burned out, but my local lighting store (where I also got the white blacklight) had some #57 bulbs which are almost exactly the same. I got 10 for a whopping 16¢ apiece.
There was only the control panel to fix now. I ordered a replacement CPO from Phoenix Arcade because they seemed to have the best reproduction, and it did not disappoint.
Thus began the arduous task of removing the old overlay. The silver stuff under the original overlay isn’t paint; it’s actually the original adhesive backing.
I removed the hardware from the control panel and went out to give it a good scrubbing before dunking everything in Evaporust for a night. I really want to get new #8 carriage bolts for this but no one locally keeps them in stock, so I haven’t gotten around to ordering them yet.
After quite a lot of scraping and pulling, I removed all of the old adhesive. Underneath there were some really trippy patterns that I assume were caused by something spilling underneath the parts where the old overlay had broken off.
In order to get maximum adhesion for the new overlay, I sanded down the old paint and re-coated it with new black paint.
By carefully aligning the new screw holes and slowly peeling the backing on the adhesive, I was able to line up the new overlay without too much trouble. Then I screwed in all of the hardware and buttons. I also reinstalled the T-molding on the front after it had a nice scrub in the sink. Now the control panel was ready to finally reinstall in the cabinet.
I still need to scrub off the T-molding on the sides of the cab, but the major parts of this restoration are done. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out!
Custom SCART switcher problems
I like Ben Heck’s idea for custom a AV switch, but the CBT3244 bus switch chips don’t have enough bandwidth for analog signals. Loud audio clips and bright video blanks out. I’ve just had to go back to manually plugging in one SCART cable at a time (everything is RGB now) unless I can find a method that allows this many inputs without losing quality. It seems like using a method designed more with these issues in mind is much more complicated and maybe out of my realm of expertise.
Super Scope Eye Protector Replacements Now Available
3D printed replacement eye protectors for the Super Scope are now available in my eBay listings.
TurboGrafx / PC Engine HuCard Trays Up for Sale!
They’ve been a while coming but are finally here! I now sell replacement trays for TurboGrafx-16 and PC Engine games. These are designed to fit in a standard jewel case and allow you to store your games as you would in their original cases. You can even print art for the back to simulate the original spine sticker and fit it underneath the tray. Check them out in my eBay items for sale.
Wizard of Wor repair log
This game uses 6 PCBs – an unusual design.
I have been working on a Wizard of Wor machine that wouldn’t start. The only thing I got was a vaguely green screen and a buzzing speaker. I began by removing the socketed chips one at a time and cleaning them with a high quality plastic eraser and a Dremel wire brush when the tarnish was too heavy. After this I sprayed Deoxit into all of the sockets and reseated the chips several times each.
I checked the power supply and found that there was no voltage on the +12v line. If all voltages are not present, the supply will not send the 5v “power good” signal and the game will not boot. My first thought was to replace all the capacitors on the power supply since they are at least 37 years old at this point. However, I still didn’t get any change. I also tried changing out the variable regulator that controls the 12v to no avail.
It was suggested to me that the small tantalum capacitors on each of the 6 game PCBs are known to short out. While I was testing another point on the power supply, one of these capacitors on one of the game’s two RAM boards exploded, so I went ahead and replaced them all with these. After that the game booted!
The shorted capacitor exploded so hard that it actually broke in half.
However, the display was completely scrambled. Another tip I got was to adjust the horizontal frequency control deep in the recesses of the monitor chassis. Turning it all the way up, I was finally able to get a steady picture, but it was a bit unevenly projected, most likely due to old capacitors. There were also two sets of vertical yellow lines at even intervals across the screen. The cause of this turned out to be some bad RAM chips.
To test the RAM chips, I burned Mark Spaeth’s excellent GORF test ROM since Wizard of Wor uses the same hardware. I had to create an adapter to burn it onto a 2532 EPROM because my programmer isn’t compatible with them out of the box.
I also had to bend a pin out and wire a jumper in place so it would not be damaged by the ROM board (which still uses the original mask ROMs.) I found this information in the readme file for an earlier Wizard of Wor test program, WOWMD.
After finally getting the chip on the board, I was able to test the RAM.
I ended up having two bad RAM chips on the board with the capacitor that exploded.
I replaced the original 4027 chips with 2104 RAM, which is a drop-in replacement.
Now the game is up and running. I need to replace the capacitors on the monitor to correct some display geometry issues, and that’s it. I’m also planning to put heatsinks on the game’s special Astrocade chips since those are known to sizzle, and without them we’d have a dead game on our hands. Since the original heatsinks that Midway used are pretty hard to come by now, I found some alternatives I think will work nicely for about 50 cents each.
