Zaccaria MPU board progress...

[ajlaird]

Great work, will take a while to populate one of those!

[Homepin]

Great work, will take a while to populate one of those!

Yes, and that will be reflected in the price 

The first job we had was to assemble the HEF40097 IC's - the only ones we could buy in any quantities were surface mount types so we had to design up a tiny adaptor board as they don't make adaptors for 16 pin IC's (there isn't enough width sideways usually) and we couldn't easily change the PCB to accept S/M chips for these. Here is the first one:

[Strangeways]

Looking good. I can see plenty of these being sold to the US collectors that have several Zacs in their collection with faulty MPUs.

[ajlaird]

Will you be offering in both built and kit form?

[Homepin]

Will you be offering in both built and kit form?

We wanted to actually make one up before making this decision and frankly it's not looking good for a kit. Due to the age of the parts used you can't just make up a list, call RS and say "send me 200pcs of each". There are FAR too many variables and we will be lucky to be able to build up batches of 10 boards that are identical in reality. At this stage I think a kit will cause way too many problems.

There will be several RAM choices and that will be a headache enough.…

Some progress:



 

[The pinballist formally known as Dean Morgan]

Will you be offering in both built and kit form?

We wanted to actually make one up before making this decision and frankly it's not looking good for a kit. Due to the age of the parts used you can't just make up a list, call RS and say "send me 200pcs of each". There are FAR too many variables and we will be lucky to be able to build up batches of 10 boards that are identical in reality. At this stage I think a kit will cause way too many problems.

There will be several RAM choices and that will be a headache enough.…

Some progress:



 

So are you saying board will be sold as a complete working new MPU?

[Homepin]

Yes, sort of..........

At this stage we are thinking it will be complete, assembled and tested BUT supplied without Micro, RAM & EPROMs (we will fit those for testing and then remove them).

There will be choices of 3 different RAM options - EPROMs differ between games and the Micro is hard to come by but all of these bits are likely to be OK on the old board this is replacing.

Nothing is set in stone yet.......

Will you be offering in both built and kit form?

We wanted to actually make one up before making this decision and frankly it's not looking good for a kit. Due to the age of the parts used you can't just make up a list, call RS and say "send me 200pcs of each". There are FAR too many variables and we will be lucky to be able to build up batches of 10 boards that are identical in reality. At this stage I think a kit will cause way too many problems.

There will be several RAM choices and that will be a headache enough.…

Some progress:



 

So are you saying board will be sold as a complete working new MPU?

[Boots]

Yes, sort of..........

At this stage we are thinking it will be complete, assembled and tested BUT supplied without Micro, RAM & EPROMs (we will fit those for testing and then remove them).

There will be choices of 3 different RAM options - EPROMs differ between games and the Micro is hard to come by but all of these bits are likely to be OK on the old board this is replacing.

Nothing is set in stone yet.......

What if the machine is missing the MPU board?
Quite common with project machines getting around

[Homepin]

What if the machine is missing the MPU board?
Quite common with project machines getting around

Then I probably can't help the owner as Micros are very scarce but the RAM mod is no issue (using a 6116) as is the EPROMs

It will still come back to the buyer being able to supply a micro because at this point I don't have access to any.

[Homepin]

 

At last....the Zac MPU lives running the test EPROM written by 'Leon' - it flashes all outputs slowly. Almost ready to fit into a machne and give it a run.….

[goodolddays]

 

[Homepin]

Our first assembled board is now running - bit of a hold up as 'real work' got in the way a bit and there was a faulty 2114 RAM on the proto board....all good now and running in the Stars Phoenix kindly provided by The Pinball Shed.

[Retropin]

Excellent news Mike... fixing a corroded Zac board is fraught with difficulties as you know. The hours i have spent fixing up 2 of these boards could be better spent making a new one that I KNOW will work once finished... youve filled a big void in the market... good on you and i wish you great success!!!!