Author Topic: Project Centaur 2  (Read 2245 times)

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Offline humpalot

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Project Centaur 2
« on: October 26, 2008, 12:51:16 AM »
Made a start on the Centaur 2 this week.  So far have spent over 12hrs working on it.  Good project machine, but not one for the inexperienced or novice.

Won't bore people with too many pics.  Will post most pics when I start on the cosmetics.  The majority of my time will be spent repairing previous restro work.  Someone has repainted the entire cabinet by paint brush  ^.^ (had way too much time on their hands), if they hadn't used high gloss black it would of been a decent job.  The other bad part is that they used the same black paint on the playfield for touchups, I hope it's not enamel.

I haven't decided how far I'm going to take this machine as far as a restro goes.  At the moment I'm concentrating on just getting it up and running, that's a major effort in itself.

So far have rebuilt the power supply.  New fuse holders, bridges, diodes, resistor, varistor, correct fuses installed, fixed previous repairs.

Repaired the lamp driver board, it was missing about half of it's parts.

Modified the MPU, it was actually a baby packman and would never of worked in this machine.  Now also jumpered to use 2732 roms. Cleaned up battery corrosion.

Have also fixed several wiring shorts in the main cabinet.

Still need to rebuild the squawk and talk board, has resistors instead of pots, also most of the caps have been replaced with wrong value ones. (this should be an interesting one to work on).

Solenoid driver board needs usual repairs and upgrades.


« Last Edit: October 26, 2008, 01:01:00 AM by humpalot »

Offline ajlaird

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #1 on: October 26, 2008, 09:47:20 AM »
Wow, sounds like an awful lot of work! Good luck with this one.

Offline Strangeways

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #2 on: October 26, 2008, 10:44:04 AM »

Great start, Mick. Centaur or Centaur2 were always high on my "wanted" list, but my wife didn't like the backglass (I had to sell my Space Invaders as she was spooked by that as well)  %.%

There's nothing like taking possession of an machine that needs hours of work and then watching it develop (slowly) into a work of art.

How is the playfield on this machine ? Just about every Centaur I've seen has wear around the ball arch.

Those boards needs a bit of work, and I've never seen a Baby Pacman MPU. Amazing !

Keep the updates coming !

 ^^^
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Offline humpalot

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #3 on: October 26, 2008, 01:34:02 PM »
The arch is pretty good.

Yes I love nothing better than being able to save a game, to me that's the biggest thrill I get.

Pic of playfield and inside cabinet. 

Offline Strangeways

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #4 on: October 26, 2008, 01:42:44 PM »

Stock, standard project game... Exactly what I love getting my teeth into !

Do you have all the plastics ?

Nice Targets - one is off a Flash Gordon !
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Offline humpalot

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #5 on: October 26, 2008, 03:16:28 PM »
No it needs new plastics, new drop targets etc etc.

Guess now I need to find a flash gordon to go with that target  %.%

Offline Pinball Fixers

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #6 on: October 26, 2008, 04:02:19 PM »
It's great working on a machine from start to finish and bring it back to it's former glory!

You'll have a lot of fun... and maybe pull your hair out here and there  %$%

Offline Strangeways

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #7 on: October 26, 2008, 05:15:14 PM »
No it needs new plastics, new drop targets etc etc.

Guess now I need to find a flash gordon to go with that target  %.%

Greg has these -

http://www.rtbb.com.au/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=37&products_id=409

I'm grabbing the CV protector set before they all go...

I need a full set of target for my Flash Gordon - I did buy the Plastics set and I'm waiting patiently for the double playfield repro !!
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Offline humpalot

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #8 on: November 04, 2008, 08:14:01 AM »
40 odd hours later, I finally have this game working.  Spent a lot of time with my head in the schematics fixing the connectors.  Had a number of wires that had either burnt or just fell off the connectors, but some of these had been put back onto the connector in the wrong location  ^.^  Caused all types of problems and errors after I repaired the boards and first fired up the machine.

The squawk and talk was basically toast.  Replaced the caps with correct value ones, replaced 3/4 of the resistors as these were shot, replaced the 5V, had 2x blown diodes, put in 2 new trim pots and replaced the TDA2002 amp.  A number of IC's had already been replaced and were OK, I replaced all the eproms as I do for all my games.  The original eproms were in the bottom of the cabinet and when tested were shorts.  This board suffered from bad wiring and from having the caps replaced with the wrong value.

The aux lamp board was another that suffered from a connector problem with a wire in the wrong location.  Took out all of the transistors.

Now the bad stuff is out of the way I can start on the fun part of the cosmetics  #*#


Offline Strangeways

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #9 on: November 04, 2008, 12:21:07 PM »

That is the approach I have with all my restorations. Start from scratch on an unknown machine and you cannot go wrong. Sometimes, everything works straight off the bat, sometimes every board and every assembly needs to be attended to.

Great that it is all working for you - sounds like major repairs on the S&T board..

Now the "easy" stuff - and the "fun" stuff - the cosmetics  #*#
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Offline humpalot

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #10 on: November 05, 2008, 10:45:40 AM »
Started the stripping process last night.  Have stripped and removed the playfield.

Under the playfield the cigarette tar and smell is that thick and strong it looks like the machine has smoked about 5 cartons of cig's everyday of it's life.  It's that bad that I think that I might have to buy some Nicabate patches to get the machine through this hard time. 

Can anyone suggest how many patches a machine this size with such a high dependency on nicotine would require #@#

Offline Strangeways

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #11 on: November 05, 2008, 11:47:10 AM »
Started the stripping process last night.  Have stripped and removed the playfield.

Under the playfield the cigarette tar and smell is that thick and strong it looks like the machine has smoked about 5 cartons of cig's everyday of it's life.  It's that bad that I think that I might have to buy some Nicabate patches to get the machine through this hard time. 

Can anyone suggest how many patches a machine this size with such a high dependency on nicotine would require #@#


 %.%

sounds like they sited the game at a "Smoker's Club" with the glass removed !
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Offline ajlaird

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #12 on: November 07, 2008, 11:36:44 PM »
Started the stripping process last night.  Have stripped and removed the playfield.

Under the playfield the cigarette tar and smell is that thick and strong it looks like the machine has smoked about 5 cartons of cig's everyday of it's life.  It's that bad that I think that I might have to buy some Nicabate patches to get the machine through this hard time. 

Can anyone suggest how many patches a machine this size with such a high dependency on nicotine would require #@#


 %.%

sounds like they sited the game at a "Smoker's Club" with the glass removed !


Sounds like when I first started playing pinball - the (small) room was always full of smoke - well before they started banning cigarettes indoors.

Offline Pinfan

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #13 on: November 08, 2008, 07:20:53 PM »
No it needs new plastics, new drop targets etc etc.

Guess now I need to find a flash gordon to go with that target  %.%

Hey humpalot, you may want to have a look at this..

http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/maxime1967
Some people have big HEADS !

Offline humpalot

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Re: Project Centaur 2
« Reply #14 on: November 09, 2008, 01:25:01 PM »
Already have a repro plastic set from RTBB.