Battlezone

Manufactured by Atari (c)1980

Battlezone… my nemesis.  The is the single biggest pain in the ass cabinet I’ve owned.  I have had this games PCB out on the bench more times than I can count trying to track down an issue that caused the monitor to go crazy with vectors everywhere.  But lets start from the beginning.

I picked up Battlezone around September of 2009 from a local who had a few games he thought were gold and was trying to sell.  I had spent a few months trying to convince the guy that the 1/2 working Battlezone sitting in his garage wasn’t worth the $500 he was asking for it.  The monitor was jacked up and the game coined up… sometimes and even when it did,  it wouldn’t last long before the damn thing would just go crazy with the vectors.  Even when it way working correctly there was a severe blooming issue,  the black light inside was out,  the gel was missing,  and the marquee lamp was also blown.  At least the control panel,  controllers,  and the cabinet itself were in good shape.  After working on the guy for a few months,  and him advertising the thing for $500 for the whole time and getting ZERO response I finally widled him down to where he would take $300 for it.  I overpaid.  I knew I was over paying but I really wanted a Battlezone.  And to make matters worse,  the seller thought he was giving me a one hell of a deal on the machine and obviously wanted a pat on the back for being such a good guy.  If I knew then what I know now,  I’d have run hard and run fast.  This was just the beginning what will turn out to be a long and frustrating relationship.

When it home I discovered that the marquee lamp was present but not wired up.  Unfortunately the entire black-light fixture was missing and needed to be replaced.  Also,  the game decided to simply not power up.  Great.  I tracked that down to a bad bridge rectifier in the power brick. Next up was new gels and using black foam-board I picked up from Wally World I created a new bezel to attach the gels to.  I was still getting an odd pulsing on screen which wasn’t quite the same as the blooming issues associated with a bad high voltage diode… and being that I replaced the HV diode already,  I figured it had to be something else. To verify that I plugged in a 2nd G05 monitor and it too exhibited the same issue meaning i had an issue with the PCB.  It just so happened that about this time a KLOVian was selling a “working” PCB.  I really wanted my Battlezone up and running so I bought it and sold my PCB as “working with issues”.  When I plugged the new PCB in it worked GREAT! About this time I also insalled the Braze Battlezone High Score kit.  For 6 months or so I enjoyed a working Battlezone.. then it happened…

One day I was playing the game and it looked fine… 10 minutes later I walk past the machine and the vectors are all jacked up.  I throw it in to test mode and you can see above what I saw.  Damn.  Being a little pissy about the situation I powered down and went and played other games.  When i came back to the game a few days later I powered up and it came up right.  An hour later it was back… and so it began.  I figured it MUST be a cold solder joint…so I pulled the PCB and went through all the connectors.  Same semi-intermittant problem.  Then back to the bench it went… more joints re-flowed.  Again it worked… only to not work a little later or the next day or the next week.  I replaced the interconnect cables.  Same deal… it work work then not then work again… then not.  It went like this literally for YEARS… sometimes it would work great for a week (testing every day) only to screw up the next morning.  Sometimes it would play for 20 minutes before screwing up.  I was getting VERY frustrated I couldn’t figure out where the problem was.  Slowly but surely my patience wore thinner and thinner.  By this time I must have had the damn thing on the bench a dozen or more times.  I finally gave up and sent it in to a KLOVian to work on.  A month or so later I get it back,  fire it up and… it worked… for about 2 weeks I enjoyed Battlezone worry free… then it HAPPENED AGAIN. I was about to pull my hair out.  When I discussed the issue with the guy who’d repaied the PCB he offered to take a look at it again at no charge,  but offered me a suggestion to check a certain chip.  The next time the issue arose I tapped on the chip and sure enough,  the damn thing stopped freaking out.  I pulled the PCB one last time,  pulled that socket and replaced it with new dual-wipe socket.  SUCCESS!  Well,  mostly.  It STILL exhibits the same issue from time to time (probably once every 20 times I turn it on or so)… but it goes away with a reboot.  I don’t have the heart to pull the damn thing out again to work on it so I just reboot… and deal with the minor issue.  With the amount of money and time I have put in to this machine I would have to sell it for $850+ to even come close to breaking even.  Battlezone will forever be a part of my collection.  Luckily,  I really do like the game! 🙂

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