Info
This is the environmental version which you stand inside being immersed in the
Tron experience. I bought this at the San Jose auction in '98. Wow, it's heavy!
I had two friends help me load it on my truck at the auction, but when I got
home, I had nobody to help me unload it. I managed to get it off the truck safely
by sliding it off the back of the truck so the heavy part rested on the ground
and the light part rested on the tailgate. I then put an old mattress under
it and drove the truck out from under it, letting it plop safely onto the mattress.
Then I put my hand truck on the side of the cabinet, found a nice balance point,
tilted it back and slowly wheeled it into the garage into the position it will
stay forever. ;-)
The game worked, but had lots of little problems. There was no speech, so I
tested all the voltages to all the boards and found there was no -5v on the
speech board. Ohming the wiring from the connector back to the power supply
showed an open circuit... close inspection revealed a broken -5v wire on the
harness at the power supply connector. Soldered that back on and Sark was back
to his old chatty self.
The two rows of lights above the monitors didn't sequence and two or three were
stuck on. This turned out to be bad transistors on sequencer board. A trip to
Radio Shack and a little soldering and those were working nicely.
The rear fluorescent light assembly (the one that lights the artwork that the
monitor image is reflected onto) was physically broken. I bought a Tron fluorescent
light assembly for parts and in mid-2001, met a rather nice fellow named Lance
Lewis who had the misfortune of having to part out an eDoT due to a sudden,
unwanted, catastrophic, rapid disassembly of his game. I had him over to test
some of his parts in my machine and he sold and gave me the parts I needed to
get my rear fluorescent going. He even gave me a back door (mine cracked in
half!).
Shortly after getting that fixed, a few of the transistors on the light sequencer
board went out again. Bleh. They couldn't have had more than 2 hours of usage
on them since I replaced them. I decided to ask the experts on rgvac if there
was a more robust version of that transistor and I was told that the TIP122
would work much better but the pinouts were different. I bought some and figured
out how to make them work in place of the originals and the lights are now happily
sequencing again.
The spinner started acting oddly by moving the targeting crosshair in the same
direction no matter which way you spun it. I ended up fixing that by loosening,
repositioning and tightening the optical sensor.
The test switch needs to be replaced. I have to manually short the contacts
on the back of the switch to get into test mode.
The monitor could use a cap kit for some slight pincushioning and fold-over,
but it's not that bad and it doesn't look easy to get the monitor out, so I've
been putting that off.
I bought a repro control panel overlay to replace the one with cracks at the
bends. I hate removing old overlays, so I managed to convince my buddy Lance
Lewis to install it for me in trade for an NOS Burgertime CPO I had. Looks great.
Thanks Lance!
There was some graffiti on the inside of the cabinet that came off pretty easy
with some rubbing alcohol.
The mirrored plastic on the inner sides of the monitor area needs to be replaced.
I removed it completely leaving the plain black sides. I need to find a source
for new mylar mirror material and cut it to the right shape. I'll need to clean
the old adheasive off the sides and decide on a new adheasive.
The floor of the cabinet needs to be replaced. I bought a repro floor graphic,
but still haven't figured out how to get someone else to install it for me.
;-)
I picked up a new black light cover off eBay that goes above the control panel
since mine was faded and crusty.
The rear half of the cabinet is coming apart from the front on the lower right
side. I need to reinforce that before I try moving this thing again.
The game has recently developed the dreaded loud hum coming from the speakers,
even though it's got an original power supply. Since there was a lot of talk
on the newsgroups about this hum getting worse when you installed a switching
power supply, I decided to try figuring out the source of my problem and perhaps
shed light on the switching supply hum problem. I started by disconnecting
power to both sound amps. I powered the game on and the hum was gone. Good.
Then I plugged one back in, powered on. No hum. Good. Plugged the other back
in, powered on... no hum. Whoa. I guess the problem was the power connector
on one of the sound amps wasn't making good contact! Cool.
The game is in good enough condition to enjoy playing, so I've put off doing
the finishing touches on this machine and paid attention to others. The picture
used in the KLOV is of this very machine. =)
Hacks
The one thing that always bugged me about Discs of Tron was the lack of a freeplay
mode. So, I made one. Check out my hacks
page for Discs of Tron.