Board repair

There is a common problem with Pole Position.  They don't work.  To own a working Pole Position, from what I can tell, is a small miracle.  I don't know a whole lot about electronics or the theory behind it, but it would seem the boards have a design flaw that caused the +5 contacts at the finger board and connector to overheat and burn up.  Secondly, in order to save the high scores, and I guess to save money at the time, the manufacturer opted to solder a battery directly to the main circuit board.  We all know that these games were never meant to last 25 or 30 years, but you can guess what happened, battery acid leaked out and destroyed many of the boards.  This one was no exception.  Asking around on the KLOV forum got me the e-mail address of a Dick Millican (causeddmillikan@juno.com ) in Washington that specializes in repairing the Pole Position boards.  He was very reasonable and had the board repaired and back in about a week.

Naturally when the boards came back I was excited to plug it in and go.  Sadly I was presented with this lame display on the monitor.  So my first thought was that I had done something wrong on the earlier monitor work.  After swapping out the original Matsushita monitor for a known working one, I still had this nasty dark and wavy display.  I put the original monitor back in, played with the connectors for a bit and the picture seemed to clear up for a moment.  Having heard all the talk about faulty connectors I decided to re-pin the edge connectors and see what happened.  Well it worked.

This was more like it.  Although the colors are a bit off.  The picture was looking good. 

I added a few credits and was happy to see that the game played and sounded perfect. 

With the back door closed, the inside of the cabinet got really hot in a hurry.  So I installed a 4 inch 12 volt fan into the back of the cab and wired it up.

This game is a blast to play.  The sound when you're sitting in the cockpit and racing are enough to put a smile on any ones face.
There are still some issues to be resolved.  On some days, when I turn it on, I just get garbage on the screen.  I then have to turn it off.  Move the filter board or connectors around a little, and then turn it on again.  Usually it starts up after this and works fine for the rest of the day.  Also the colors need adjusted, but that is best done by switching the game to service mode and using the color chart.  Right now there is something wrong with the service switch, so it will need to be replaced first.