Atari System 2 Championship Sprint
- Thread starter strykr
- Start date
frothmeister
Active member
Coming together nicely now Rich 
I concur that those voltages seem fine. I have a feeling my 10.3v measures at about 14v normally when under load.
I've never seen them all measure bang on at the same time in ANY Atari cab I've had.
I concur that those voltages seem fine. I have a feeling my 10.3v measures at about 14v normally when under load.
I've never seen them all measure bang on at the same time in ANY Atari cab I've had.
frothmeister
Active member
And don't forget your 'Guddler jump leads' once you get it running ;-)
Cheers Dan, getting there, was full steam ahead today until i noticed that swallow had sent the wrong size pins
. Had to halt all progress. Learnt a lot in terms of mapping out all the wiring and getting my head round the schematics tho, will get there in the end!
Well its been a long time since I updated this thread, ive spent a long time tracking down parts, studying the schematics, and wiring the whole thing up, and its been a major learning curve for me. Some of this might be bog standard and boring to all the techie people out there but I feel its worth documenting in case some other fool has the grand idea of buying a clapped out dilapidated shell and trying to buy and piece together every single part from scratch.
Also I have been extensively researching Atari system 2 cabinets all over the internet and the information is in some cases scarce and in others misleading, and others a bit baffling as it seems that most of the cabs I could find restored were originally paperboy cabs which were field or home user converted to work with champ sprint, Ar2 rev d's, Ar3's Switching psus to power both vid and cpu board, or ar3 for video and sound and a sierracin switching psu just providing 5v for the board. It took me (having not much electronics experience and only having previously wired jamma cabs from scratch) quite a while to get my head round it and to realise that although all System 2 games get exactly the same voltages, they all get them in different ways, either from the brick or power regulator, APB, Champ Sprint, and paperboy for instance are all system 2, but all have different wiring and different wiring connections that all essentially take voltages and connections to the same place but in a different way.
It took me a long time to secure a power brick and when I did it was the power brick for paperboy/centipede and a few other raster atari games, so this governed the way I wired the cab, essentially wiring it as an original paperboy with an AR3, that would have had a field conversion to championship sprint BITD. Which required referring and double checking both games' schematics when wiring. I've had parts from europe, america and the uk over the course of months, using arcade fixit, klov, dragons lair, maplins, ebay, arcade boneyard, swallow amusements, rs components, and various uk forum members digging out old parts along the way and flogging them too me for good forum prices, and probably a few more ive forgotten. Its been a major mission, and ive lost count of the times ive sat down to work on the cab only to be missing 1 pot, or 1 molex pin, or 1 colour strand of wire that has meant an order and a week or so's wait!
Anyway, i've been a bit slack with taking millions of photos, but I will try to cover the whole process as best as possible. I've had a lot of help with this, asking some dumb questions along the way and had some support from some Amazing Arcade Men, they know who they are, along with Frothmeister, Bensonrad & Jodo taking as many pictures as possible for reference, and RGP, Colin D and equites lurking in the background offering some tech support and answering my assinine at times technical questions.
Let's get on with it:
So when I last updated the thread, the bulk of the woodwork had been done, holes bondoed and sanded, new formica and sideart applied, black vinyl applied to any new parts needed etc. So I set about wiring it up. I finally found a power brick which I had to import from the usa in the end. untested as usual and lacking the correct molex connections.
So I made up a new molex to change incoming voltage to 240 and not 110.
then I set about following the schematic and the excellent documentation on tripods atari site to begin checking voltages.
As It was being wired as a paperboy I needed a new big blue as well, which I asked colins advice about and bought a 'big black' from RS and a capacitor holder from ebay.
With the voltages checking out as ok from the power brick I wired in this second capacitor and made my first and thankfully only (so far) major gaff. I fired it up and the F3 slo blo fuse blew..... This set me back a bit and i threw a bit of a good old fashioned 'arcade strop' all my parts are untested and i hadnt begun wiring and it blew....
After a bit of research I came across Dokert from klovs advice that if that particulat fuse is blowing it normally means the second cap is wired incorrectly or the bridge rectifier ws faulty, obviously I cant have been stupid enough to wire incorrect polarity to the cap so I tested the bridge rectifer and it was all fine.
And yes. you've guessed it, id wired the cap wrong lol. I went to maplin and bought a new fuse holder, as the original was badly burnt found a new fuse on ebay and changed that around, and tested volages, the fuse held and voltages were good!
In the meantime I had fortunately managed to find a 70 percent complete championship sprint harness from a klov member. This gave me a massive head start of course as it had all the correct pitch connectors etc, but it didnt change the fact that champ sprint although being system 2 is wired slightly differently from a paperboy, so I set about modifying the harness and adding and subtracting wires where necessary folowing the pin out.
I bought 2 untested AR3 boards from a Klov member, and bought an untested Champ sprint PCB set from ebay US which arrived with some shoddy packaging, and not even a layer of bubble wrap seperating the pcbs so they were grinding together in transit......
buying this old stuff untested is always a massive gamble but needs must, and i feared the worst when I unpacked it and saw these pics.
The connectors were badly burned, i was tempted to replace these myself but at this stage I had no wiring setup to test the pcb, there was a suspicion of scratched and broken traces on the underside of the board from transit damage, and the fact that the pcbs are the size of the QE2 with a million chips, my best bet would just be to send it off to Retroclinic to have a good look for me.
He replaced the connectors and reseated a few chips and it was confirmed as a worker!! Buoyed by this i got back to putting it all back together.
First port of call was to attach the pcb to the rear door, I had been holding off on this as both hinges to the rear door were knackered,
So i contacted a local company who fabricated new hinges for me, it took them a month to do it though which held me back a fair amount, and as it transpired all I had were 2 top parts of the hinge, so some guesswork was required to manufacture them, and I eventually asked them to leave the second holes blank, and used my drill press to put correcly spaced holes on the second part.
I couldnt locate the correct atari spacers for the pcb part, and these system 2 cabs also came with anti static foam behind them which had perished on the original door. In the end I opted to use some appropriately lengthed screws, some washers and nylon spacers that i bought from ebay, they adequately hold the cpu video board and cpu boards in place securely, around about 3/4 inch from the metal plate, they are so tight in there that there is no chance they will touch the metal plate so left off the antistatic foam.
Once everything was in place i made up the appropriate mate and lok connectors for the AR3 board, checked voltages again and they all checked out. The next part was modifying the wiring, and double and triple checking everything was correct before I even thought about powering anything up! this took quite some time as you can imagine, and tidying and ensuring correct cable lengths is always a faff
With the power brick and ar3 voltages all checking out I moved on to wiring up a generic switching psu to power the gameboard, and in the absence of an original fan I decided to buy a 12v PC fan which I could then wire up to the 12v from the switcher. I'd always read about how hot AR3's can get, and i tell you its real..... you could easily fry an egg on that bugger.....I installed the switcher, selecting 120v and powered it from the Atari Power brick, and all voltages checked out.
Once this side was done I moved onto the monitor. Which I bought from Muddymusic some time ago, once again, "untested" but thought to be a worker. It turns out to be a modified WG K7000. I had to make up a new video molex connector from the video pcb and once this was all made I held my breath and fired it up for the first time...Lo and behold I got a picture!!! Which was pretty astounding given the fact that every component in the cab was untested, and I was wiring it lol.
The monitor will need a new lopt at some stage as it has been glued together, and the picture is slightly too big for the screen so I will need to replace the caps near the width coil and try that as adjusting it doesnt do anything, but I can certainly live with it for now.
Once this was done I set about wiring up the speakers from the AR3, and the service panel. This is when I discovered that although it was sold to me as a system 2 service panel, its actually not. Not a massive deal as it still features the coin counter, service switch etc, but it had a mono potentiometer for volume, so yet another trip to maplin and I installed and wired up a dual gang pot for the stereo sound, I havent played much paperboy but from playing champ sprint a lot in mame I knew that the stereo side was integral to the game, the music is panned quite dynamically from left to right which sounds great, and also both cars sounds,)engine, picking up power ups etc, are panned appropriately left and right, so i wanted to get this correct.
With the game seemingly working I still had the issue that I was running a fairly gerry rigged mains cable into the cab, and the original atari power inlet was absent so I put a wanted up on the forum and got a lucky score with an inlet that fits nicely in the blank space, and includes a power on switch, not essential I guess, but I always like to have a seperate power switch actually on the cab. I installed this and used double headed spade connectors to tap off a direct 240v for the marquee fixture I had which also works!!
One thing I will say if anyone is doing this sort of thing, is finding replacement imperial measurement screws has been a real pita. I went through a number of them until I discovered that on this cab, the screws are not only imperial (which i should have realised tbh) But they use an older style whitworth thread. Not easy to find really..... But i managed to track them down through ebay and through a local old school diy shop. You know the kind where there is just crap everywhere from decades, and the chap empties out a load of screws on the table, as we hunt them down, then wants to charge me £1.20! Proper old school.
On first power up the steering worked like a charm, I have a replacement opto pcb just in case but its always nice when something works out of the box. The pedals on the other hand are not functioning correctly, and in test the pots were jerking around all over the place, so I ordered some new arcade pots from Arcade fixit, and installed them and went into the service menu and configured the pots, it didnt work at first, as there was a bit of a wobble in the readings once i completed the test, but I re-did it and ensured that the pots were 100 percent stable before completing configuration and it all works.
Finally, coin door wiring, which was nice and simple, and installed some replacement bulbs and holders from Swallow Amusements, and an original coin bucket, the coin mechs i've bagged from Purity and Ben76 unfortunately dont work, so will need to have a look at them, but i can credit up easily enough with the microswitch for now.
Also treated myself to an original Instruction sheet, and a custom key ring.
So everything is just about done now, and it works. obligatory resto done pics:
Final thing I need to do now is ensure that the eeproms are playing Rev C of the game, as the board is stamped as Rev A. For now though I want to play the thing!
Bit of a mission, but Im very very happy with it.
Quick vid of the first credit
strykr2015-02-16 18:15:33
Also I have been extensively researching Atari system 2 cabinets all over the internet and the information is in some cases scarce and in others misleading, and others a bit baffling as it seems that most of the cabs I could find restored were originally paperboy cabs which were field or home user converted to work with champ sprint, Ar2 rev d's, Ar3's Switching psus to power both vid and cpu board, or ar3 for video and sound and a sierracin switching psu just providing 5v for the board. It took me (having not much electronics experience and only having previously wired jamma cabs from scratch) quite a while to get my head round it and to realise that although all System 2 games get exactly the same voltages, they all get them in different ways, either from the brick or power regulator, APB, Champ Sprint, and paperboy for instance are all system 2, but all have different wiring and different wiring connections that all essentially take voltages and connections to the same place but in a different way.
It took me a long time to secure a power brick and when I did it was the power brick for paperboy/centipede and a few other raster atari games, so this governed the way I wired the cab, essentially wiring it as an original paperboy with an AR3, that would have had a field conversion to championship sprint BITD. Which required referring and double checking both games' schematics when wiring. I've had parts from europe, america and the uk over the course of months, using arcade fixit, klov, dragons lair, maplins, ebay, arcade boneyard, swallow amusements, rs components, and various uk forum members digging out old parts along the way and flogging them too me for good forum prices, and probably a few more ive forgotten. Its been a major mission, and ive lost count of the times ive sat down to work on the cab only to be missing 1 pot, or 1 molex pin, or 1 colour strand of wire that has meant an order and a week or so's wait!
Anyway, i've been a bit slack with taking millions of photos, but I will try to cover the whole process as best as possible. I've had a lot of help with this, asking some dumb questions along the way and had some support from some Amazing Arcade Men, they know who they are, along with Frothmeister, Bensonrad & Jodo taking as many pictures as possible for reference, and RGP, Colin D and equites lurking in the background offering some tech support and answering my assinine at times technical questions.
Let's get on with it:
So when I last updated the thread, the bulk of the woodwork had been done, holes bondoed and sanded, new formica and sideart applied, black vinyl applied to any new parts needed etc. So I set about wiring it up. I finally found a power brick which I had to import from the usa in the end. untested as usual and lacking the correct molex connections.
So I made up a new molex to change incoming voltage to 240 and not 110.
then I set about following the schematic and the excellent documentation on tripods atari site to begin checking voltages.
As It was being wired as a paperboy I needed a new big blue as well, which I asked colins advice about and bought a 'big black' from RS and a capacitor holder from ebay.
With the voltages checking out as ok from the power brick I wired in this second capacitor and made my first and thankfully only (so far) major gaff. I fired it up and the F3 slo blo fuse blew..... This set me back a bit and i threw a bit of a good old fashioned 'arcade strop' all my parts are untested and i hadnt begun wiring and it blew....
After a bit of research I came across Dokert from klovs advice that if that particulat fuse is blowing it normally means the second cap is wired incorrectly or the bridge rectifier ws faulty, obviously I cant have been stupid enough to wire incorrect polarity to the cap so I tested the bridge rectifer and it was all fine.
And yes. you've guessed it, id wired the cap wrong lol. I went to maplin and bought a new fuse holder, as the original was badly burnt found a new fuse on ebay and changed that around, and tested volages, the fuse held and voltages were good!
In the meantime I had fortunately managed to find a 70 percent complete championship sprint harness from a klov member. This gave me a massive head start of course as it had all the correct pitch connectors etc, but it didnt change the fact that champ sprint although being system 2 is wired slightly differently from a paperboy, so I set about modifying the harness and adding and subtracting wires where necessary folowing the pin out.
I bought 2 untested AR3 boards from a Klov member, and bought an untested Champ sprint PCB set from ebay US which arrived with some shoddy packaging, and not even a layer of bubble wrap seperating the pcbs so they were grinding together in transit......
buying this old stuff untested is always a massive gamble but needs must, and i feared the worst when I unpacked it and saw these pics.
The connectors were badly burned, i was tempted to replace these myself but at this stage I had no wiring setup to test the pcb, there was a suspicion of scratched and broken traces on the underside of the board from transit damage, and the fact that the pcbs are the size of the QE2 with a million chips, my best bet would just be to send it off to Retroclinic to have a good look for me.
He replaced the connectors and reseated a few chips and it was confirmed as a worker!! Buoyed by this i got back to putting it all back together.
First port of call was to attach the pcb to the rear door, I had been holding off on this as both hinges to the rear door were knackered,
So i contacted a local company who fabricated new hinges for me, it took them a month to do it though which held me back a fair amount, and as it transpired all I had were 2 top parts of the hinge, so some guesswork was required to manufacture them, and I eventually asked them to leave the second holes blank, and used my drill press to put correcly spaced holes on the second part.
I couldnt locate the correct atari spacers for the pcb part, and these system 2 cabs also came with anti static foam behind them which had perished on the original door. In the end I opted to use some appropriately lengthed screws, some washers and nylon spacers that i bought from ebay, they adequately hold the cpu video board and cpu boards in place securely, around about 3/4 inch from the metal plate, they are so tight in there that there is no chance they will touch the metal plate so left off the antistatic foam.
Once everything was in place i made up the appropriate mate and lok connectors for the AR3 board, checked voltages again and they all checked out. The next part was modifying the wiring, and double and triple checking everything was correct before I even thought about powering anything up! this took quite some time as you can imagine, and tidying and ensuring correct cable lengths is always a faff
With the power brick and ar3 voltages all checking out I moved on to wiring up a generic switching psu to power the gameboard, and in the absence of an original fan I decided to buy a 12v PC fan which I could then wire up to the 12v from the switcher. I'd always read about how hot AR3's can get, and i tell you its real..... you could easily fry an egg on that bugger.....I installed the switcher, selecting 120v and powered it from the Atari Power brick, and all voltages checked out.
Once this side was done I moved onto the monitor. Which I bought from Muddymusic some time ago, once again, "untested" but thought to be a worker. It turns out to be a modified WG K7000. I had to make up a new video molex connector from the video pcb and once this was all made I held my breath and fired it up for the first time...Lo and behold I got a picture!!! Which was pretty astounding given the fact that every component in the cab was untested, and I was wiring it lol.
The monitor will need a new lopt at some stage as it has been glued together, and the picture is slightly too big for the screen so I will need to replace the caps near the width coil and try that as adjusting it doesnt do anything, but I can certainly live with it for now.
Once this was done I set about wiring up the speakers from the AR3, and the service panel. This is when I discovered that although it was sold to me as a system 2 service panel, its actually not. Not a massive deal as it still features the coin counter, service switch etc, but it had a mono potentiometer for volume, so yet another trip to maplin and I installed and wired up a dual gang pot for the stereo sound, I havent played much paperboy but from playing champ sprint a lot in mame I knew that the stereo side was integral to the game, the music is panned quite dynamically from left to right which sounds great, and also both cars sounds,)engine, picking up power ups etc, are panned appropriately left and right, so i wanted to get this correct.
With the game seemingly working I still had the issue that I was running a fairly gerry rigged mains cable into the cab, and the original atari power inlet was absent so I put a wanted up on the forum and got a lucky score with an inlet that fits nicely in the blank space, and includes a power on switch, not essential I guess, but I always like to have a seperate power switch actually on the cab. I installed this and used double headed spade connectors to tap off a direct 240v for the marquee fixture I had which also works!!
One thing I will say if anyone is doing this sort of thing, is finding replacement imperial measurement screws has been a real pita. I went through a number of them until I discovered that on this cab, the screws are not only imperial (which i should have realised tbh) But they use an older style whitworth thread. Not easy to find really..... But i managed to track them down through ebay and through a local old school diy shop. You know the kind where there is just crap everywhere from decades, and the chap empties out a load of screws on the table, as we hunt them down, then wants to charge me £1.20! Proper old school.
On first power up the steering worked like a charm, I have a replacement opto pcb just in case but its always nice when something works out of the box. The pedals on the other hand are not functioning correctly, and in test the pots were jerking around all over the place, so I ordered some new arcade pots from Arcade fixit, and installed them and went into the service menu and configured the pots, it didnt work at first, as there was a bit of a wobble in the readings once i completed the test, but I re-did it and ensured that the pots were 100 percent stable before completing configuration and it all works.
Finally, coin door wiring, which was nice and simple, and installed some replacement bulbs and holders from Swallow Amusements, and an original coin bucket, the coin mechs i've bagged from Purity and Ben76 unfortunately dont work, so will need to have a look at them, but i can credit up easily enough with the microswitch for now.
Also treated myself to an original Instruction sheet, and a custom key ring.
So everything is just about done now, and it works. obligatory resto done pics:
Final thing I need to do now is ensure that the eeproms are playing Rev C of the game, as the board is stamped as Rev A. For now though I want to play the thing!
Bit of a mission, but Im very very happy with it.
Quick vid of the first credit
strykr2015-02-16 18:15:33
What can I say dude
It looks fantastic and its a game you love
Such a intensive restoration well beyond my capabilities.
Hats of to you sir
Can't wait to play it mate
It looks fantastic and its a game you love
Such a intensive restoration well beyond my capabilities.
Hats of to you sir
Can't wait to play it mate
silverfox0786
Beware the Hillman
Hats off to you SIR
That looks brilliant!!! Well done.
Maybe I can tap you up for some advice once I get a chance to look at mine.
I has no power brick and the game pcb is wired to a switcher.
Keep up the good work and it was well worth it in the end.
Maybe I can tap you up for some advice once I get a chance to look at mine.
I has no power brick and the game pcb is wired to a switcher.
Keep up the good work and it was well worth it in the end.
Given the state this was in you've done a stirling job. I particularly like the formica and sideart work. It even inspired me to get my ass in gear with the Baby Pac.
Top job! Needs to be moved to restoration showcase immediately
Purity2015-02-16 18:33:09
Top job! Needs to be moved to restoration showcase immediately
Purity2015-02-16 18:33:09
In the video mate you show us how to play the game & I've seen you play it too a few times .
You know when you spin the wheel , do you ever forget when your driving a real car and attempt that ? Lol
I've tried it on a dodgem and the car always goes backwards lol
Chuckie egg2015-02-16 19:04:07
You know when you spin the wheel , do you ever forget when your driving a real car and attempt that ? Lol
I've tried it on a dodgem and the car always goes backwards lol
Chuckie egg2015-02-16 19:04:07
Legendary resto status is assured for you Sir
One of the best things about this is that, if I remember correctly, the cab is too big to go back out of your doorway?...So it's in with you now forever. Perfection.
I wish I'd been in that situation with a few of my sales in the past. That feeling when 10 minutes after Martin drives off down the road to the new buyer you know you shouldn't have sold that cab
One of the best things about this is that, if I remember correctly, the cab is too big to go back out of your doorway?...So it's in with you now forever. Perfection.
I wish I'd been in that situation with a few of my sales in the past. That feeling when 10 minutes after Martin drives off down the road to the new buyer you know you shouldn't have sold that cab
Fantastic restoration of a fantastic game. Always loved the steering wheel flinging and locking mechanic. top marks
Thanks everyone .
Alex lol, nope i havent spun the wheel like that yet, although after long sessions of OR2 I do sometimes feel like I can bounce off anything arcade style
.
Phil, it comes apart just as it was put together, so it can move with me, I never had the heart to pull apart a fully functioning cab, but as this one was buggered I thought the only way was up! There were plenty of times in this resto that I just wanted to push it out the window tho....
strykr2015-02-16 19:37:56
Alex lol, nope i havent spun the wheel like that yet, although after long sessions of OR2 I do sometimes feel like I can bounce off anything arcade style
Phil, it comes apart just as it was put together, so it can move with me, I never had the heart to pull apart a fully functioning cab, but as this one was buggered I thought the only way was up! There were plenty of times in this resto that I just wanted to push it out the window tho....
strykr2015-02-16 19:37:56
"........but I feel its worth documenting in case some other fool has the grand idea of buying a clapped out dilapidated shell and trying to buy and piece together every single part from scratch."
hmmmmm, I think I am one of those! but I am very glad you only live over the hill and now have the knowledge
Really amazing work you have done here, you make it all look so easy too! utterly utterly brilliant, awsomeness.
Now I've got rid of a couple, I should really try and put mine together.
hmmmmm, I think I am one of those! but I am very glad you only live over the hill and now have the knowledge
Really amazing work you have done here, you make it all look so easy too! utterly utterly brilliant, awsomeness.
Now I've got rid of a couple, I should really try and put mine together.
Bensonrad said:"........but I feel its worth documenting in case some other fool has the grand idea of buying a clapped out dilapidated shell and trying to buy and piece together every single part from scratch."
hmmmmm, I think I am one of those! but I am very glad you only live over the hill and now have the knowledge
Really amazing work you have done here, you make it all look so easy too! utterly utterly brilliant, awsomeness.
Now I've got rid of a couple, I should really try and put mine together.
Once it starts getting light of an evening we'll get your Paperboy up n running.