Before you power up your machine, read what John W. Linville has to say about the circuit breakers in the Condor power supplies. The breakers on my machine were rusted & wouldn't trip; John makes it sound like this is a common problem.. The circuits that these breakers protect include the deflection amps; I'm convinced that since they didn't work on my machine the damage to the deflection circuitry was more extensive than it needed to be. Check & make sure that the 5V leg of the supply is putting out 5V, too, before you connect anything up.
If you do wind up replacing the breakers on the supply, make sure you note the position of the plastic spacer that's under power transistor Q1. The spacer keeps the pins and case of the transistor from contacting the aluminum chassis that it's mounted on, so it's critical that you put this spacer back exactly as was when you reassemble the supply. If you don't, the supply won't work right.
If your sound board doesn't work right, the manual for your machine might have a good set of procedures for troubleshooting it & testing the various circuits. The Star Castle manual does, and the Ripoff manual seems to have an equally good troubleshooting section. You may be able to download these manuals from an archive rather than having to go out and buy them. There's also a manual for the Cinematronics CPU Exorciser that has a general section on troubleshooting sound boards.
The CPU Exorciser manual also has an excellent section on troubleshooting the monitor circuitry. The only thing I'd add is that I found a newsgroup posting that says you can replace the 2N5878 power transistor (Q110 & Q210) with a 2N3716, and the 2N5876 (Q111 & Q211) with a 2N3792. I've replaced Q110 and Q111 on my machine with these substitutions and it seems to work fine.
You may notice I haven't mentioned anything about fixing the CPU board. That's because I never had any luck fixing mine. I finally wound up buying a working board to replace it.
One last thing - if you don't have the key for lock on the back of the cabinet, don't fret. You can pop the lock by sliding a table knife against the catch and whacking it with a hammer. There's a washer that keeps the lock in place and it has teeth that stick into the particle board. Whacking the lock in this manner won't break the lock but will cause the washer to rotate, which will slightly damage the particle board underneath. Nothing that can't be easily fixed, though.
I don't think you can buy a replacement lock at a hardware store that'll fit the machine. I wound up taking the lock out & having a local locksmith make up a key for it.
My Star Castle was in pretty rough shape and I had to do some work on every board in it. In a way that's made for a good learning experience, since this is the first arcade machine I've owned.
Related Resources:
The Unofficial Cinematronics Home Page
The 'Wiretap' Arcade Game Collector's Archive
Copyright © 1999, Larry
Dworsky. All rights reserved.
Last revised: December 03, 1999.