Taito Phoenix Cocktail Table Shop Log

[ronsplooter]

As well as tinkering with the pins I also like to mess about with arcade cabs now and then so thought others may be interested in what I'm working on at the moment. I picked up a Taito cocktail table a few years ago that was originally a Phoenix but was running a bootleg Pleiades board (the sequel to Phoenix) with dead sound. I'm not particularly interested in Pleiades but the cab itself was in reasonable condition although quite dirty so my plan was to convert it to JAMMA and put a vertical 60 in 1 board into it. The cab has 2 way sticks and 2 buttons per player so I'm going to restrict the 60 in 1 to just the games that support that setup and basically turn it into a classic shooters cab running Galaga, Galaxian, Phoenix, Space Invaders etc. This got stuck on the list of future projects and the cab was sat untouched at my old house until I had time to get round to it.....well that time is now

This what I'm staring with, I've already removed the bootleg Pleiades board:





Internally it's very grubby but pretty much original and unhacked Based on this I decided on a slight change of plan as originally I was going to rip most of it out and put a new JAMMA harness in and just keep the isolation transformer and wiring for the monitor. As the original wiring is in such decent condition I'm now going to leave it all in place and make an adapter to go from the Phoenix/Pleiades connector pinout to JAMMA. This means that in the future if I or someone else wanted to make this a dedicated Phoenix then it was easy enough to do.

Same as with any pinball work, first job is to dismantle it Tabletop was removed to allow easier access to the rest of it and then I worked top to bottom removing stuff:





In the end I was left with a pile of parts and a dirty wooden box!

 

[ronsplooter]

The cab cleaned up really well, especially on the inside:



Control panels are self contained units that can be removed and swapped for other games but also makes working on them nice and easy:





I also took advantage of the decent weather yesterday to get some painting done. Just a clean up and then recoat with Satin black to refresh the exterior metal parts:



Everything is now cleaned and ready to start re-assembly

 

[Colywobbles]

If anyone’s feeling inspired by this I have a project one that looks like I’ll never be able to finish so may sell if anyone interested.
Col

 

[HomerRamone]

Another Phoenix ? Just curious

 

[Paul]

I have a legless (!) Space invaders that i need to get working on... Roll on the summer...

Would be interested in a sketch with measurements of the legs if you get a chance please @ronsplooter ??? Am guessing the pheonix and space invaders are the same spec Cab with different game boards in...

Mine fires up, however nothing displayed on the screen, so probably more work...

 

[ronsplooter]

All the Taito cocktails are the same cab from what I understand mate @Paul and you just swap out the control panels for the relevant game. I'll do you a picture of the legs later on as they're currently separated from the rest of it

 

[Colywobbles]

Oops Wrong tell

 

[Colywobbles]

Another Phoenix ? Just curious

Nope it’s a generic one but nonetheless about 40yr old I guess

 

[Paul]

All the Taito cocktails are the same cab from what I understand mate @Paul and you just swap out the control panels for the relevant game. I'll do you a picture of the legs later on as they're currently separated from the rest of it

Thats great matey - thank you. Will be great to get some feet on it, and then over the summer i can work on getting it up and running again. Will watch another awesome @ronsplooter restore with eager anticipation

 

[ronsplooter]

@Paul here's a few pics of the legs, does that give you what you need? The height is obviously adjustable so these measurements are taken with them at their lowest position.

 

[ronsplooter]

Just a couple of pics as I start to put it back together:

 

[Paul]

@Paul here's a few pics of the legs, does that give you what you need? The height is obviously adjustable so these measurements are taken with them at their lowest position.

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Hiya mate - thats perfect - thank you

One last Q - Whats the measurements on the holes on the top of the stand please?? (thats if you havent put it all back together already!)

Thinking about either adapting a variable-height table or just having one engineered from scratch!

Thanks again

 

[ronsplooter]

@Paul hopefully the pic below gives you the hole spacing. It's from the perspective of looking down at the top of the leg

 

[ronsplooter]

Everything is back together apart from the two control panels as I'm waiting for some new buttons to be delivered. To make sure it was still working the same as before I stripped it down I used the bootleg board it came with to check the monitor and all looks good. Once I've rebuilt the two control panels I'll do some more testing with the board and then the final job is to make the adapter that will allow me to plug the 60 in 1 into the harness. Here's a few pics of how it currently sits:

 

[HomerRamone]

Looks like you installed something not quite right. Says Pliades not Phoenix
Maybe the main PCB is downside up or something.

 

[ronsplooter]

Control panels are back together, installed and looking good. The game had red buttons when I got it but I've swapped these out for white as I think it looks way better. I've tested everything is working with the bootleg board and it's all good so the game is operating exactly the same as before I took it to bits





The final job is to make the adapter that will allow me to connect the JAMMA 60 in 1 board to the existing wiring harness. First job was to confirm whether the existing harness was using the Phoenix or Pleiades pinout as they are slightly different, which seems a bit daft tbh. By checking which pins the +5V and +12V were output on in the cabinet I've been able to match it to the Phoenix pinout so looks like my bootleg board is using Phoenix even though it's a Pleiades (or really a Pliades ). I've bought a JAMMA extension harness and am working my way through labelling everything up as I desolder the wires from the finger board. I'll then cut down the finger board from the 48 pin JAMMA to the 36 pin needed for Phoenix before re-soldering the relevant wires back on in the right places.

 

[HomerRamone]

Thats the same desoldering deely as I bought

 

[ronsplooter]

I finished working on the frankenstein adapter and have been testing with it but I can't get a proper picture displayed on the monitor. The 60 in 1 is getting power and you can sometimes see it cycling through it's attract mode but it's always very distorted and no matter what I do with trying to dial in the monitor I can't get it working.

I know the monitor is good as the bootleg pcb displays fine and I know the 60 in 1 is good as I've had it running in my JAMMA converted Dino King so it's got to be something with the way I've wired up my adapter. I'm thinking it's related to the monitor sync but there's only 1 sync pin on the Phoenix adapter which I've connected to the vert sync so not really sure where to go with this now. I've read a bit about the difference between positive and negative sync so maybe the cab is the wrong type for the 60 in 1 but I have no idea how I'd change that....any arcade monitor experts on here, you're advice would be appreciated!







I have had some good news however as when I couldn't get the 60 in 1 working I decided to have a look at the bootleg Pleiades board and see if I could get the sound working on that. A replaced speaker and a tweaked volume pot later and we have sound

I'm going to keep the Pleiades board in it for now whilst I work out what to do about the 60 in 1 and I'm also on the hunt for a working, original Phoenix pcb so I've got the option to put it back to full original spec so if anyone has one that they'd be prepared to sell then give me a shout

 

[Drew.m]

Sounds weird but have you got another switch mode psu you can try (60in1) as its a pretty modern device. If not can you test it with a vga monitor while connected to the cocktail cab to see if you get the same issue ?

 

[HomerRamone]

Would you not be better using a small ff pc than running the 60 in one thing ? (or maybe a pi)
I know we got an arcade machine in the office with something like that in. and its a bit pants. lots of stuff not on there (and it had way more than 60 games - still many classics missing). doesnt save highscores. cant edit controls etc etc

 

[Drew.m]

Would you not be better using a small ff pc than running the 60 in one thing ? (or maybe a pi)
I know we got an arcade machine in the office with something like that in. and its a bit pants. lots of stuff not on there (and it had way more than 60 games - still many classics missing). doesnt save highscores. cant edit controls etc etc

Bit more work to do that, and you would need additional hardware to support the 15khz crt in the cabinet . I quite like the choice on the 60in1

 

[ronsplooter]

Sounds weird but have you got another switch mode psu you can try (60in1) as its a pretty modern device. If not can you test it with a vga monitor while connected to the cocktail cab to see if you get the same issue ?

I've tested the 60 in 1 in my JAMMA wired Dino King and can get a picture on that monitor no problem. I guess it could be power supply related but the readings at the connector looked good to me. I'm 99% sure it's something to do with my frankenstein adapter and/or the monitor sync.

Would you not be better using a small ff pc than running the 60 in one thing ? (or maybe a pi)
I know we got an arcade machine in the office with something like that in. and its a bit pants. lots of stuff not on there (and it had way more than 60 games - still many classics missing). doesnt save highscores. cant edit controls etc etc

I've already got another cab running a Pi with MAME, plus my Dino King running Pi2JAMMA which is basically emulating a Sega Megadrive so the aim wasn't to have everything available in the cocktail cabinet, just the classic shooters. Everything I want for this cab is on the 60 in 1 so all good from that perspective

Tbh I might park this for a while anyway as I've got a fully working, recapped, original Phoenix board on it's way so I'm going to put that in and run it fully original for a bit and re-visit the 60 in 1 idea at a later date.....got a load of pinball projects to get on with plus an Outrun 2 sit down on the way

 

[HomerRamone]

Bit more work to do that, and you would need additional hardware to support the 15khz crt in the cabinet . I quite like the choice on the 60in1

Could get a replacement CRT that will support a PC easily enough though ? (Or are they all unobtanium these days )
I know I half heartedly looked into trying to source a 15khz monitor for my Robotron but they seemed elusive or very expensive. Got a convertor that was meant to let you use 15khz on a regular monuitor but had no luck getting a picture. (Though I couldnt decide if my Robotron boards might just be dead )

The one in the office has several hundred IIRC. but off the top of my head was missing Pac Land. Couldn't play Robotron (even though it has 2 sticks) because you cant reassign controls per game. And no hiscores - was hoping for some friendly competition in the office.

I've tested the 60 in 1 in my JAMMA wired Dino King and can get a picture on that monitor no problem. I guess it could be power supply related but the readings at the connector looked good to me. I'm 99% sure it's something to do with my frankenstein adapter and/or the monitor sync.

I've already got another cab running a Pi with MAME, plus my Dino King running Pi2JAMMA which is basically emulating a Sega Megadrive so the aim wasn't to have everything available in the cocktail cabinet, just the classic shooters. Everything I want for this cab is on the 60 in 1 so all good from that perspective

Tbh I might park this for a while anyway as I've got a fully working, recapped, original Phoenix board on it's way so I'm going to put that in and run it fully original for a bit and re-visit the 60 in 1 idea at a later date.....got a load of pinball projects to get on with plus an Outrun 2 sit down on the way

Probably be nicer with an original Phoenix in guess - rather then "yet another multi machine game"