======================== The Sega/Gremlin X-Y FAQ version 1.6 written by: Mark Jenison ======================== 1. Introduction 2. The X-Y Convert-a-Game system a. The System 1. CPU boards 2. X-Y timing and control boards 3. Sound boards 4. EPROM boards b. Monitor: Electrohome G08 X-Y c. Power supply 3. Games a. Space Fury b. Star Trek c. Eliminator 1. Upright 2. Cocktail 3. 4-player d. Tac/Scan e. Zektor 4. Repair tips a. CPU b. EPROM c. X-Y boards d. General e. Power supply f. Monitor 5. Conversions a. Game-to-Game b. Related documents 6. Contributors 7. Document History *************** 1. Introduction *************** This document discusses the Sega/Gremlin X-Y Convert-a-Games system. These games were color X-Y games released in the early 1980's. The Convert-a-Game system was designed so an operator could convert from one game to another by simply changing artwork, control panels, game cages (and possibly the orientation of the monitor) without having to re-wire the cabinet. All of this could be done from the front of the cabinet. The following were included in the series of Sega color X-Y Convert-a-Games (listed in order of release): - Eliminator - Space Fury - Zektor - Tac/Scan - Star Trek ******************************************* 2. The Sega color X-Y Convert-a-Game System ******************************************* ========== The System ========== This is just a brief overview. The system is explained in much more detail in the Star Trek manual. Each Sega color X-Y Convert-a-Game system consisted of what is known as the G-80 system. It contains the following elements: * CPU board * Sound board(s) * X-Y timing and control boards * 48K EPROM board These boards are about the size of a piece of paper (approximately 8 1/2"x11") with one narrow end having a 86 (2x43) edge pins. All these boards fit into a card cage, with the individual boards plugging into a interconnect board at the bottom of the cage. The interconnect board allows the boards to be plugged into the slots in any order or position. This board is supplied with voltage from the power supply, and is how all boards are powered. It also acts as a bus to get information between cards. ---------- CPU boards ---------- The CPU board itself is generic between the X-Y games. However, each game had a special chip (protection chip/slapstick) at U21 and an EPROM at U25 that was specific for that game (the only exception here may be Space Fury and Eliminator). Some games have the same special chip as other games. These are a list of which special chips go with which games: Special chip (U21) EPROM (U25) Game --------------------------------------------------------------------- 315-0076 1390 Eliminator 4-player 1711 Tac/Scan 315-0064 969 Space Fury 1873 Star Trek 315-0063 959 Space Odyssey (version 1 & 2) (non X-Y) 315-0070 969 Eliminator 969 Eliminator cocktail 1802? 005 (non X-Y) 315-0062 829 Astro Blaster (non X-Y) 315-0082 1778 Monster Bash (non X-Y) 1611 Zektor If anyone sees any discrepancies, or can fill in some of the above data, please send e-mail to: jenison@cig.mot.com ----------------------------- X-Y timing and control boards ----------------------------- These boards, often referred to as the X-Y pair, are the boards that control the monitor. They are generic between all X-Y games. These boards are hooked together via ribbon cable. ------------ Sound boards ------------ There is some compatibility of sound boards between games. There may or may not be necessary EPROM swaps on some of these boards. Sound board Games used with --------------------------------------- Speech board Space Fury Star Trek Zektor Battle Star Space Fury Meatball/Eliminator Eliminator Eliminator 4-player Zektor Universal Tac/Scan Star Trek Meatball and Eliminator sound boards are the same; apparently Sega changed the name of this sound board during production of the game. According to schematics, the sound board for Zektor is the same as Eliminator's. However, during test mode, Zektor has four sounds which do not appear. I believe that the board for Zektor never got designed, so they used the sound board for Eliminator instead, but left the tests in for the other sounds. No sounds are noticably missing during game play, and the sounds that are present (thrust, fire, bounce, etc) do match the Eliminators sounds. Both Battlestar and Meatball/Eliminator sound boards both have a large socket on them. It is ok that they are unpopulated. I found a SOUND AY-3-8912 in a Battlestar sound board once, and it shows up on the schematic, but removing the chip seems to have no effect. Speech boards have very little circuitry on them, so don't get worried if you pickup a set and see that the speech board is barely populated. I have seen several speech board sets whose EPROM numbers are not continuous. For example, Space Fury's speech board has EPROMs 970-972, and 808. The 808 is a 2716, while the others are 2732s. I would speculate that the 808's were from Astro Blaster. However, these leftover EPROMS ARE NECESSARY for the speech boards to run correctly. Star Trek uses a Zektor EPROM for its speech board. ------------ EPROM boards ------------ The EPROM boards are generic between games; any set of Sega/Gremlin X-Y EPROMs can be put into any G-80 EPROM board. ============================ Monitor: Electrohome G08 X-Y ============================ The Sega X-Y Convert-a-Games came with the infamous Electrohome G08 X-Y monitor. This monitor is infamous for its unreliability, and are probably the main reason why these games were junked by operators so quickly. It is commonly joked about on the net that if you operate one of these monitors, you should also be the owner of a fire extinguisher (and keep it handy). ============ Power supply ============ The power supply that came with the Sega X-Y games provided an audio amp and the following necessary voltages: +5VDC, -5VDC, +12VDC (for sound), -12VDC (for video), and 3VAC. According to John Robertson, "the original use of the 3VAC was a valid power detect reset. If the power switch was quickly cycled on/off/on this would force a reset. [This] Was a way around the fast cycle reset free credits that some games gave." ******** 3. Games ******** The following list of games are known produced Sega Gremlin X-Y games. I have a flyer which promotes Sega X-Y Convert-a-Games that shows another X-Y game called Battle Star. It appears from the screen shots on the flyer that it is NOT a prototype game for Eliminator or Space Fury (the flyer shows a Space Fury being converted to a Battle Star). Even though Space Fury has a Battle star sound board, it is possible Battle Star itself was never released. Most games came in the common Sega Convert-a-cabinet, which was used as the cabinet for many of Sega's games (Congo Bongo, Zaxxon, etc). Any game where "dedicated" cabinet is mentioned means that it also came in a cabinet other than the Convert-a-cabinet. ========== Space Fury ========== Space Fury came in both upright and dedicated cocktail. Space Fury is somewhat similar in game play to Asteroids or Space Duel. Enemies objects fly onto the screen, "assembling" themselves into floating objects. The characteristic of the objects depend on how many of the pieces are allowed to assemble. Between waves, you are allowed to add an "attachment" on your ship, giving you additional fire power, possibly in additional directions. This game is probably most famous for it's one-eyed alien which taunts you throughout the game. "So, a creature for my amusement. Prepare for battle!" 1 - Speech board (EPROM 970-972, 808) 2 - CPU board (EPROM 969, special chip 315-0064) 3 - X-Y timing board 4 - X-Y control board 5 - Sound board "Battle star" 6 - EPROM board (EPROM numbers 960-968) Controls consisted of 6 buttons: left, right, thrust, fire, 1P, 2P. ========= Star Trek ========= Star Trek came in an upright Convert-a-cabinet, dedicated sit-down version, dedicated upright, and was also available as a Sega X-Y Convert-a-Game kit, as well as a kit for Asteroids cabinets. There is a switch setting for two sets of controls, so it may be possible to play out of a cocktail, but I've never seen one. The screen consists of 3 sections: 1) a display for score, available shields, photons, and warp time, 2) a radar view of your ship, surrounding enemies and star bases, and 3) a cockpit view from your ship; sort of like Battlezone in outer space. The object of the game is to defeat the enemies in the sector. There are star bases which you can dock with to get more shields, photons, and warp time. There are bonus rounds which you must survive where NOMAD places mines, and you must successfully navigate through the mine field them and attempt to destroy NOMAD. Of all games manuals, Star Trek's manual is probably the most helpful when it comes to explaining the Sega X-Y G-80 system. It also has a good deal of monitor information, and explains the theory of the G-80 system in detail. Of all the Sega X-Y manuals, try to get a copy of this one. 1 - CPU board (EPROM 1873, chip 315-0064) 2 - X-Y timing board 3 - X-Y control board 4 - Sound board "Universal" 5 - Speech board (EPROM 1871-1872, 1607) 6 - EPROM board (EPROM numbers 1848-1870) Controls consisted of an encoder wheel, thrust, fire, photon, warp, 1P, and 2P (unless it was a sitdown). ========== Eliminator ========== There are three different forms of Eliminator, but the premise is the same: There is a large spherical rock known as the Eliminator. It floats around the screen and sends out ships to destroy you. You attempt to destroy enemy ships by forcing them into the Eliminator with your energy bolts. The Eliminator can only be destroyed by firing a shot down a narrow tunnel to its core. I believe the Eliminator was coined as "The Death Bagel" by John Grigsby. Although the games between the three different types are the same, different versions, thus different EPROMs, were necessary to handle the displaying of scores for each of the different cabinets. The attract modes for each game stayed the same as the upright version, which is kind of odd for the 4-player version since the attract mode implies only two players. ------- Upright ------- Eliminator upright came in the standard Convert-a-cabinet. The Eliminator upright board configuration is described here. It consists of: 1 - CPU board (EPROM 969, chip 315-0070) 2 - X-Y timing board 3 - X-Y control board 4 - Sound board "Meatball" or "Eliminator" 5 - EPROM board (EPROM numbers 1333-1345) Controls consisted of 10 buttons: left1, right1, thrust1, fire1, left2, right2, thrust2, fire2, 1P, 2P -------- Cocktail -------- The Eliminator cocktail is very different in hardware than it's upright or 4-player counterpart. For starters, the game has a different power supply configuration. It has what appears to be a basic switching power supply, a transformer, and a small board which looks to rectify some of the voltages and/or support audio amplification. Also, it uses a 19" monitor, but the chassis is different than the standard G08 chassis so that it could fit in the cocktail. The weird thing is that it had adjustment knobs at the BOTTOM of the chassis (so you could reach them) that looked similar to the screen and focus knobs seen on the average Electrohome G07 monitor. The Eliminator cocktail board configuration is described here. It consists of: 1 - CPU board (EPROM 969, chip 315-0070) 2 - X-Y timing board 3 - X-Y control board 4 - Sound board "Meatball" or "Eliminator" 5 - EPROM board (EPROM numbers 1200-1212) Two control panels containing left, right, thrust, fire, with the 1P, 2P buttons on the cabinet. -------- 4-player -------- The four player version of Eliminator is a tall table top game where you stand at each side of the monitor at a player control panel. It was not really a Convert-a-Game per se, since no other games could be played out of its cabinet and the game couldn't be played out of any other Sega/Gremlin cabinet (without some serious hacking). The four player consists of basically the same set up of the regular upright except that it has an external I/O board to handle all the additional coin and control inputs. 1 - CPU board (EPROM 1390, chip 315-0076) 2 - X-Y timing board 3 - X-Y control board 4 - Sound board "Meatball" or "Eliminator" 5 - EPROM board (EPROM numbers 1347-1360) Controls consisted of 4 control panels, each with: left, right, thrust, fire No player start buttons were needed. There was a coin door for each side of the cabinet under each player's controls. The coin mechs have lockout coils, so as soon as a player put a coin in, the coin door would lock out attempts to coin up that side again, and the player would use that side. A countdown from 10 would begin, and other players could coin in before it reached 0. Once it reached zero, players could not join, and any remaining attempts to coin in would be locked out. The players then try to "eliminate" each other. The last remaining player must then face the Eliminator (and its drones) alone. It's strange that I've never seen a flyer for a the upright or cocktail version; only the 4-player. ======== Tac/Scan ======== Tac/Scan was a kit for the Convert-a-cabinet, and also came in a cocktail according to the flyer. You pilot a fleet of seven ships whom all move and fire in unison. First scenario: Shoot down enemies while you pilot your fleet through waves of descending enemies. The game play for this scenario is unique; your ships are at the bottom of the screen, firing up, but you can rotate the ships to fire left and right, and pilot your fleet past enemies. The formation of your ships also changes. Additional ships appear occasionally which you can catch and add to your fleet. Second scenario: Basically the same thing, except in a 3-D perspective from behind your fleet. Sort of like Blaster or Gyruss. Additional ships are also awarded here. Third scenario: Pilot your fleet down a warp tunnel. Avoid hitting the sides or you will lose ships. 1 - CPU board (EPROM 1711, chip 315-0076) 2 - X-Y timing board 3 - X-Y control board 4 - Sound board "Universal" 5 - EPROM board; (EPROM numbers 1670-1688, 1709-1710) Controls consisted of: encoder wheel, fire, add ship, 1P, 2P. ====== Zektor ====== This was the rarest of the Sega XY games, until it was rediscoved discovered by Paul Frazee (crzyfrze@swbell.net) and purchased by me in an auction for $400! Thanks to contributors who helped me pay for this! ;-) The game board consists of: 1 - CPU board (EPROM 1611, chip 315-0082) 2 - X-Y timing board 3 - X-Y control board 4 - Meatball sound board 5 - Speech board (EPROM numbers 1607-1610) 6 - EPROM board; (EPROM numbers 1586-1606) Controls consisted of: encoder wheel, 1P, 2P, thrust, fire "Dangerous Dann" Frank contributed this description of Zektor, taken from the manual, flyer, and his personal experience with the game. ------------- Object: To "recapture Eight cosmic cities that have been seized by an evil cadre of alien Robots." Each city is named in an Alphabetical progression (and increasing difficulty) in this order... Ascella Baitos Centaurus Denebala Eridonus Faltar Graffas ...??? Each city's liberation begins with a different "Robot" image and voice confronting the player... The robot ruling "Faltar" was a male with a deep voice stating "I rule Faltar now, you will have to fight for it". There are also female robots such as the one who declares "I have conquered Eridonus. You will not take it from me" To liberate each city, the player must defeat three 'waves' of enemy FIGHTERS' and ROBOPROBES that are often 'shielded' (in red) and who fire lethal zig-zag shaped 'Zizzers' at the player's ship. Also there are three types of MOBOIDS, and their features are as follows... Green Moboids... 'Spin' player's ship on contact and 'bounce' enemy ships Blue Moboids... 'Bounce' all ships Red Moboids... Destroy all 'unshielded' ships (including Player's ship) After defeating the three waves of attack, the alien Robot holding the city appears within three concentric rings (a la "Star Castle") through which a 'Slot shot' can be scored 'neutralizing' the Robot and earning the player a Bonus ship. If you don't make the shot after a period of time, you still advance to the next level, but don't get a bonus ship. Enemies who are shielded must be hit several times to weaken the shields before they are destroyed. The last boss is the alien from Space Fury. ************** 4. Repair Tips ************** So you have a set of what you believe to be a complete Sega/Gremlin X-Y game. You have your working monitor and a good power supply. You power up the game, hoping to see the games attract mode come up on the screen, but instead you get a garble mess of graphics, a still picture, or no picture at all. Welcome to the wonderful world of Sega/Gremlin X-Y games. Well, don't fret. These marvels of technology were designed to be modular so that they could be debugged easily. It helps to have a known *working* set to swap parts around to figure it where the problem lies, but if you aren't so fortunate, here's some debugging advice. ========== CPU boards ========== The led on a good CPU board will flash out information that can be used to debug other problems; check the manual for these codes. If the game isn't coming up, press the test plunger. If you get a halt light, try replacing the 2114 RAMs and replacing the Z80 CPU and see if that fixes it. If the halt light flashes repeatedly, the first 1k of EPROMs is either bad or making a bad connection. By the way, bad sound boards and speech boards can cause symptoms that might make you suspect the CPU or X-Y boards are bad. Do not test CPU and X-Y boards with untested sound and speech boards. You don't need these boards in the card cage for the game to run, so unplug them and set them aside until you've tested the rest of the boards. ============ EPROM boards ============ First things first; reseat each EPROM on the EPROM board and check all pins are getting a good connection. It doesn't help to try and debug a program that cannot run. I've seen many different versions of sockets used on these EPROM boards, and in most cases if the EPROM board doesn't seem to be working, it's because of the sockets. There are three or four devices on the board itself, so replacing them all wouldn't be a problem if it came down to that. ========== X-Y boards ========== Listen carefully to your monitor when you are working with these boards. If you power up and you here the deflection circuitry working (what is known as "deflection chatter"), then it's likely the control board is bad, and your timing board is probably ok. If you hear nothing, it could be either board. Press the test plunger on the CPU and it should flash out the location of any bad 2114 RAMs on the timing board. Keep doing this until all bad 2114 RAMs have been located and replaced. B.G. Micro, Inc (1-800-276-2206) is a cheap source of 2114 RAM chips. ============ General tips ============ Double check your connections; these games have a bunch of connectors that are not keyed, so it is easy to put one on backwards by mistake (making it especially easy to fry sound boards). On sound boards, the ground (shield) is the bottom pin, and the upper pin is the sound. Each game has a sound test. This test can be deceiving. The loss of sound(s) does not necessarily mean the sound board is bad. A bad CPU board, bad speech board, bad amplifier, or screwing up the connectors will also cause a loss of sounds. Sound problems are the least simple to debug. A common problem with these boards is that most sounds will work, but some will be missing. The Star Trek manual mentions the exact circuits to look at for it's sounds, which is nice if you have a bad Universal sound board. For the Space Fury sound board, usually a sound failure is due to 4.7uf capacitor in the sound's circuit going bad. Replace these first. If that's not it, have a few spare 4011 and TL082 op-amps handy. The same with the Eliminator sound board. Maybe your set works, but is missing speech. Fortunately, this board has a lot of socketed devices (this board always appears to be missing a lot of devices, but it's not). David Shuman suggests: "...try replacing the socketed TL082 op-amp on the speech board. This swap brought back the speech on one of my Space Fury sets. The other problem chip is the 8035 CPU-- this is another part that, when it dies, knocks out the speech. Both the TL082 and 8035 are available cheap from B.G. Micro.". Speech boards can be nasty, as bad ones can create symptoms like multiplier errors and no sound at all, which might make you think the sound board is bad. The self test is useful, but not flawless, however. All self tests may pass, but you could STILL have a screwed up game. The only thing I could suggest is the EPROMs, since the self test only tests a certain portion of the EPROMs, not all EPROM data. I have an Eliminator 4-player that originally passed the EPROM test, but the player 2 and 4 ships were still screwed up. The problem turned out to be a corroded socket where an EPROM was not making a good connection. ============ Power supply ============ Sega/Gremlin power supplies are not the most reliable. If you have a dead one, you have a few choices: you can repair it, or replace it. In most cases repairing these power supplies is straight forward. If you open it up, you'll see there's really not much to it. The voltage regulators are all mounted and can be easily replaced. If you decide to modernize your game and put in a switching power supply, there are a few things to consider: 1) The Sega/Gremlin power supply has a built in audio amplifier. You'll need to provide your own if you replace it. I've had good luck with using the Bally Midway Dual audio amps as a replacement, but any audio amp should do. 2) You'll need a 3VAC supply for the power-on reset. I've heard that using +5VDC as a substitution may work, but your milliage may vary. 3) You'll need +5VDC, -5VDC, +12VDC, and -12VDC. John Robertson says you may be able to get by with substituting -5VDC for the -12VDC for the video, but you'll need to adjust your picture. Or if you wish, you can use a switching power to supply the more common voltages and keep the old power supply in there and use it for the things that may still work (audio amp, 3VAC, -12VDC). Just make sure if you do this to make the grounds common between the two power supplies. ======= Monitor ======= Instead of making this section as huge as it could be (or should be), I'm going to try and make it brief and just describe where the problem likely lies. The following tips are assuming the power supply and game boards are known good. Symptoms: No deflection Check header board and deflection board. Check deflection transistors. >From David Shuman - "The original parts on the G08-003 are 2N6259's, which don't seem to exist anymore. I asked around on sci.electronics and people recommended the following substitutes: ECG388, 2N5631, MJ15003, SK3947. I haven't tried any of these swaps, so do so at your own risk. I'm told that the ECG and SK parts won't perform as well under heavy stress (like in a G08), so you might want to try the other two... I know MCM Electronics carries the MJ15003 (which, incidentally, was the part used in the original G08-001)." Symptoms: No heater glow The HV is gone. Check the HV unit. The heater filament runs off a winding on the HV transformer, so if there's no glow, it's a good bet there's no 22.5kV either. The pinouts for the HV unit: 1 - Y 2 - X 3 - -9.1VDC 4 - +9.1VDC 5 - GND 6 - GND (heater) 7 - +6.3VAC (heater) 8 - +126VDC 9 - NC 10 - VG2 (variable gain; part of brightness circuitry) Be careful not to short the pins together when measuring voltages! Let me just say this; in general, the entire system set up (monitor, power supply, board sets) is flakey. The monitor has been redesigned several times, the power supply has surface wire hacks and cut traces, and the board sets aren't very reliable. If you get a working set up and running, hold onto it like gold, but prepare parts in advance for any problems that may transpire. Good luck! ************** 5. Conversions ************** ============ Game-to-Game ============ So you have a Sega/Gremlin X-Y game, and have been looking to add to your collection of Sega/Gremlin X-Y games. However, these games in general are hard to come by, and if you *do* find another, it is likely it won't be working. Well, if you can gather just a FEW pieces, you may be able to convert your game "X" to game "Y". In order to convert game "X" to game "Y", the *minimum* you would need would be: 1) Game "X"; a working game "X" would be best, but it's possible that the parts you swap in for "Y" will get you a working set. 2) The audio board for the game. Space Fury, Star Trek and Zektor would need the additional speech board as well. 3) A copy of game "Y"'s EPROMs. This includes the CPU EPROM U25 for game "Y", and maybe speech board EPROMS as well. 4) The special protection chip at location U21 for game "Y". This will be the hardest to come by. If you are lucky, your game "X" will already have this. 5) Controls. Star Trek control panel could run Tac/Scan, Eliminator (2 player) can run Space Fury, etc. For example: To add Space Fury to your Star Trek (assuming it's in a Sega Convert-a-cabinet), you'd need the EPROM data, Battle Star sound board, and a spare control panel; a control panel from just about any Convert-a-Game (Zaxxon, Congo Bongo, Eliminator) will do. Swap EPROMs on the EPROM board, speech board and CPU board, swap in the sound board and swap control panels (assuming you've modified it for Space Fury) and your done! Probably a lot of the EPROM swapping could even be avoided if someone figured out how to strap the game for a larger EPROM, and use some banking tricks so that you'd only need to swap sound boards and control panels. Rick Schieve wrote up an article talking about how he added 4-player Eliminator to his Tac/Scan set up: http://ubd3.vdospk.com/nostalgia/text/elim.txt ================= Related Documents ================= 1. Wells Garner to Sega X-Y hack -- David Shuman http://wiretap.spies.com/ftp.items/game_archive/info/segatoatarconv 2. The Sega Vector Game Page -- Ian Boffin http://magenta.com/havoc/sega/vector/html/segaxy.html *************** 6. Contributors *************** Mark Jenison David Shuman Rick Schieve Kevin Klopp John Grigsby Dangerous Dann Kerry Stillinger Dwaine Hurta Zonn Moore William La Covara John Robertson Ian Boffin Paul Tonizzo Al Kossow Clay Cowgill ******************* 7. Document History ******************* Version 1.0: Initial Release Version 1.1: Added information about Zektor Version 1.2: Added more to Sound board section Added information about Battlestar Version 1.3: Added more speech board information Version 1.4: Added Eliminator cocktail information Version 1.5: More added to repair section Version 1.6: Zektor section updated