Chesster Phantom 6126 or 6124 question

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Stray Black Cat
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Joined: Sat May 10, 2014 8:19 pm
Location: Florida

Chesster Phantom 6126 or 6124 question

Post by Stray Black Cat »

The manuals state that when the automatic clear or re-setup are taking place, [NO/STOP] can be pushed to allow the task to be manually done more quickly. This seems to be disabled on my machine. I thought I used it years ago, but I'm not sure of that. Stop works as specified on all other listed functions. The Stop will not work during castling or takeback until the whole move is completed as specified in the manual. Has anyone had the stop functional on clear or re-setup on a Chesster enhanced unit?
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Stray Black Cat
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Posts: 14
Joined: Sat May 10, 2014 8:19 pm
Location: Florida

Post by Stray Black Cat »

On moving Chesster Phantom, I had a lockup. Obviously, I still have a loose connection, most likely the power feed itself. Will track this weekend. On going over the boards and component pictures, I am surprised that any units still work. 9VAC input with no ground, Half wave rectifiers pulling a pulsed(phased) +6v, -6v, +5v, and a floating common(s?). These are smoothed by the 5 large capacitors. If anything were to fail, voltages would be all over the place. Installed caps are rated for 2000 hours and pretty low end in quality. I will be replacing with 5000 hr high end Caps from Digikey. Board is double sided so I should be able to backlight and follow underchip traces. All the half wave clipping will require my scope to find voltage/timing relationships for a working diagnostic schematic. So far, the motor control is the most interesting. Fidelity followed Milton Bradleys Big Track design for its motor control, even using the same type transistors. Unfortunately, the Chesster board does not look promising as too many chips have no data and one may be custom. Hopefully I can load the 6100 board data into SPICE to get a quality schematic for future repair work on the 6100s. This board handles all the movement anyway.
On a side note. I played the 6124 level A1 and Easy Mode against Excalibur's King Arthur. The play strength evened at just under level 40 for King Arthur. It indicates Phantoms A1 with easy mode to be playing at strength 950. A1 with easy mode off was 1650. Originally I thought A1 was easy mode. Easy mode prevents phantoms from thinking on your turn. Now I don't feel so bad about being clobbered every time. I have a long way to go just for 950. :D
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