Here's some shots of my latest purchase, the crusty MatchUp that appeared on ebay a couple of months back. It turns out this had been acquired by the Centre For Computing History in Cambridge and was at a premises in nearby Haverhill just over the border in Suffolk. I don't have any other history but it does have a nice little aluminium tag in the cash box area from its operating days nearly 40yrs ago.
Had a bit of time in the last few days to start poking about ... the MPU doesn't appear to have seen much (if any) repair - all the solder joints look original from initial inspection. The original 5A and 3A 5x20mm glass fuses on the underside of the MPU to protect the 50v and 12v control circuits had been previously replaced with 6x32mm ceramic of the same rating and although not blown, also had several loops of fine fuse wire wrapped between holders so i've replaced with standard fuses. It has unusual switches, the custom type made specifically for Barcrest with which to play the game and a door switch i've not seen before in place of the usual Cherry (there is a pink wire with no terminal in this area and it looks like this and a white wire were originally fitted to a test switch which is no longer present and appears to have been ripped from the cabinet as the laminate is pulled away around a pair of holes). Noticed also the heat sink was not screwed to the 5v regulator on the reel assembly (just held in place with old tape) and at least one of the reel solenoids has been changed but otherwise it looks fairly unmessed with and having checked the wiring and fuse in the power plug and scrutinised the MPU for any obviously damaged components and not finding any, decided to power up and see what, if anything happened ... not a lot, just a couple of the lamps behind the gamble feature panel (illuminating the 10p coins) lit, but at least no smoke or blown fuses.
Inspecting the cart I found only 1x2716 EPROM and an empty socket next to it, along with a custom 24pin chip similar to those found in MPU2 carts, but with a different number and tracks going to different pins.
I've no previous experience of MPU1 and no spares so it promises to be interesting getting this one going.
Finding a steady 5v at the RAM I then got the probe hooked up to the pins kindly provided on the MPU and recorded what was happening at the CPU and pair of 6820 PIA.
Pin2 of the CPU reads a steady High so operation is being halted but both IC3 and IC6 are being enabled (continuous HL pulsing).
I then noticed a 50v test point pin but only got a reading of 17v and looking at the tracks, it appears to get a direct feed from the white power connector. Oddly when metering all the voltages coming from the transformer to MPU, the blue wire that feeds the 50v pin metered 9.8v? Some more checks needed there! (Orange 28.5v, Red 23.4v, Green 16.0v and Brown 8.7v).
No schematic or circuit diagrams so don't know what voltages the transformer should be delivering to the MPU (the slides, coin lock-outs and presumably reel solenoids all need 50v AC).
Could be a bit of a struggle this one but here's hoping it can be brought back to life - I really like the look and sound of the game, having seen dunc2007's MatchIt in operation via you-tube.
Here's a few random shots of bits and pieces - only part of the cabinet is laminated, the back door, shelves etc. are bare chipboard. It stands an inch or two low at present as what was left of the base disintegrated when moving/loading it. It's the widest but also the slimmest game i've seen measuring 28⅛ inches wide and around 16¼ deep, below glass.
