From: dover@ll.mit.edu (David Humphrey) Newsgroups: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting Subject: Finally DL is done, here is some info Date: 8 Jun 1995 16:16:23 GMT Well, I finally have a Dragon's Lair running up to the point where I am confident that I can successfully complete the game. Thanks to "Blind Guy" Chris, Jim Rogers, and yes, even John Pierce at CPDIST, for all of the input on how to jumper the boards, make the cables and dissect the LDV1000 player (forgot... thanks to the Pioneer Industrial division support line!) Now, for those attempting to do the same; build a DL out of spare parts, I want to provide some info on it; first off, the connector from the CPU to the LDV1000 player. The connector from the DL CPU to the disk player is composed of a ribbon cable, a 24-pin DIP ribbon connector, and a 24-pin Centronics ribbon connector. The #1 wire of the ribbon cable may go to the #1 pin of the centronics connector, but then must connect to the #12 pin on the 24- pin DIP connector. Yes, surprise me, but the cable is reversed. LDV1000 connection DL M/B connection (Pioneer manual description DL manual schematics) DIO1 1 12 D0 DIO2 2 11 D1 DIO3 3 10 D2 DIO4 4 9 D3 5 8 6 7 Ready Command Strobe 7 6 Ready (tied together) 8 5 Gnd 9 4 1 3 Status Strobe 11 2 Enter Gnd 12 1 Gnd DIO5 13 13 D4 DIO6 14 14 D5 DIO7 15 15 D6 DIO8 16 16 D7 Enter Signal 17 17 Int/Ext Gnd 18 18 Gnd 19 19 Gnd 20 20 Gnd 21 21 Gnd 22 22 Gnd 23 23 Gnd 24 24 Gnd Blind Guy writes: "Anyway, with a disc in the player and the lid closed, power up the game and the player. You should immediately hear 1 short beep, then after 15 seconds you should hear another short beep. Right at the second beep is when the player is initialized and sent the play command. You should hear the disc start to spin up to speed (1800 RPM!) after which the laser carriage will move to start playing the disc from the begining. 15 seconds after the second beep will be a 3-tone beep at which time the attract sequence starts to play (now the game is fully initialized and ready for play). Listen closely to the player when it is initialized. If the disc spindal cannot spin or does not spin up to speed fast enough, the player shuts down. Also, if the carriage cannot move or cannot "find" the begining of the disc, the player shuts down and the spindal stops. These players are really quite reliable once they are properly cleaned and maintained. Out of seven LDV1000's that I had, only two of them could not be made to work because of corrosion from water on the PCB's. The player's EPROM revision sould be "1001". The LDV1001 player came out after the LDV1000 and is identical, but has a faster seek time (a benefit for games like Dragon's Lair). Now onto the DL main board itself. These boards are really bullet proof. Although I have seen several J1 sockets that were loose or bad causing erratic laserdisc control. The "W1" jumper on the board must be OPEN to use the LDV1000 player. Here are the dip switch setting that I use: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 SW2(A) (1=on) 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 (0=off) 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 SW1(B) 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0" After the CPU is powered on, the display board will show some code such as 15EE in the player 2 display, and finally settle into operation where the credits display just shows two zeros (00). About 5 sec.s after this, is when the LDV1000 is initialized to power up. The disk will spin up, and try to seek, as Chris describes above. The EPROM in the LDV1000 had a label on it, something like: Z03-1001-GYW-V2.0, so if YOU are ever in doubt about whether you have the right control board CPU you can cross-check this. The last hint at operation was from Jim Calore of the Star Tech Journal, he writes: "The LDV1000 player's most likely failure during the earning life of Dragon's Lair was the optics. The players needed frequent attention. Cleaning the mirrors and lenses got some of 'em working. But, beyond the simple cleaning maintenance, mirror and optic alignments were necessay. Not particularly hard to do, but it required a jig (test shops have 'em)... without the test jig for alignment, it's impossible. For older (age of actual running time) players, the laser diode itself simply became too weak to operate properly..." So after this input, you should all have an idea of whether you have an LDV1000 that can work or not! As far as the CPU goes, there are umpteen jumpers to add to the older rev. boards that came out for the PR7820 that WILL modify it enough to work with the LDV1000, (as well as modify the sound circuit). I cannot even BEGIN to go into them as they are much too detailed, suffice it to say, that with any style Starcom CPU and the rev. "F" DL code (four EPROMs instead of five), you can get it to work with an LDV1000 player. When I get my manual from Jim, I will be able to pass on a copy of the jumpers to those of you who need the info. To use a regular video monitor, you will need the NTSC decoder board for the video output from the player. With a regular TV, this should not be necessary, so consider it optional, it has no input from the CPU board at all. As far as the digital display from the CPU, this too is optional, as long as you don't care to know about status output, player score, and credits left. It would be nice to have one, and the I/F cable between the CPU and the Status Display card is only a straight through ribbon cable between two identical 16-pin dual-row ribbon connectors. No inverting, no tricks.... Lastly, the power connector to the CPU. A big hassle to find, but straight forward enough, if you can secure the proper power supply to give you the +5, and +25 volts. Now this too is optional; the +25 volts, that is; it is only used for the sound amplification circuit. Before I describe the pinouts, I might suggest that if you use your television for the NTSC output for video, you might also use it for the sound amplification by plugging the audio output from the LDV player to the TV and using the volume control there. According to the schematics, you may be loosing some beeps generated by the CPU, but, I assume these would be minimal (THIS IS JUST A GUESS). The power connector has pinouts like: 1 joystick right 2 player 1 button 3 +5 4 +5 5 joystick left 6 player 2 7 Gnd 8 Gnd 9 joystick down 10 coin 1 11 Gnd 12 Gnd 13 joystick up 14 coin 2 15 Gnd 16 left sound in 17 aux 3 (unused in DL) 18 (unused) 19 Gnd 20 left speaker out 21 aux 2 (unused in DL) 22 aux 5 (unused in DL) 23 Gnd 24 right sound in 25 aux 1 (unused in DL) 26 aux 4 (unused in DL) 27 Gnd 28 right speaker out 29 joystick action 30 +25v 31 Gnd 32 Gnd 33 coin counter out 34 +25v 35 Gnd 36 Gnd I could have the speaker designations reversed (left to right), but that's about all I can add. Good luck guys. Ace -- ........................................................................... . `now listen "mother", we are the Pros from Dover... so get me a nurse who . can work up close without getting her teats in my way and send out for some . breakfast. Eggs are OK, steak would be even better...' ...........................................................................