Super Chase / Hantarex Polo

A reasonably rare/overlooked game from Taito in 1992. This was completely dead when I got it – no lights, sounds, picture. The power supply was the first problem as it wasn’t able to supply +5V to the pcb. In fact I had to try 3 (used) power supplies until I found one that could give a consistent +5. This pcb draws a lot more current than a lot of older titles (probably as it uses a 68020 CPU and two sub 68000 cpus, plus a lot of graphics and sound ic’s that were cutting edge at the time) so some power supplies can’t keep up and voltage drops.

This made two LED’s on the light driver board illuminate, but still nothing else. The sound board is quite unusual in it expects +13V as well as +5V and +12V. Without the +13V line connected the sound amps don’t work at all – however putting 12V there made them work well enough that I could hear game sounds – so pcb confirmed as running! [I should mention that Super Chase isn't jamma - so I couldn't just test it in another cabinet].

The monitor remained completely dead – it’s a Hantarex Polo 25″ standard resolution. No signs on physical problems (cold solder joints, blown fuses, burnt areas, broken components). I hate working on high voltage stuff, so rather than debug anything I decided just to shotgun replace the flyback, all capacitors, and the HOT (horizontal output transistor). On a 23 year old monitor it’s a good bet the capacitors need replacing, and the flyback may have failed. Internet repair logs on this monitor suggest bad flybacks can kill the HOT, so as it’s only $5 may as well replace it too.

And it worked! It’s quite unusual for a cap kit to bring a dead monitor back to life, but the Polo has a built in power supply (no isolation transformer needed) so bad caps there were probably the primary reason for not turning on. Monitor looks good as new now.

A cool thing about Super Chase is the flashing lights – these are just 40W incandescent bulbs, but both were blown – replaced them, and replaced a blown fuse on the driver board and all was good there. The driver board is quite a simple thing – it takes two 5V lines from the game pcb as input, a 110V mains source, and outputs two 110V lines to the bulbs. You can see the board is designed for 4 lights, but only 2 channels are populated.

(Main marquee light still not fixed in picture below)