Here's a game I never thought I would ever own. After completing my Centipede project, I figured that my collection was about done, with the exception of a pinball I plan to add eventually. Then I found this great Taito Zoo Keeper at a decent price. Now you need to know that MOST Zoo Keeper machines arrive dead. If they weren't dead, no one would sell them. It is a great game that is totally addictive.
Opening it up found that someone had attempted to wire in a switching power supply, but got a few things wrong. First the power supply did not put out -12V so they ran +12V to it. Second, they needed a reset line so they left the original power supply in to tell the CPU that the power was good even though the power was coming from somewhere else. The boards were all there, but when power was applied, the machine blinked a code that the Data/sound board (the bottom board in the last picture) was bad. It looked OK and had the word "GOOD" written on it. I took all of the boards out.
I drove down to my friend Steve's house and plugged the boards into his working Zoo Keeper. Same error, but the VIDEO board was working - a major hurdle in the process. The same error about the data/sound was displayed. Steve's data/sound had LESS components and some jumper wires on it as well. I tried adding the jumper wires, but it still didn't help.
I got on the IRC chat channel and learned that Tim at Arcade Collecting knew a bit about the machines and I inquired about the Data/Sound. He told me that the board I had was the wrong one and that he thought that he had one that would work. Cool. He hooked me up with a board missing one component which I could transplant from my board.
It arrived a few days later and I drove back to Steve's house for another test. I moved the component over and WOW! what volume. It was great. So I KNEW that I had good boards at this point (although we never tested the ROM boards) and that it should work after I re-wired a new power supply into the game. Tim also had a page on wiring in a PC Power supply into Zoo Keeper.
Steve and I went out and bought a PC power supply for the Zoo Keeper and I went home to install it. After a few hours of splicing wires, putting terminal ends on them and splicing them into the wiring harness, I was ready to try it. As is traditional, I pushed the button and hoped for the best. Nothing. So I pressed the test button and... Nothing. Weird. So I looked at all of the cables (There is a lot of them and they all have the same connector). The previous owner had marked where they all went and they were connected properly. Still nothing. Meter test of the power showed things were OK. Now what? Bedtime for my Daughter so I read her a story. After the story, I thought... "Hmmm, I'm trusting the people who marked the cables that they marked them properly, but these were the same people who had connected -12V wire to the +12V side. A check in the manual gave me the idea to remove them all and start from scratch. It's not the easiest read, but I figured that some of the wires seemed to be wrong. Following the diagrams I rewired it again. Turned it on and still nothing, but what I didn't know was that it was a success. I turned it off, then on again and it reset and I heard MUSIC! Loud too! Going around to the front there was the game playing. I hit the coin button and it played. Way cool!
This was a good time to start cleaning up the cabinet. I scrubbed the Control Panel and cleaned all the glass. It really didn't need much work.
When I turned off the game, the settings would go away and I would loose them. This was due to the fact that the battery had been removed from the game to prevent it from going bad and leaking acid all over and ruining the board. While on the chat channel again, Mark Spaeth (Who had helped with the Centipede project), told me that he had a battery backed RAM that would replace the settings RAM and keep itself charged., It arrived within days and I put it in with his help. Awesome! No more missing settings and a ton of old elecronics bypassed and modernized (Close-up below).
All that was left was to clean up my work and get the wiring right. I got some large plastic wire ties that I stapled in to hold the power supply. Next was to rewire a few things. I had a problem with the fuse for the monitor so I put in a fuse holder. I also rewired the serviceman's outlet so it would would work with the switch and provide power to the power supply.
I still have some cabinet work to do to it, but it is an exceptional game all the way around.
In September of 2003, my friends Jon and Brian from Florida had a field day at beating the high score formerly held by my friend Steve. Nothing like a little friendly competition! I'm just surprised I even had a score left on the thing! Even more to my surprise was when my other friend from Florida, Jason (AKA JWC) beat them all in October of 2003. Florida is representin' on ZK!
All Contents Copyright Al Warner
Created: April 22, 2001
Updated: October 13, 2003