Asteroids <-> Asteroids Deluxe Conversion:

Credits and Copyright:

COPYRIGHT © 1993, 1996
AUTHOR: Doug Jefferys
ORIGINALLY CREATED: April 13, 1993
HTML CONVERSION: May 31, 1996
LAST UPDATED: June 12, 1996 (added .JPG of finished product)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Credit to Rick Schieve and Steve Ozdemir for letting me use their "Gravitar to Tempest Conversion" document as a template for the original ASCII version.

Standard Disclaimer:

The author hereby grants permission to reproduce and distribute this document for personal use, subject to the condition that the document (along with any copyright and disclaimer notices) is not modified in any way. The opinions expressed within this document are those of the author only and not necessarily those of the author's employer. This document is provided for informational purposes only. Although the author has made every effort to provide accurate information, he cannot guarantee the accuracy or usefulness of any of the information contained herein due to the complexity of the issues involved. The author takes no responsibility for anything arising as a result of anyone using the information provided in this document, and the reader hereby absolves the author of any and all liability arising from any activities resulting from the use of any information contained herein.

General Overview:

The information in this file can be used for either converting from Asteroids to Asteroids Deluxe, or from Asteroids Deluxe to Asteroids. For the sake of this discussion, we shall limit ourselves to converting from Asteroids to Asteroids Deluxe.

Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe happen to have almost identical wiring harnesses. For testing purposes, either board may be used in either harness; the game will power up correctly and you'll be able to use the self-test switch to test the board.

Playing the game, however, will be difficult. You will find that the left and right rotation buttons are reversed, and that pressing start will add credits to the machine, and putting coins in will start your game. If you're dealing with a cocktail (sit-down) unit, you may also find that the display is upside down and/or backwards for one (or both) players.

The hard way to solve the problem is to find an Asteroids Deluxe machine, take it home, rip out its wiring harness, and spend a long time playing around with connectors every time you switch games.

The easy way to solve the problem is to make an adaptor -- something you can glom onto the end of your Asteroids Deluxe board to let you play it in your Asteroids cabinet.

Plug the adaptor between the board and the harness as follows:

ASTEROIDS               ASTEROIDS
   DELUXE -> Adaptor -> WIRING
    BOARD               HARNESS

The "adaptor" is nothing more than two female 44-pin edge connectors wired together with some pins crossed, and a "male-male PCB". The pins to cross are as follows:

Deluxe Asteroids
N 12
12 N
P 13
13 P
S 15
15 S

Deluxe	Asteroids
N	12
12	N
P	13
13	P
S	15
15	S

As with the Gravitar/Tempest conversion, the "male-male PCB" is merely a piece of PCB with straight traces on both sides. It is used as a "gender bender" to allow you to attach the (female) edge connector of the old wiring harness to the (also-female) edge connector of your adaptor.

I haven't tried going the "other way" (turning an Asteroids Deluxe cabinet into an Asteroids machine), but the information provided here should be more than enough to tell you what you need to know.

Ingredients:

One Asteroids machine (avec board).
One Asteroids Deluxe board (sans cabinet).
Two 44-pin female edge connectors.
One male-male PCB as described above.

Detailed Information:

A 44-pin edge connector has 22 pins on each side. The "parts side" is labeled with letters, and the "solder side" is labeled with numbers. Some letters (e.g. O, Q, I) are not used, as they could easily be confused with numbers.

"---" denotes a straight-through connection between the two connectors.
"***" denotes a place where you'll have to switch wires.


                      ASTEROIDS  |   |  ASTEROIDS 
                   DELUXE BOARD  |   |  HARNESS

               -------------------
               |                 |
	       |             P20 |     J20
               |            -----|   |-----
               |        GND |  A |---|  A | GND
               |        +5V |  B |---|  B | +5V
               |            |  C |---|  C |
               | COIN CTR-L |  D |---|  D | COIN CTR-L
               |    AUDIO 2 |  E |---|  E | AUDIO 2
               | COIN CTR-R |  F |---|  F | COIN CTR-R
               |            |  H |---|  H |
               |    PLAYER1 |  J |---|  J | PLAYER1
               |  DIAG STEP |  K |---|  K | DIAG STEP
               |  SELF TEST |  L |---|  L | SELF TEST
               |      Z OUT |  M |---|  M | Z OUT
               |     COIN C |  N |***|  N | START1
               |     COIN L |  P |***|  P | START2
               |     COIN R |  R |---|  R | COIN R
               |  ROT RIGHT |  S |***|  S | ROT LEFT
               |       FIRE |  T |---|  T | FIRE
               |      X GND |  U |---|  U | X GND
               |      Y GND |  V |---|  V | Y GND
               |      RESET |  W |---|  W | RESET
               |     36 VAC |  X |---|  X | 36 VAC
               |        +5V |  Y |---|  Y | +5V
               |        GND |  Z |---|  Z | GND
               |            |    |   |    |
               |        GND |  1 |---|  1 | GND
               |        +5V |  2 |---|  2 | +5V
               |            |  3 |---|  3 |
               | COIN CTR-C |  4 |---|  4 | COIN CTR-C
               |    AUDIO 1 |  5 |---|  5 | AUDIO 1
               |  START2LED |  6 |---|  6 | START2LED
               |    PLAYER2 |  7 |---|  7 | PLAYER2
               |  START1LED |  8 |---|  8 | START1LED
               |       SLAM |  9 |---|  9 | SLAM
               |     SHIELD | 10 |---| 10 | HYPER
               |      Z GND | 11 |---| 11 | Z GND
               |     START1 | 12 |***| 12 | COIN C
               |     START2 | 13 |***| 13 | COIN L
               |     THRUST | 14 |---| 14 | THRUST
               |   ROT LEFT | 15 |***| 15 | ROT RIGHT
               |      INV Y | 16 |---| 16 |
               |      X OUT | 17 |---| 17 | X OUT
               |      Y OUT | 18 |---| 18 | Y OUT
               |      INV X | 19 |---| 19 | INV X
               |     36 VAC | 20 |---| 20 | 36 VAC
               |     +SENSE | 21 |---| 21 | +SENSE
               |     -SENSE | 22 |---| 22 | -SENSE
               |            -----|   |-----
               |                 | 
               -------------------

Troubleshooting:

Visual Check:

As the swapped pins (N, 12), (P, 13), and (S, 15) are all vertically above one another, you should have something approximating a "cage" of wire between the pins, with the exception of three sets of "bars" which cross to the "other side" of the cage.
The finished product should look something like this:

Safety Check:

Check EVERYTHING for shorts, etc... before plugging it in. Go over it and look for little bits of solder that went to the wrong place, strands of wire, anything that could cause trouble. If you've got a multimeter with a continuity checker, use it. The five minutes you spend now may just save your machine later.
Solder is brittle and can crack easily. If you've soldered wires directly onto the edge connectors (as opposed to using a crimp tool and inserting pins into an empty connector), be careful when installing your adaptor, and try not to wiggle things around too much.
When switching between games, power off your machine and let it sit for AT LEAST 30 seconds before unplugging the harness and switching boards. The big capacitor in the power supply can still supply enough power to damage your board if you yank the harness out too early. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but do you really want to risk your board in proving the point?

Reality Check:

(a.k.a. "What to do if Everything Appears Upside Down or Backwards")

The basic idea here is to play around until the INV Y and INV X connections get set up to operate properly depending on whether or not PLAYER1 or PLAYER2 is up. Depending on whether you're installing into a cocktail machine or not (and whether you're converting from Asteroids Deluxe to Asteroids or vice versa), the actual connections required will vary.

For example, my Asteroids machine is in the "cocktail" cabinet. Pins 7 and 19 are shorted on my harness; this is how the video gets inverted along the X axis when PLAYER2 is up. I had to short pins 7 and 16 in order to also invert the Y axis in order to defeat the automatic left-to-right inversion built into the Asteroids Deluxe game (which expects to be played in a cabinet with a mirrored reflector...)

Happy Hacking!