Recently I decided to take a look at another custom IC, the Taito ‘PC030CM’:

It’s a 20 pin chip in a brown-ish SIL package used on some PCBs like Arkanoid, Bubble Bobble, Big Event Golf, Tokio/Scramble Formation, Legend of Kage and few other.Like schematics shows, the ‘PC030CM’ handles coin inputs as well counters/lockouts:

If the part fails (most of times it breaks due its fragile nature), the board will no longer boot, an ‘I.O ERROR.’ is all you will get:

For this reproduction project I had no need to inspect or analyze the part but I simply re-engineered,using SMT devices, a replacement board that can be found on some Arkanoid bootlegs:

Then I compared my schematics to work previously done by ‘JROK’ on KLOV forums and, once verified everything, I designed a proper PCB.Here’s the reproduction how looks fully assembled (I ordered it with red soldermask but manufacturer wrongly made it blue)

For the testing the user ‘manimani’ on Neo-Arcadia forum kindly sold me an original Arkanoid PCB :

The board was missing the ‘PC030CM’ custom :

Some workaround was made in such a way that the board could coin up the same using the SERVICE button instead :

So, this was a perfect platform test for my reproduction which worked fine:

Thanks again to ‘manimani’ and ‘JROK’.See you at my next reproduction project.






































