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Atari — arcade (System 1/2, Hard Drivin')

Beyond the vector cabinets, Atari Games made notable raster bases: System 1 (Marble Madness, Gauntlet), System 2 (Paperboy, 720°), and above all Hard Drivin' (1988) — the first polygonal-3D driving cabinet with force feedback.

Identification

Field Value
Manufacturer Atari Games (former Atari coin-op)
Years 1984 → early 90s
CPU Motorola 68010 / 68000 (+ 6502 sound)
Settings DIP / EEPROM

The main boards

Hardware Year Games MAME driver
Atari System 1 1984 Gauntlet, Marble Madness, Peter Pack Rat, RoadRunner, Indiana Jones atari/atarisy1.cpp
Atari System 2 1985 Paperboy, 720°, APB, Super Sprint, Championship Sprint atari/atarisy2.cpp
Hard Drivin' / GX2 1988 Hard Drivin', Race Drivin', S.T.U.N. Runner, Steel Talons atari/harddriv.cpp
Atari GT / G42 1991 Rampart, Guardians of the 'Hood, Road Riot, Moto Frenzy atari/atarigt.cpp, atarig42.cpp
  • System 1/2: zoomable sprites, rich sound (Atari POKEY + YM2151 + TMS5220 speech) — Gauntlet (up to 4 players) is the landmark.
  • Hard Drivin' (1988): real-time polygonal 3D + a force-feedback wheel — a technical revolution (multi-CPU 68010 + DSP + TMS34010/34012).

Notable games

Gauntlet (1985), Marble Madness (1984), Paperboy (1985), 720°, Hard Drivin' (1988), S.T.U.N. Runner (1989), Race Drivin', Rampart (1990), Steel Talons…

Common faults

Symptom Likely cause Lead
Corrupt sprites/planes Atari customs / RAM RAM test, contacts
Force feedback dead (Hard Drivin') force-feedback board / motor Mechanical + board diagnosis
Mute voice TMS5220 (speech) Sound-stage diagnosis
Lost config EEPROM / battery Reinit / replace
No image Power, 68010, harness Base diagnosis

Modernisation & mods

The common ground for every JAMMA board

Video, power, control panel and upscalers depend on the cabinet rather than the board: everything is centralised in Modernising a cabinet. To run the board outside a cabinet (at home, on a display): supergun.

  • Battery 🟢: a save battery is fitted (settings/counters/RTC). A leaking battery corrodes traces — check and replace it before it leaks → save batteries.
  • Storage 🟡: the game lives in EPROM/mask ROM on the board. Changing or restoring a game means reprogramming the EPROMs (and, for a mask ROM, using a pinout adapter) → EPROM method.
  • Media preservation: replacing the original storage, multicarts, ODEs and modern options by family → PCB preservation hub.
  • Scan rate 📺: System 1: ~15.7 kHz / 59.9 Hz (standard) · System 2: ~25.0 kHz / 60.1 Hz (medium res) — varies by board, check the variant before choosing a monitor → tri-sync and upscalers. (Computed from the MAME sources — atari/atarisy1.cpp + atarisy2.cpp — pixel clock ÷ htotal.)
  • FPGA / emulation: see the Emulation & FPGA section below.

Repair (technician)

  • Slapstic (Atari protection) + customs: a "dead" board can be a dead slapstic or custom (donor / MAME).
  • Multi-CPU (68010 + DSP + TMS34010 on Hard Drivin'): diagnose block by block; a freeze = one CPU / its RAM.
  • Sound: POKEY + YM2151 + TMS5220 (speech) — silent voice = TMS5220 + dedicated stage.
  • Capacitors: recap. Oxidised EPROM sockets: turned-pin socket.

→ Methods: PCB fault-finding · Recap · EPROM · Traces & vias

Expected clocks — measurement table ✅

Values extracted from the MAME sources for this platform. On a scope or frequency counter, a clock that is missing or off-value points straight at the crystal, the divider or the chip at fault — the fastest starting point on a dead board.

Component Expected clock Role
M6502 1.789773 MHz CPU
M68010 7.15909 MHz main CPU
YM2151 3.579545 MHz FM (sound)

How to read this table

Several values for one component = several board variants in this family (or several instances of the chip clocked differently). These frequencies are those of the clock signal at the component's input, not of its original crystal — on many boards the clock is divided down from a single master crystal.

Archived original schematics ✅

Manufacturer schematics for games in this family, archived locally. They give the clock tree, the address decoding and the breakdown of the video/sound/power stages — enough to trace a missing signal back to its source.

Scope

A schematic applies to the game and revision named: within a family the general breakdown carries over, but component references and custom chip pinouts do not transpose. Source: the Arcade Game Manuals collection (Internet Archive), manufacturer documents kept for preservation.

Original manuals for games on this platform ✅

Manufacturer manuals for games running on this board. Beyond the instructions, they very often carry the full DIP settings, the connector pinout, the test procedure, the parts list and the expected voltages.

→ Full catalogue: service manuals, wiring & game manuals

DIP settings ✅

5 games on this platform, settings extracted from the MAME sources (INPUT_PORTS_START blocks). The Position column gives the switch's physical reference on the board (SW2:!3,!4 = bank SW2, levers 3 and 4) — which is what lets you set it up without the paper manual. Games are sorted by MAME set name.

DIP settings — MAME set 720
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
Bonus Life 5/6A:!8,!7 3000 · 5000 · 8000 · 12000
Difficulty 5/6A:!6,!5 Easy · Medium · Hard · Hardest
Maximum Add. A. Coins 5/6A:!4,!3 0 · 1 · 2 · 3
Coins Required 5/6A:!2,!1 3 To Start, 2 To Continue · 3 To Start, 1 To Continue · 2 To Start, 1 To Continue · 1 To Start, 1 To Continue
DIP settings — MAME set apb
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
Bonus Coins 6/7A:!3,!2,!1 None · 1 Each 6 · 1 Each 5 · 1 Each 4 · 1 Each 3 · 1 Each 2 · 1 Each 1 · Free Play
Attract Lights 5/6A:!8 Off · On
Max Continues 5/6A:!7,!6 3 · 10 · 25 · 199
Difficulty 5/6A:!5,!4,!3 Easiest · Very Easy · Easy · Medium Easy · Medium Hard · Hard · Very Hard · Hardest
Coins Required 5/6A:!2,!1 3 To Start, 2 To Continue · 3 To Start, 1 To Continue · 2 To Start, 1 To Continue · 1 To Start, 1 To Continue
DIP settings — MAME set csprint
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
Auto High Score Reset 5/6A:!1 Off · On
DIP settings — MAME set paperboy
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
Coinage 6/7A:!8,!7 4C 1C · 3C 1C · 2C 1C · 1C 1C
Right Coin 6/7A:!6,!5 1 · 4 · 5 · 6
Left Coin 6/7A:!4 1 · 2
Bonus Coins 6/7A:!3,!2,!1 None · 1 Each 5 · 1 Each 4 · 1 Each 3 · 2 Each 4 · 1 Each 2 · 1 Each ? · Free Play
Difficulty 5/6A:!8,!7 Easy · Medium · Medium Hard · Hard
Bonus Life 5/6A:!6,!5 10000 · 15000 · 20000 · None
Lives 5/6A:!4,!3 3 · 4 · 5 · Infinite (Cheat)
DIP settings — MAME set ssprint
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
Coin Multiplier 6/7A:!6,!5,!4 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8
Difficulty 5/6A:!8,!7 Easy · Medium · Medium Hard · Hard
Obstacles 5/6A:!6,!5 Easy · Medium · Medium Hard · Hard
Wrenches 5/6A:!4,!3 2 · 3 · 4 · 5

Check against your own board

These settings apply to the game and revision described by MAME. One title may have several DIP sets depending on region or revision, and some systems use soft-dips (settings in memory, via the test menu) rather than physical switches. In case of a discrepancy, the board's silkscreen and the test menu are authoritative.

See also: DIP reference · game manuals

Emulation & FPGA

  • Emulation: MAME (atarisy1.cpp, atarisy2.cpp, harddriv.cpp, atarigt.cpp).
  • FPGA / MiSTer: cores available for several classics (Gauntlet, Marble Madness, Paperboy…); not Hard Drivin' (multi-CPU 3D).

EPROM repair

68010 (System 1) / 68000 (System 2) program. Ex. (MAME atari/atarisy1.cpp, atarisy2.cpp): Marble Madness = 10× 27128 · Road Runner = 27C256/27128 · Paperboy = 10× 27128 · 720° / APB = 27C512. ⚠ Slapstic protection chip on many → game-specific.

Lineage

Complements the Atari vector side (Asteroids/Tempest). Hard Drivin' foreshadows mainstream polygonal 3D (before Model 1/System 21).

Photos / assets

(To add: System 1 (Gauntlet) board, Hard Drivin' set, FFB wheel.)

Sources & attribution

Review & corrections

How this space is used

Spotted a wrong value, an outdated procedure, a chip reference that does not match your board? Say so here, with what you observed (model, board revision, serial number, measurement). Every report is cross-checked against a source before anything changes — an unverifiable correction is published as “reported by …, not cross-checked” rather than silently applied.

Reading is open to everyone; posting requires signing in with Discord. Reports from the wiki's declared reviewers are handled first; anyone else's are read too, but go through a human before anything is changed.