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Taito — classics (Space Invaders, Qix, Bubble Bobble…)

Taito is where it all began: Space Invaders (1978) created the arcade industry. Then a long line of 8-bit classics — Qix, Elevator Action, Bubble Bobble, Rastan — on various Z80 hardware. Ultra-mature emulation, MiSTer cores for many.

PCB Taito (Rainbow Islands)

PCB Taito (Rainbow Islands) — photo by Noggin73, domaine public (Wikimedia Commons).

Identification

Field Value
Manufacturer Taito
Years 1978 → late 80s
CPU Intel 8080 (Space Invaders) then Z80 (most)
Settings DIP

The main classic boards

Hardware CPU Games (examples) MAME driver
Space Invaders (1978) Intel 8080 @ 2 MHz Space Invaders (+ variants/clones) taito/8080bw.cpp
Taito SJ (1981-84) Z80 Jungle King/Hunt, Elevator Action, Alpine Ski taito/taitosj.cpp
"The Legend of Kage" / early Z80 The Legend of Kage, Bubble Bobble, Rastan taito/bublbobl.cpp, taito/rastan.cpp

Space Invaders: an 8080 drives a B&W bitmap framebuffer; the "colour" comes from a plastic overlay (green/red strips) glued on the screen — no hardware colour. It's the game that launched the golden age.

Notable games

Space Invaders (1978), Qix (1981), Jungle King (1982), Elevator Action (1983), The Legend of Kage (1985), Bubble Bobble (1986), Rastan (1987), Operation Wolf (1987)…

DIP settings transcribed

Several Taito games have their DIP tables in-wiki (e.g. Bubble Bobble): → DIP reference.

Taito America's Service Tips ✅

A collection of numbered bulletins, and two of them hold for the whole range

The Service Tips collection of Taito America Corporation (1256 Estes Avenue, Elk Grove Village, Illinois) gathers bulletins numbered by year — 81-13, 81-23, 82-17, 83-1… ⓘ Each carries three boxes at its head: MANDATORY, ON FAILURE ONLY, FOR YOUR INFORMATION, one of which is ticked. That is the first thing to read: it says whether the bulletin is an obligation, a conditional repair or plain information.

⚠️ Beware what a bulletin's title does not say. 81-23, headed only "SUBJECT: SELF TEST" without naming a game, in fact describes the self-test of one specific game: its content cites the "LUPIN and COPS" sprites, ROM locations (3D, 3C, 3B, 3A) and display faults located at 12-M, 12-L, 13-M, 13-L, 15-M, 15-L, 1-H. Applied as-is to another Taito, it would mislead.

Bulletin 81-13 — the FMP001 regulator, and this one is cross-range ✅

ⓘ This one explicitly covers "ALL TAITO GAMES WITH A FMP001 SWITCHING REGULATOR", which makes it a platform document rather than a game one.

⚠️ The procedure sets conditions before any measurement: "THIS TROUBLESHOOTING PROCEDURE SHOULD BE DONE IN A NO-LOAD CONDITION WITH THE B-CONNECTOR UNPLUGGED. YOU WILL BE LOOKING FOR SHORT CIRCUITS EXCEPT WHERE NOTED." ⓘ Off-load and with the B connector unplugged — a reading taken otherwise does not compare with this tree.

The tree starts from the fuse symptom and descends to the component:

Symptom What the bulletin has you check
Primary failure, F1 blown instantly bridge rectifier, D05 (C2335), D01 (C2812)
+12 V failure, F2 blown instantly D26 (RD18E), C27 (33 µF 25 V)
+12 V low or absent D23 (RD11E) · D10 (RD5.1E) · D4 (RD8.8E) · D2 (C1384) · IC1 (µPC311C) between pins 4 and 8 · D8 (CTU22S) · C7, C8 (1000 µF 25 V)
+12 V too high D2 (C1384)
+12 V cannot be adjusted IC1 (µPC311C) between pins 2 and 3 · R22 (1 kΩ) — "no connection of central terminal or bad soldering"
−12 V failure, F3 blown R26 (RD18E), C28 (33 µF 25 V)
−12 V low or absent D7 (CTU22S)
+5 V failure, F5 (6 A) blown D27 (RD7.6E)
+5 V cannot be adjusted IC2 (µPC311) between pins 2 and 3 · D10 (RD5.1E)

ⓘ The capacitors are named with their values, so they can be checked without the schematic: 2200 µF 10 V and 100 µF 16 V also appear in the too-high and cannot-adjust branches.

Bulletin 83-1 — the 1982 Service Tips index, and a duplicated number

ⓘ A bulletin that repairs nothing: it says what exists. Taito America published the index of its Service Tips each year, to be ordered "send a self addressed stamped envelope". The 1982 one:
82-1 · 82-3 · 82-12 Qix — 19″ monitor schematic · static freeze · message memory failure
82-5 · 82-6 · 82-7 Alpine Ski — joystick · "T" connector · troubleshooting chart
82-8 to 82-11, 82-21, 82-23 Grand Champion — block diagram, power supply schematic, intermittent resets, coin registering, lock-ups, steering wheel
82-13 · 82-14 · 82-15 Colony 7 — freeze-up · Wild Western — operators manual misprint · coinage switch setting
82-17 ⚠️ vertical deflection circuit revision — see Wells-Gardner
82-18 · 82-19 KRAM — no high-score-to-date program · Electric Yo-Yo — number of yo-yos
82-20 · 82-22 Qix, KRAM, Yo-Yo, Space Dungeon — switch test · coin door processor
82-23 · 82-24 Alpine Ski, Wild Western, Jungle Hunt — power supply · Jungle Hunt — sound troubleshooting chart

⚠️ Number 82-23 is assigned twice in the original index — once to "Alpine Ski, Wild Western, Jungle Hunt / Power Supply", once to "Grand Champion / Steering Wheel". ⓘ This wiki reproduces the index as printed; asking for "82-23" was therefore not enough.

ⓘ 82-14 deserves noting for itself: a bulletin whose subject is "Wild Western / Operators Manual Misprint". The manufacturer documented the errors in its own manuals — one more reason not to treat a single manual as a final authority.

The second Service Tips compilation, and what it adds ✅

The wiki had the index. Here are the bulletins.

The compilation already archived runs to 11 pages for 24 bulletin numbers: it is essentially a contents list. A second document of 42 pages carries the bulletins themselves.

⚠️ And it runs later in time: the index stops at 83-1, this one holds 83-2, 83-5, 83-6, 83-7 and 83-13 — ⓘ five 1983 bulletins the index mentions nowhere.

Bulletin Subject
83-2 ⓘ Troubleshooting "S.J." systems
83-5 Power supply +5 V problems — "improve Q5's connection on power supply"
83-6 Coin door cable pinched in the frame — harness re-routing
83-7 +5 V failure — hints for isolating the fault
83-13 ⓘ Theory of operation of the "S.J." system

ⓘ Two of the five are about the +5 V, on a platform for which this wiki held no power documentation at all → mains chain.

The Taito SJ, described by its maker ✅

Bulletin 83-13 — ticked FOR YOUR INFORMATION — covers Alpine Ski, Wild Western, Jungle Hunt and Front Line, and describes the "S.J." system that the table at the top of this page summarised only as "Z80":

Item What the bulletin writes
Processors two Z-80s: the main (video) at 4 MHz, the sound one at 3 MHz
⚠️ Clocks ⓘ each CPU has its own clock circuit and its own crystal
Video master clock 12 MHz — ⚠️ "with the exception of the microprocessors"
Scratchpad RAM sound: 2 KB (2114) · main: 2 KB (2016)
Program ROM independent banks, ⓘ jumperable to most common EPROM types
CPU-to-CPU byte-I/O transfers on a latch
I/O memory-mapped throughout; ⓘ the Z-80's ports are used only to clear asserted interrupts at the start of each machine cycle ("M1" state)
Background three completely independent background pages, each movable in any direction

⚠️ The 12 MHz does not clock the processors. ⓘ Measuring 12 MHz somewhere on an S.J. board therefore tells you nothing about the CPUs — the same misreading as the 19.968 MHz on the MCR, in reverse.

ⓘ And the sound stage is fragile by construction: "the sound processor's address and data lines are unbuffered due to a low component count in the sound circuitry".

⚠️ The scan carries a third-party watermark, visible diagonally across the pages. This wiki says so rather than pretending it is not there.

Archived Taito game manuals ✅

ⓘ This wiki does not open a page per game. These manuals are archived and listed here for what they are — operating, maintenance and parts documents, often the only sourced figures for a given cabinet.

30 manuals and catalogues, by title

⚠️ Titles come from the title pages where legible, otherwise from Internet Archive's catalogue. ⓘ Three of them are not game manuals and are handled elsewhere: the G.T.C. 100, the Trimline and the Space Invaders Cocktail parts catalogue → Taito cabinets.

Common faults

Symptom Likely cause Lead
Corrupt bitmap image (SI) video RAM / 8080 RAM test, contacts
Wrong colours (SI) misplaced overlay Reposition the overlay
Corrupt sprites/tiles video RAM, customs RAM test
No sound amp / PSG / SN76489 Sound-stage diagnosis
No image Power, CPU, harness Base diagnosis

Old boards → discrete TTL logic, recap + re-soldering; many period Space Invaders bootlegs (identification).

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.

  • 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 📺: ~15.62 kHz / 59.2 Hz — standard resolution, a classic 15 kHz chassis is fine → tri-sync and upscalers. (Computed from the MAME sources — taito/bublbobl.cpp — pixel clock ÷ htotal.)
  • FPGA / emulation: see the Emulation & FPGA section below.

Repair (technician)

  • 8080/Z80 logic (80s): diagnose TTL / RAM / buffers, good/bad comparison. Space Invaders = 8080 + analog/SN76477 sound (a dedicated stage).
  • Sound: amp + SN76489/PSG — diagnose separately.
  • 2716/2732 EPROMs on sockets: oxidised legs → re-tin / turned-pin socket.
  • Edge contacts: clean; check the PSU (few electrolytics).

→ 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
YM2203 3 MHz FM (sound)
Z80 3 MHz · 6 MHz sound CPU (usually)

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 (so they do not depend on a third-party site staying up). They give the board's real functional breakdown: clock tree, address decoding, video stage, sound stage, power supply — exactly what you need to trace a missing signal back to its source.

Scope and limits

A schematic applies to the game and revision named. Within one family the general breakdown (buses, decoding, sound/video stages) carries over from board to board, but component references and custom chip pinouts do not transpose between titles. Use it as a map of the logic, not as a cross-reference table.

Source: the Arcade Game Manuals collection on the Internet Archive. Manufacturer documents with no explicit licence, kept here for preservation (machines out of service for over 25 years).

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.

Space Invaders — one Taito manual and three schematic sheets

All of them carried the same label here. Opened and identified from their title page on 13 August 2026.

Doc What the cover carries Pages
TV070014 Space Invaders — Service Instructions and Parts Catalog, Taito Corporation. The cover shows the table cabinet 29
M051-00739-A005 Single sheet — Game Logic board schematic, revision A 1
M051-00739-B005 The same board, revision B 1
M051-0075-A005 Game Logic board of the cocktail cabinet — a different drawing number 1

⚠️ Three sheets, three drawing numbers. Read the one silkscreened on the board before following a schematic: A005 and B005 are not the same revision.

→ Full catalogue: service manuals, wiring & game manuals

DIP settings ✅

8 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 boblbobl
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
Mode — Game, English · Game, Japanese · Test (Grid and Inputs) · Test (RAM and Sound)
Flip Screen — Off · On
Demo Sounds — Off · On
Coin A — 2C 1C · 1C 1C · 2C 3C · 1C 2C
Coin B — 2C 1C · 1C 1C · 2C 3C · 1C 2C
Difficulty — Easy · Normal · Hard · Very Hard
Bonus Life — 20K 80K 300K · 30K 100K 400K · 40K 200K 500K · 50K 250K 500K
Lives — 1 · 2 · 3 · 5
Monster Speed — Normal · Medium · High · Very High
DIP settings — MAME set boblcave
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
ROM Type DSW-B:8 IC52=512kb, IC53=none · IC52=256kb, IC53=256kb
DIP settings — MAME set bublbobl
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
Mode DSW-A:1,3 Game, English · Game, Japanese · Test (Grid and Inputs) · Test (RAM and Sound)/Pause
Flip Screen DSW-A:2 Off · On
Demo Sounds DSW-A:4 Off · On
Coin A DSW-A:5,6 2C 1C · 1C 1C · 2C 3C · 1C 2C
Coin B DSW-A:7,8 2C 1C · 1C 1C · 2C 3C · 1C 2C
Difficulty DSW-B:1,2 Easy · Normal · Hard · Very Hard
Bonus Life DSW-B:3,4 20K 80K 300K · 30K 100K 400K · 40K 200K 500K · 50K 250K 500K
Lives DSW-B:5,6 1 · 2 · 3 · 5
ROM Type DSW-B:8 IC52=512kb, IC53=none · IC52=256kb, IC53=256kb
DIP settings — MAME set bublboblp
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
Language SW A:1 English · Japanese
Flip Screen SW A:2 Off · On
Demo Sounds SW A:4 Off · On
Coin A SW A:5,6 2C 3C · 1C 1C · 2C 1C · 1C 2C
Coin B SW A:7,8 2C 3C · 1C 1C · 2C 1C · 1C 2C
Difficulty DSW-B:1,2 Easy · Normal · Hard · Very Hard
Bonus Life DSW-B:3,4 20K 80K 300K · 30K 100K 400K · 40K 200K 500K · 50K 250K 500K
Lives DSW-B:5,6 1 · 2 · 3 · 5
Edit Mode DSW-B:7 Off · On
DIP settings — MAME set dland
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
Game — Dream Land · Super Dream Land
Lives — 1 · 2 · 3 · 100 (Cheat)
DIP settings — MAME set sboblboblb
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
Game — Bobble Bobble · Super Bobble Bobble
Lives — 1 · 2 · 3 · 100 (Cheat)
DIP settings — MAME set tokio_base
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
Cabinet SW A:1 Upright · Cocktail
Flip Screen SW A:2 Off · On
Demo Sounds SW A:4 Off · On
Coin A SW A:5,6 2C 1C · 1C 1C · 2C 3C · 1C 2C
Coin B SW A:7,8 2C 1C · 1C 1C · 2C 3C · 1C 2C
Enemies SW B:1 Few (Easy) · Many (Hard)
Enemy Shots SW B:2 Few (Easy) · Many (Hard)
Bonus Life SW B:3,4 100K 400K · 200K 400K · 300K 400K · 400K 400K
Lives SW B:5,6 3 · 4 · 5 · 6
Language SW B:8 English · Japanese
DIP settings — MAME set tokiob
Setting Position Options (default in bold)
Lives SW B:5,6 3 · 4 · 5 · 99 (Cheat)

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

Procedure — a dead board, step by step ✅

What this adds

The general method lives in PCB diagnosis. This is its application to this platform: the same order, but with the values actually expected here, so you do not have to go back and forth.

Tools: multimeter, oscilloscope (or frequency counter), current-limited bench supply, desoldering braid. → Tooling

If the board is still in a cabinet

A CRT holds its charge with the machine unplugged. → CRT safety

1. Inspection, power off. Corrosion, cut tracks, oxidised EPROM legs, leaking SMD capacitors, dubious earlier repairs.

2. The connector, before anything else. A large share of "dead boards" are a contact problem, not a fault. Clean the contacts with isopropyl alcohol and reseat — not with an abrasive eraser on a gold edge, which takes the plating off and brings the problem back worse. It costs two minutes and settles the question.

3. Power, measured on the board. Aim for +5.0 V measured as close as possible to where power reaches the board — not at the PSU output: the drop is in the loom, and that is exactly what makes a board boot on the bench and not in the cabinet. Where you probe depends on this board's connector — JAMMA edge, JVS loom or a proprietary harness — plenty of makers kept one long after JAMMA arrived — see Identification above. → Wiring Check −5 V and +12 V too if the sound stage uses them. Suspected short: bring it up current-limited and find the hot spot.

4. /RESET. It must release after power-up. Held low = the CPU never starts. A 1–2 Hz loop is not the reset circuit, it is the watchdog: the CPU is crashing at boot, so look at the bus, not at the reset.

5. Clocks — the values expected on this platform.

  • YM2203 → 3 MHz (FM (sound))
  • Z80 → 3 MHz · 6 MHz (Sound CPU (usually))

Several values for one component means several board variants in this family, not several readings on the same one: identify yours before calling a clock wrong. That is the mistake that replaces a healthy crystal.

6. Bus. Activity on the main CPU's address lines tells you whether it is running or frozen. Frozen with good clocks and good reset → work RAM, bus buffers, ROMs.

7. It boots but the picture or the sound is wrong — that is another job: see Common faults on this page, then signal tracing.

Emulation & FPGA

  • Emulation: MAME (8080bw.cpp, taitosj.cpp, bublbobl.cpp, rastan.cpp…).
  • FPGA / MiSTer: cores available (Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, Rastan, Elevator Action…).

EPROM repair

8080 program (Space Invaders, 1978) in small 2708 / 2716 EPROMs (1-2 KB), + the famous cellophane colour overlay. Period components (±5/±12). Many variants/licences (Midway).

Lineage

Precedes the Taito 16-bit systems (B/F1/F2/F3) on the 68000.

Photos / assets

(To add: Space Invaders board, colour overlay, Bubble Bobble board.)

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.