Free Play Richardson hiring for tech team

Off Topic Job Listings
#1

I don’t know if this is an appropriate post. Will leave it to the mods to decide. If this doesn’t say “Makers Apply Here”, I don’t know what does…

From their FB post: "Malcolm Gladwell famously opined that greatness requires 10,000 hours of practice. Well Free Play now spends 10,000 hours on game repair and maintenance EVERY YEAR! (So we’re getting pretty good at it.) It takes a ton of love and passion to keep these games running and we’ve received industry recognition for having the highest levels of game uptime in the world (and not just for retro arcades).

And we’re hiring! We’re looking to add an awesome new employee to our tech team for some major projects we have in the works! This is an entry-level, full-time position based primarily out of our Richardson location. No experience is necessary - you just need to have a passion for problem solving, a love for arcade games, and a willingness to learn about technology that is best described as ‘ancient’. If this interests you, email [email protected] for more information.

Free Play is an awesome, equal opportunity employer and is committed to building the best arcades in the world."

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#2

Julie,

If you haven’t done so, try cross-posting on the DFW Pinball and Arcade Club on Facebook.

Raymond (Arcadecomponents.com)

#3

They can’t afford me, lol. But sounds like fun

1 Like
#4

I shared it to the DFW Pinball & Arcade Club page on Facebook.

#5

That sounds like fun, but like @rbox80, I don’t think I can pay the bills working for them. What a timely post as just this week I’ve been working on getting my extra Galaga board sets working. The main culprit is cheap sockets and tarnish on the pins of the Namco custom 24/28 pin chips (the IC packaging company used very low quality lead frames).

Here’s a Galaga board set on the workbench driving a VGA monitor through a line doubler board. Game play is with a classic Atari joystick.

Galaga repair setup.JPG2448×3264 1.76 MB


Galaga running on a Digilent Nexsys 2 board with the larger XC3S1200E FPGA. The whole game fits in the FPGA - 3 Z80s, EPROMs (8x 2532, 4K bytes each), plus the SRAMs and logic. Controller is a PS1 with HDL code to convert to parallel inputs. The Dell rotatable monitor is perfect for this application.
IMG_7530.JPG2448×3264 1.68 MB


Nexsys 2 board. Note that top and bottom acrylic covers were cut at DMS. In fact I’ve cut acrylic top/bottom covers such as this for most of my eval boards. Eliminates the concern of setting exposed bottom of board on something metal, as well as dropping something metal on the exposed top.
IMG_7532.JPG2448×3264 1.45 MB

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#6

I’m with you there on the salary thing. I run Arcadecomponents and repair game boards on nights and weekends as fun and stress relief from the day job at Corporate America.

On the Galaga board, make sure you replace any of the non-epoxy encapsulated white and blue resistor packs. Those are a bad source of intermittent issues. I have them in stock and sell those as a kit with all the 24, 28, 40, and 42 pin sockets, but if you need a few, I keep a decent size stock on hand.

Raymond

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#7

I’ve read that some of the r-packs are flaky but didn’t realize it was the unecapsulated style that were the problem. The Galaga video board that I’m working on now has that style, so I guess I’ll replace them.

This video board must have been stored in a damp environment because most of the Namco customs have rust/corrosion on the pins. Tarnish on pins isn’t uncommon but I’ve never seen rust. When I tried to pull the Namcos from the sockets several pins broke off of each. Usually there’s enough of the leadframe so that a replacement pin can be soldered on. But these pins are so corroded that they won’t whet to accept the solder. So these will have to go in the trash pile :frowning: I do see that you sell Namco custom pulls, but they’re not cheap @$13 each.

I have one video board where the custom chips aren’t socketed. The chips are tarnished and this has caused some of the solder joints to deteriorate. Although the chips are tarnished they are not corroded, so I’m confident that if I can remove them I can clean them. The problem is removing them without damaging either the chip or the PCB traces. I’ve tried flux + solder wick but can’t get the pins to fully release. I have a hot air tool but don’t have the attachment to match the 600 mil package pitch. Any ideas or suggestions on this?

I’ve been putting all of the customs in a socket carrier to eliminate damaging them further when removing/inserting them. It would be nice if one could find carrier sockets with slightly longer leads, but thus far haven’t found the holy grail carrier socket. Suggestions?

#8

Use an emery board to clean the legs up and they’ll solder fine. Donor legs can be harvested from those slightly skinny body EPROMs where they have more leg exposed after a right angle bend.

For desoldering you need to use a real desoldering iron. If you can’t make the one in the Electronics lab work, come over to my shop and I’ll show you how to use a real desoldering iron. I have Pace units on each of my 3 workbenches.

Raymond

#9

By ‘real’ soldering iron, do you mean one with the hollow tip and vacuum to suck up the solder? Is that what’s in the DMS electronic lab?

#10

You could probably poke the board about getting one for electronics, I know I’ve had my share of problems trying to desolder

#11

If I thought that they could match what I make now, I’d go in a heartbeat… But I’m pretty sure they can’t and wouldn’t.

#12

We have a Metcal SP440 De-soldering Station on loan from David Fenyes.
The ELab also has a Hakko OFR-300 De-soldering Tool
Check the Tool Wiki: https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Tools#Electronics

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#13

Do either or both of these have vacuum to suck up the molten solder?

NM, just looked up both, and they do have built-in vacuum.

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#14

Both…20191817161514131210

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