Overview:

Atari's huge multiplayer arcade games from the 1970's are pretty hard to find. This page is about the commonality (and otherwise) of the earlier machines, not the Sprint or Tank series.

I own and have repaired a *lot* of Indy stuff for others, so I thought i'd post my findings - mainly because the pcbs are not intuitively labelled from the factory. Every Indy pcb is etched with "Indy 800", no matter if its from the 4 or 8 player game, despite them being incompatible in most cases. Just identifying them is usually the main hurdle. Secondly is then working out if you have a full and correct set! I've been buying the individual pcbs from eBay since the late 90's and have been able to put together a complete set plus obtaining a cage, which have come from all over the place!

The PCBs:

(technically this is an Indy 4 cage with an extra 4 car pcbs in it :)

The heart of the game - Atari developed the card rack for Indy 800 first then later stripped down the existing set for just 4 players. The pcbs do turn up from time to time, but rarely/never as a complete set, usually its just individual boards. The PCB cage itself is very hard to find, whereas individual pcbs do turn up randomly.

There are 5 different pcbs in the rack as follows:

*note : Indy 800 psu can be used in Indy 4. Indy 4 psu can be used in Indy 800 but you will only have four working coin mech lockout coils - only a slight inconvenience but it will power it.

When i say 'Unique' in the table above the meaning is that to convert an Indy 4 Score or Coin pcb to work in Indy 800 there are a lot of chips required, clipped legs and cut traces to re-instate and lots of blue patch wire to remove. Its not impossible, but its a _lot_ of work and i would say barely worth it unless you are completely stuck. Some later revisions of Indy 4 pcbs also had these changes effected in the etching so conversion may be even more of a nightmare.

There are some big differences between the two games as follows :

The first game made/released.
- 8-players stand around a square cabinet, 2 players per side
- Players have gas, brake, steering wheel and 'Horn' button.
- Car Colours are Green, Yellow, Peach, Purple, Blue, Red, White, Light Blue
- overhead mirror for spectator viewing.

Produced a year or so later, a stripped-down version
- 4-players stand around a square cabinet, 2 players on 2 sides, with 2 blank sides.
- Players have gas, brake, steering wheel only
- Car Colours are Green, Cyan, Violet, Red

Telling the PCBs apart!

Here's some side-by-side photos, 800 on the left, 4 on the right, never confuse the two again!

PCB

Page 5 of the Indy 4 manual TM-055 tells us that each game actually shipped from the factory with one spare pcb for each of the folowing: STEERING, CAR, COIN, SCORE, SYNC!

This probably saved the operator a lot of hassle and correspondence back with Atari and downtime servicing this beast if it failed. A bad machine taking up such floorspace rapidly loses revenue! Looks like they didn't relise this until they shipped Indy 4 however. These spare pcbs do not appear to be noted as supplied with an Indy 800 machine purchase.

And visit my WEBSTORE for lots of video arcade game items to buy!