News Update History
Welcome to the site news update history page, any updates to the site or its content will be posted here.
The site started from humble beginnings and launched on 13th Feb 2000.
Highlights from the site history:
13 Feb 2000: Site v1.0 launched (remember Netscape?!)
18 Nov 2001: Site v2.0 launched with improved navigation.
30 Jun 2005: Site v3.0 launched with new layout.
13 Oct 2024: Site v4.0 launched, an all new site with high resolution manual scans and expanded hardware identification section.
Feel free to search, filter or just browse the history, sometimes there were long periods between updates and I cannot promise that will not happen again!
(Note: Not all previous site history has been migrated)
News Update History
Added images of a prototype/sample game Defender boardset that I recently fixed. There are some differences between this and production games:
The CPU board has no green solder mask and the decoder PROM was previously undumped.
The ROM board has wire modifications that are incorporated into the production version
The Interface board has the normally omitted 4-pin molex connector populated.
High Resolution Williams Schematics
I recently found out that my wife had access to an A0 scanner at work, so on a day off we went in armed with all my Williams original schematics and have rescanned them at 300dpi. I then re-touched them by hand, fixed any known errors and bundled them into a new PDF. The file sizes average about 15Mb, but they are so much better than the files that were previously available. I have more documents scanned but they have not been processed yet and so will be uploaded in due course.
If you have any unscanned manuals that you would be prepared to lend me for scanning, please get in touch via my Contact page.
You can find the new documents on the Williams Documents page, there is also a filter available to view only high resolution documents.
Taito Defender Schematics
Added Taito Defender schematics to the Defender Manuals page.
Note: For the new website version launched in October 2024 these schematics have been rescanned at 300dpi and retouched by hand to ensure the best possible quality/readability.
