How a Konami Cabinet Stays on Target: Target Panic!

We’ve seen a few test PCBs now; games that were only sold alongside Japanese arcade cabinets to satisfy a law requiring a minimum amount of functionality. Sega gave us Dottori-kun, a remake of Head-On; Taito gave us Mini-Vaders, another retro throwback. But what about Konami? Let’s test out our system with Target Panic! No Expenses Spent Konami’s Target Panic is a small densely-packed PCB, intended presumably to be sold alongside cabinets like the 1996 Konami “Windy”. We haven’t seen a Konami game from 1996 on the blog yet, but it’s fair to assume they did better for their retail games than a Z80 CPU. (A CMOS Z84, as it turns out) Interestingly, the position that would be taken up by a crystal oscillator is vacant on this board. Of course, a CPU needs a system clock. Konami just went with a cheaper option– a ceramic resonator rather than a crystal oscillator. For reference, a random datasheet for a ceramic resonator gives a frequency tolerance of up to ±0.5%. A totally random crystal…