Red Octane Afterburner

Fattoxthegreat · Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:59 pm Post subject:

I play regularly on 9 footers, I am 6' 3" tall and am morbidly overweight. I have owned mine for almost 3 months now, so I'm sure she'll hold for you.

vesper · Trick Member Joined: 06 Dec 2005

wiljoebob808 · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 1:48 pm Post subject:

ive had this pad since august and just a few weeks ago, the left arrow doesn't work unless you REALLY stomp on it. i weigh 120 and DONT stomp so i have no idea whats wrong with it

orb · Trick Member Joined: 20 Nov 2002

aluminum. · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 1:39 pm Post subject:

lukejeff13 · Trick Member Joined: 14 Jan 2005

btw the cotton swab idea worked! it improved my DDR scores by 50% giving me less greats.. no boo's or good's leaving me with AA's and some AAA's. very nice trick to make the afterburner better after a couple months of playing on it.

Razor LOL · Trick Member Joined: 04 Oct 2005 Location: Clarksville, MD

Is there any kind of alternative to sheet metal modding? If so, what is it and how do you do it? If not, show me a link as to how to sheet metal mod. Since I would like the recessed buttons for practice before the arcade (and just plain 'ol anytime) and from the reviews it's very strong, but it still has FOIL CONTACTS. The CF w/ the arcade mod kit would prolably be to expensive, and I don't know how much of an arcade feel it really gives, so now I'm going with the Afterburner and modding the contacts.

However, this won't be until I get my first job this summer (I just turned 14). Before you ask, I can do all DDR 10's and ITG 10's (working into 11's and 12's).
_________________

Recall
Groovestats (Now completely filled in, challenges plz)

Marvel627 · Trick Member Joined: 07 Jun 2003

Hey, I've had my afterburner for 2 months now and it has been great! It has seen it's share of 10 footers and is ultra sensitive. Using it with stepmania, xbox, and ps2 is a snap(i own all three and tested it on all of them).PLus, going from my pad at home to the arcade is easy, ive been doing a lot better at the arcade. I am able to pass a slew of 10 footers on this pad which i wasnt even close to passing on my old ebay pad(ps, max 300, max unlimited, getting really close to passing legend). I havent done any mods to it, i havent had to open it up or do anything besides tightening screws occasionaly. Im 120 pounds and am trying to play a lot on it before warantee runs out late march, if anything is going to go wrong it will most likely go wrong before then. I may write a formal review and take a video a little later. Cya!

wiljoebob808 · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 7:53 pm Post subject:

well open it up and look inside... all of your foil sheets will be cracked

btw the cotton swab idea didn't work for me. i found out the imprint of the sensor got inbeded into the sheet metal so it wouldn't pick up a signal anymore. So, i just switched around the arrows. Sure, it looks horrible, but hey i need good scores not good looks

Marq(uistadorous) · Trick Member Joined: 03 Aug 2005 Location: Arvada, CO

vesper · Trick Member Joined: 06 Dec 2005

They aren't firm at all compared to the arcade. If you keep the bolts tight though, it shouldn't feel too soft like a TX1000, but there's still going to be a noticeable difference from the arcade.

bboy a.c300 · Trick Member Joined: 15 Jan 2006 Location: MA

Man from all the complaint's they must be 'almost' bad as the old RO pad

cmeador · Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 9:20 pm Post subject:

My afterburner finally stopped working after many months of heavy usage. I'd like to fix it but I need some pointers to help me diagnose the problem.

symptoms:
All pad buttons are nonfunctional. Control box select/start still work normally. This was a sudden thing, it just stopped working one night.

preliminary diagnosis:
I tried plugging the cbox directly into the pad (leaving out the serial cable) and that made no difference, so presumably the serial cable is fine. I took off the up arrow for a visual inspection and nothing is obviously out of place (i.e. all of the wires and stuff seem to be intact).

I have some free time and access to some tools (including voltmeter etc) so I could do some more in-depth testing but I don't know where to begin.

edit: I was very happy with the pad while it lasted, it was totally worth the price. Assuming this one is dead, however, I will go with a CF next time around.

cmeador · Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 4:13 pm Post subject: Great news

I was able to fix my pad. Here are the details, to the best of my limited knowledge of circuits:

apparently how it works
The arrows work by stepping on the arrow, which has foil on the bottom, and compressing the foam between the arrow and the circuit below. The foam keeps the foil separated from the circuit except when you step down, and when the foil is pushed onto the circuit it "closes" the circuit and the control box knows that the arrow is being pushed.

The circuit is essentially a signal pin and a ground pin, and when they are bridged by the foil (the signal pin is grounded) that is what tells the cbox that the button is pushed. Each arrow circuit has three wires, apparently two (black) are redundant ground wires and the third (colored) is the signal wire. These mysteriously feed into the serial port at the front of the pad, where you plug in the cbox. All of the arrow sensors are interconected on their ground wires, which join up at some point and end up exiting the pad through one ground pin.

apparently what was wrong
Since all of my arrows went out at once, that became the key information in figuring out what was broken. After some playing around with the multimeter, I determined that none of the ground wires were actually grounded. Somehow the connection to the ground pin was broken.

the fix
I soldered a wire to connect the ground wire directly to the metal frame of the pad, and it worked. Since the arrows were still interconnected, I only had to do it on one arrow to make the whole thing work, but I ended up doing it on both the down and left arrows for redundancy.

I'm going to take pics later on, but I'm just glad it works again.

edit: pics are in
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmeador/tags/afterburner/
I made some notes to help illustrate what is what.

Mixel Plix · Trick Member Joined: 19 Mar 2005 Location: PA

when these things are out of stock does anyone know if they come back around the time they have posted or can it be sooner cause i wanna order one of these. i finally got the money and then i check the site and it's out of stock

and i havent been able to play DDR for a few months because my mat died.

wodos · Trick Member Joined: 29 Jul 2004 Location: auburn, al

I was getting kind of tired of having the arrows so recessed. I like the recess, but I kept getting tripped up in the corners of the panels. So, I took my friend's afterburner's panels and screwed them in on top of mine. I must say, the arrows are now at the PERFECT height. Only about 1/8 inch lower than the metal, rather than the 1/2 inch or so. But, now my friend is left with a panel-less pad. Useless.

On to my question: I want to buy some more panels, but they are $60(?!?) direct from RO, wayyy too much IMO. Does anyone know where I can find some inexpensive replacement panels? I'm thinking that since all of these Afterburners are dieing, there should be lots of extra panels around, right???

Norkusa · Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 10:34 am Post subject:

wodos · Trick Member Joined: 29 Jul 2004 Location: auburn, al

will they still do it if it has been longer than six months? I've had my AB since last june, I don't think any part of it is still under warranty...

Norkusa · Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 8:04 pm Post subject: