Pole Position RAM 8 problem solved

I just wanted to follow up and let folks know what I found. I have been fighting this RAM 8 problem on and off for awhile. I have lost several RAM chips in the process of troubleshooting this issue. It turns out the power supply for the RAM battery circuit was intermittent. I would check for 5volts at the RAM socket and at times I would have 2.4, 1.7, 4.3 and a few others. I thought I had a bad socket as the trace next to the socket was reading 5v. It turns out that was just a coincidence. After a bit of time probing around I traced the problem down to a couple of 1k resistors supplying base current to the RAM battery circuit. The two faulty resistors had been damaged by a leaky battery pack. They didn't look all that bad however, they were reading several 100k at times. When I desoldered the resistors one of the lead wires fell out of the end of the ceramic (both had the same failure). Appearently the corrosion chewed its way through the lead wire just inside the ceramic
 resistor; just out of sight.
  After replacing these two resistors; I have a solid 5v on the socket and my new 6116 ram is happy.
   
  Besides having the RAM 8 error on bootup; I also suffered from lost high scores and erronious high scores, some were extreamly high.
   
  I still have the faint simi horizontal scan line issue. I haven't much time to learn about that yet.
   
  Cameron

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Received on Mon Jun 4 10:54:52 2007