Sometimes miracles happen

I've been trying for weeks to fix my Star Castle. Until recently, I
thought the problem was with the CPU board. Then I put in a board that I
knew worked. I still got the same results. The board powered up and went
out of reset, but then everything was silent. I was getting +5v across
the CPU - so I assumed the power supply was OK.

After getting no results with a working board, I decided to examine the
power supply again. I was getting the +5v for the cpu, but on pins that
were supposed to get +25, -25, 6.3VAC, etc - I was not getting good
readings. Anybody have any ideas why?

The *real* strange thing occured when I unplugged all the connectors and
left the power supply on all day. When I got home - I plugged everything
back in - and it worked!

My roomate suggested that the caps in the power supply may have dried up
and that leaving the power supply on all day caused them to "form" - and
then work properly. He actually cured a problem on one of his color sun
monitors this way. He had left it in storage for a couple of years and
some of the capacitors dried up, causing the picture to shrink
horizontally in the center. By leaving the monitor on for a couple of
days - the picture slowly cured itself back to normal.

So - I have an Armor Attack with the same symptoms as the Star Castle and
am going to try leaving the power supply on all day just to see what
happens.

Would anyone care to explain this phenomena? I can't think of any other
reason my game would just start working after being dead since the day I
got it.

Matt
Received on Wed Jan 6 13:54:38 1999