Re: Asteroids/Asteroids Deluxe

Hello Andrew,
    Get a 5V PSU and connect directly to PCB via the test loops. Do not
connect anything to the edge connector. Set current limit to about 2 amps
and switch on. Leave a few minutes and use your little finger to find the
fault. Something will get hot. You'll probably find a smoothing capacitor
gone short. Snap capacitor off. Fault goes away. It sounds brutal but it
works.

Regards

Mike Mnemonic

----- Original Message -----
From: Evrovski, Andrew <andy@cyberplex.com>
To: <vectorlist@synthcom.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 4:10 PM
Subject: VECTOR: Asteroids/Asteroids Deluxe

> ok, so here is my very troublesome problem.
>
> I have 2 Asteroids boards and 1 Asteroids Deluxe board and I meter across
> the BIG FAT GND trace and the 5v FAT line (these fat strips are actually
> striped down the board in alternating patterns GND, 5V, GND 5V...etc) to
> check and I find that board #1 is 3 Ohms, Board#2 is 19 Ohms an board#2 is
> 90 Ohms. These are essentially shorts. My multimeter (put in continuity
> mode) beeps (continuous tone) to let me know that it is in fact a short.
>
> So.... Given the fact that these are shorts (and all my known working
boards
> are not shorted - obviously since that would be close to tying power to
> Ground), I am at a loss. How the heck does one determine what component
is
> doing this (outside of an actual solder blob or trace issue). Anything,
and
> I mean, pretty much anything can cause this. Capacitors (my first pick),
> faulty chips (these potentially could fail in such a manner as to short
> their GND and VCC lines, can't they), transistors etc...). Making
> measurements on the board is now useless since every component that ties
to
> both GND and VCC will register a short. For the life of my, I don't know
> how to figure out which component is responsible without yanking every
damn
> chip or every damn cap that goes across 5V and GND.
>
> Any help, and I mean any help, would be appreciated.
>
> Cheers
> Andy
>
>
>
> Andrew Evrovski
> HPC Development Director
> Cyberplex
> t: 902.429.4721 ext.109
> f: 902.423.0899
> www.cyberplex.com
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
> ** To UNSUBSCRIBE from vectorlist, send a message with "UNSUBSCRIBE" in
the
> ** message body to vectorlist-request@synthcom.com. Please direct other
> ** questions, comments, or problems to neil@synthcom.com.
>

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
** To UNSUBSCRIBE from vectorlist, send a message with "UNSUBSCRIBE" in the
** message body to vectorlist-request@synthcom.com. Please direct other
** questions, comments, or problems to neil@synthcom.com.
Received on Thu Aug 23 15:21:47 2001