Friday Vector Trivia #001-006

  Heheh... well, finally following up on this one... I didn't have email
for like 3 weeks after I posted this so I went through and fixed all my
Asteroids PCB's in one fell swoop. Here is a rundown of each of them
with the symptoms and solutions.

PCB #1:

Plays, had screen distortions as described in this thread where there
were flat spots where the beam seemed to fold back on itself in a
repeating fashion across the screen. As everyone guessed, it was the
DAC. I ordered a few from Mark C and in the interim snagged one from a
spare Omega Race cabinet just to test. Added a socket and threw in the
replacement DAC and all was good to go.

PCB #2

Dead, smelled hot somewhere. After investigation the filter caps on the
+/- 22V supplies had spewed their guts at some point a long time ago in
a galaxy far away (oh, sorry , wrong game). They were indeed warm too. I
replaced them expecting another issue but all was good. I made sure the
regulators were okay on the +/- 15V rails and they were running cool. I
can only assume that something happened on the AR that this PCB was
installed with at some point (direct AC to the caps maybe).

PCB #3

Dead, no clock on CPU. Investigated crystal, broken. Replaced, good to go.

PCB #4

Played had screen distortions similar to PCB #1 but they were less often
(higher bit). Snagged the other DAC from spare Omega Race PCB and fixed
everything right up. Good to go.

PCB #5

No screen. Had some random beeps. Put into self test, had screen and ROM
letters. Dug through my pile of manuals trying to find the correct REV
manual to match the REV on the PCB and finally found one. Looks like it
was a bad ROM at F1 (Self test showed 2). PCB was a Rev F. The ROM at F1
was oddly not a mask ROM, looked okay. Pulled it to verify and saw a pin
bent under. Straightened. Viola. All good.

PCB #6

Dead, no clock on CPU. Investigated crystal, broken. Replaced, good to go.

It ended up that I only had 6 Asteroid PCB's and not 10. The others
ended up being Asteroids Deluxe PCBs and a Lunar Lander PCB. Once I get
a bench setup again (just moved). I will start going through those bad boys.

I almost shit going through my PCB's when I saw a big fat 68000 on one
of them... but it was just a Food Fight!! :-) Solace for Quantum.

Overall, pretty boring problems on all of these, but Im not going to
complain.

jess

PS - does anyone have a few of those grey plastic rails that Atari used
for PCB brackets? I have a cabinet that is missing all of them and I
want to put it back together. I need two long ones and two short ones
(game PCB and ARII). Email off list if you have some spares. I just
found a stash of Atari LED switches that I would trade if interested.
Otherwise, let me know if you are looking for something specific.

Jess M. Askey
*ASCII Solutions - Software Design and I.T. Services*
3315 Buntwing Ln
Fort Collins, CO 80524
307-760-5270
http://www.ascii-solutions.com <http://www.ascii-solutions.com>

On 9/13/2010 11:49 AM, Fabrice GIRARDOT wrote:
> Andrew Welburn wrote:
>
>> don't forget 7474 !
>
> I agree at 100% ! :-)
>
> Regards,
> Fab
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ** Unsubscribe, subscribe, or view the archives at
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> ** Please direct other questions, comments, or problems to
> chris@westnet.com

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Received on Sun Oct 24 23:55:52 2010