Re: Assistance with Star Wars w/Clay's ESB Kit --- SW novram clobber?

From: Mark Capps <catfishh_at_bellsouth.net>
Date: Sun Feb 20 2011 - 20:12:09 EST

Hi,

I have a new batch of nos X2212p/5's that are working fine if you need them.

Mark,
www.arcadechips.com

On 2/20/2011 18:38, Jess Askey wrote:
> I don't have my schematics in front of me but I have an early version
> of Clay's kit where there is no NVRAM switching. In my setup each game
> clobbers the NVRAM settings and both are factory reset on powerup.
>
> Clay did mention that he had some issues with certain 2212's that
> seemed to be incompatible. Here is the important part of the thread
> that Clay discusses the issues about using non Xicor 2212's..
>
> "Chris" <gougeman@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1115578961.363114.202110@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> > Clay, can you clarify what you mean by "very slim success" with MarkC's
> > X2212s? I received my ESB kit this past week (thanks!) and was going to
> > order some NOVRAMs from him to fill the empty spot, but if they have
> > issues...
>
> Well, (and I mean this with no disrespect whatsoever to MarkC or his
> parts--
> he's a good guy and he gets a lot of hard-to-find chips for really
> reasonable prices) I kinda think that the X2212's Mark has were not
> made by
> Xicor and are possibly/probably an X2212 "like" part that someone else
> put
> out there or remarked or whatever...
>
> A few reasons:
>
> 1) they're not marked like Xicor marked their parts when they were in
> production
> 2) they're not marked like the "lifetime buy" parts Xicor did on their
> last
> production run (I bought direct from them a "lifetime" supply (so I
> thought!) when they EOL'd the X22C12 and Mark's are not like the ones
> I had)
> 3) they're pretty unreliable running on the SW/ESB multigame (probably
> 90%
> fallout-- I quit using them)
> 4) some Ham radio guys (they're the ones I sold most of my original
> X2212's
> to) have problems with them too and now specify "real Xicor" chips
> instead.
>
> I have no doubt that there's something about my daughtercard design that
> *makes* them not work well, but I also know that the "real" X22C12's I'd
> been using for the last ~9 years functioned just fine.
>
> So, I'd say to get Mark's parts, swap one onto a different board that
> doesn't mind the difference (like Food Fight or FireFox or maybe a
> non-multigamed Star Wars?) and put the (original) X2212 on the SW/ESB
> daughterboard instead.
>
> -Clay
>
>
>
>
> On 2/20/2011 11:42 AM, Altan (GAPAS) wrote:
>> I'm lucky to have acquired a Star Wars with Clay's ESB kit. I
>> believe the kit is v3.91 (but I should have written it down when I
>> took the boardset out).
>>
>> I've dug through messages on vectorlist.org, RGVAC as well as KLOV
>> forums but haven't found a solution to what I'm seeing.
>>
>> When I got the game, I realized the Star Wars part was not storing
>> settings. It would keep defaulting to the DIP switches. The ESB
>> game was storing settings. I replaced a single 2212 on Clay's PCB.
>> I picked the 2212 that the v3.x manual indicates should be swapped
>> from the SW PCB to the Clay kit. I guessed that a swapped 2212 would
>> have more used cycles than the one provided with the kit.
>>
>> I'm assuming this is the 2212 used for SW novram. Is that right?
>>
>> The reason I believe the above is because the Star Wars game now
>> stores the settings. That's a good improvement. ESB also continues
>> to store the settings.
>>
>> I thought everything was perfect until I realized that switching from
>> ESB to Star Wars --- with the game turned off --- causes Star Wars to
>> drop its settings. FWIW, since the games individually store their
>> settings, this tends to indicate no voltage issues going to the 2212
>> part.
>>
>> I've heard of some problems people occasionally have with the kit,
>> but this one seems unique. Since I don't have a schematic or theory
>> of operation for the mod, it's difficult to try and debug the issue.
>> For example, if I find out that the 2212 I replaced is actually the
>> ESB novram then things are acting very strange. I wonder if
>> something is messed up where both games are using a single 2212?
>>
>> I appreciate any assistance that is offered.
>>
>> ... Altan
>> www.aaarpinball.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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>> chris@westnet.com
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Received on Sun Feb 20 20:12:27 2011

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