Arcade Collecting > Restorations & repair
Asteroids Deluxe resurrection
ChadTower:
Had one... this one was pretty much untouched from the original op that owned it. He put it in storage when it died and never touched it again. I didn't have much for soldering or repair skills back then. About a year ago I gave the board to a local repair guy to fix and he still has it - only now he swears I gave him a regular Asteroids board. I need to push him on that and get it back.
Kevin Mullins:
I had to repair my original boardset when I got the first machine....nothing worked in it.
I used Randy Fromm's technique for testing TTL chips and found like ten suspects and after changing those it fired right up.
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: Kevin Mullins on April 05, 2009, 06:16:54 pm ---I had to repair my original boardset when I got the first machine....nothing worked in it.
I used Randy Fromm's technique for testing TTL chips and found like ten suspects and after changing those it fired right up.
--- End quote ---
With as much as I still have to learn my skills are so much more than they were when I was in that thread... maybe if I read through Randy's stuff now I'd actually get it. I'll review it, thanks for the pointers. Is that only in the book or would it be on what was his web page? I did download his website before it went away.
Kevin Mullins:
I think there was a spot about it on his site...... but honestly don't recall where I got it from. I have a copy of his books, I might have stumbled across it in one of those.
But the jist of it is to use a DMM with the positive lead on ground and probing each chip looking for dead shorts. If a dead short is found, verify whether it has direct connection to ground somewhere/somehow. I f no direct connection to ground is found, consider it suspect.
Level42:
--- Quote from: Kevin Mullins on April 05, 2009, 09:03:24 pm ---I think there was a spot about it on his site...... but honestly don't recall where I got it from. I have a copy of his books, I might have stumbled across it in one of those.
But the jist of it is to use a DMM with the positive lead on ground and probing each chip looking for dead shorts. If a dead short is found, verify whether it has direct connection to ground somewhere/somehow. I f no direct connection to ground is found, consider it suspect.
--- End quote ---
Hah, I like these kind of tracing methods. They usually are much quicker than the scientific ways !
The board repairs I've done so far (all on the Centi) was by smelling an overheated component, then feeling what got overheated, turned out to be a transistor. From there, I followed the schematics.
With the audio issue I "fingered" the board around the audio amp chip. Sound really changed depending on where I held my finger. (Of course I had discharged myself prior to doing the fingering).
Another trick: If you have a completely frozen board, short +5V to the reset pin for a couple of seconds and see if the game starts.....
I would love to have Randy's book or stuff, is it still available ?
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