Blitz/ NBA 2000 will not boot

[fairway2000]

I have Blitz/NBA that will not. I have good power out of the power sap.
The hard drive light flashes a couple times. I get a "d" on the board most of the time
I looks to be rebooting over and over. Nothing ever comes on display

Thanks for any help

[MonMotha]

Not likely a monitor or display issue.

On Seattle (and likely Vegas) boards, this usually means the hard drive is dead.  There is a DIP switch to turn on ROM based power up tests.  It is generally off as they take a while.  When these test are disabled, the first thing that puts video out is the program loaded from the drive, so the board will appear dead if the hard drive isn't working.  Eventually, the watchdog bites and resets the board resulting in the reset loop you've noted.

Turn these tests on, and see what happens.  If it complains that the disk is bad or gets all the way to the end then resets, the hard drive is dead and needs to be replaced.  It's a common failure.  Try reseating the cables just to be sure they haven't worked loose, too.

[fairway2000]

Thanks. I did test and took a picture.

[MonMotha]

Looks like you have a bad interrupt controller.  I don't remember where this is on Vegas (manual unfortunately doesn't have a schematic for this board), and you'd probably have to cannibalize another Vegas board to get it, anyway.  It's also going to be a surface mount package that you probably don't want to solder.  Could also be bad solder joints in that area, though I've not noted Vegas boards to have that issue, and you probably won't want to touch it up anyway due to the tight pitch.  I'd suggest just getting a new, working boardset.   You may only need one of the boards (SIO looks bad, but the interrupt routing may happen on the CPU board - the video board is fine).

[fairway2000]

Thanks. Do you know what area and witch board it is on? It could be a bad solder joint. It has had done this before but reboot would fix.

[MonMotha]

I'll check next time I'm at my friend's place.  He has a Vegas setup.  I'm not sure that there's a dedicated chip for this.  Inspect carefully the Altera CPLD near the board-to-board on the SIO board.  They might have the IRQ logic chucked in there.

[fairway2000]

It was the hard drive

Thanks

[MonMotha]

Hum, I seem to recall that when the HDD IRQ locks up on Seattle that the other interrupts keep working.  Apparently that's different on Vegas.  I'll have to remember that.  The two setups are similar but different in a few subtle ways.

Good to know you got it working.