I decided I was either getting very bad at this game or some mystery gremlin had changed the difficulty settings. A look at self test confirmed everything was maxed out on hard that is set by the dip switches (System2 games being odd in that some settings are menu controleld and others not). The menu controlled settings were fine and persisted after a power cylcle.
I fiddled around with the dip switches and whatever they were set to as far as the computer was concerned they were all 'on' on one bank (mainly game settings) the other bank was responding (credit settings). I figured the entire dip switch bank could have failed (I've had this on tempest when it basically fell apart) but it would be more likely to fail open for all switches.
A swift look at the schematics filled me with horror as apart from the resistors the next item in the chain was a pokey and then straght onto a data bus. I'd heard about partially dead pokeys form someone on the forum a while back where inputs fail but sound okay or vice versa therfore I decided to swap the pokeys around as credit settings are not that important and sure enough the bank contolling coin settings is now stuck 'on' but on the plus side I can now turn the 'street' timer back to 'easy' - its not like 720 is exactly easy on factory settings is it? Annoyingly however I am now missing (so far) the ransomised(?) sound effects on the training/expert select screen but since the rest of the game seems fine I think I'll leave it rather than deplete my stock of increasingly expensive pokeys....
karlcdoe2018-04-09 04:08:45
I fiddled around with the dip switches and whatever they were set to as far as the computer was concerned they were all 'on' on one bank (mainly game settings) the other bank was responding (credit settings). I figured the entire dip switch bank could have failed (I've had this on tempest when it basically fell apart) but it would be more likely to fail open for all switches.
A swift look at the schematics filled me with horror as apart from the resistors the next item in the chain was a pokey and then straght onto a data bus. I'd heard about partially dead pokeys form someone on the forum a while back where inputs fail but sound okay or vice versa therfore I decided to swap the pokeys around as credit settings are not that important and sure enough the bank contolling coin settings is now stuck 'on' but on the plus side I can now turn the 'street' timer back to 'easy' - its not like 720 is exactly easy on factory settings is it? Annoyingly however I am now missing (so far) the ransomised(?) sound effects on the training/expert select screen but since the rest of the game seems fine I think I'll leave it rather than deplete my stock of increasingly expensive pokeys....
karlcdoe2018-04-09 04:08:45