Be Honest ????

[karlcdoe]

Hmmm. After so many years and so many repairs the full list might make for sobering reading but one I do recall is that I tried reflowing every single pin on a Dragon Breed bootleg bottom board once to fix a gfx fault that went away if you flexed the board. It took ages and didn't make it any better but no doubt it will make it very hard to find the actual fault if I ever want to fix it in future -these days I'd suspect a bad track first and try so find the schematics first. Oh, and dont hook up any power except the GND and +5v line when testing a board unless the hardware absolutely requires it (eg +12v/-12v rams) as foolish shorts are another favourite. I made some fine pcb tracks vanish in magic smoke on a caveman ninja one like that whilst foolishly poking around near the sound section. To be fair the actual number of fouls ups to wins is strongly in the win section for me but never work on anything if you are tired or being distracted by something.

 

[Venom]

Managed to blow my laptop up today i use for downloading torrents and creating SD Cards. Fucked up the faulty internal cabling and has some nice little sparks and has now flatlined.

Its been back from the dead several times, so took out the parts and through the sod in the bin. I'll have some time of downloading and pick a second hand one or maybe a nuc or something instead, when I can be bothered. Just a lot easier to have an internal SD card reader , a lot of ne laptops dont have that now.

 

[Martinmurphy30]

Currently working on a 1943 board for a mate, nice zilog z80 chip was dead, removed and socketed the board put my known good test z80 in its place..... backwards 😔 now it's dead too! Shit happens, also found 2 of the data bus lines short to 5v by a resistor array that died which probably killed the original zilog chip, and the ram...but all part of the process!🤣😂 must get a repair log up for it, it been a marathon so far!

 

[Lurch666]

Just managed to blow my test PSU by picking up a screwdriver and somehow unintentionally poking the tip into one of the many vent holes in the PSU.
Got a loud pop and the mains breaker tripped.

Looks like my fixing is on hold until a replacement arrives.

 

[Venom]

At least you are still alive !!

 

[Lurch666]

I've plugged myself into the mains a few times and it aint killed me yet but this time didn't even get a shock since I was only holding the plastic handle.

 

[Retroman839]

Thanks guys you have made me feel , well , a little better. The truth is I knew what I was doing and continued , Why do we do that ? I knew that removing a 42 pin Mask rom would cause issues as this is a Konami and we all know that sucking the solder out of the holes only removed 80% so cutting is your only option, But again , I proceeded to use heat to remove it so i could test it.

Ironic thing is I pulled the correct faulty part , But fitting the new one made its worse after I wrecked a load of the pads.

NOTE TO SELF :- Just cut the F*****G things off next time !!!!!

I have fixed everything I can see i wrecked but still missing graphics This is before I wrecked it :-

View attachment 9027

And after i wrecked it :-

View attachment 9028

The rom tests are now working but obviously in reality its not (Was faulty when I first tested hence for replacing the mask rom) , There is 50% missing from the sprites completly missing. I have probed and tested and as far as I can tell everything is ok and connected. No dead links, The schematics are missing some info as far as I can tell :-

View attachment 9029

It references CHARAU, OBJCT & SET1 (Where 8L is , the one i replaced) But is no where in the schematics as far as I can tell so I cant even check properly. I am assuming it goes to the custom chip to be outputted ?? I was up till 3 this morning trying to rectify what should have been 2 hours work.

Has to be something I did when I cocked the rom swap up , but what ? (Thinking out loud here!)

Dave,

P.S I am sitting in a corner with my hands on my head

View attachment 9030

Looks like sprites in wrong place rather than missing

 

[CMYKhazi-Dan]

Turned on my Naomi Virtua Golf for some Springtime joy after hibernation to be greeted by what looked like vertical collapse 😭 turned off, restarted without VGA plugged in green version now, oh fukk. Turn off. Let's have a look... Remote board not connected from when I tested it on my other Naomi cab.

Plugged it in, happy days 😅

Thought I'd fakkd another one 😆

Edit: ok, no disaster but why do things often blow up when I turn them on!!?

 

[TheDaddy]

- I was young, about 22? I thought I'd try the heat-gun method to remove a soldered chip on a Namco Galaxian (not the common Midway type) just from lazyness really. Needless to say I managed to set fire to it and ruin it.
- On 2 seperate occassions connected Taito board sets the wrong way round and spent weeks replacing about a dozen chips to fix them.
- Electrocuted myself 3 times (that I can remember) on monitor yokes (bloody cocktail tables!)
- Put pcbs in a dishwasher on too high a setting with VERY hard water, etching all flaked off.
All part of the fun....

Lucky boy !

Dave.