Seriously belated thanks....

karlcdoe

karlcdoe

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To Chris Hardy and Andy Welburn for making helpful suggestions (over a year ago) about my Asteroids graphics fault that enabled me to fix it with the first chip I changed...
 
Yes, there was some luck involved :) Maybe I should get a better 'scope since I'll be damned if I could get a conclusive fault diagnosis using it, or a logc probe. My 'fix' in the was to piggy back a chip on top of the suspect item and note the improvement in the glitch....
 
 
 
karlcdoe

karlcdoe

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Ha! Sounds like a good old fashioned operator repair to me :) Annoyingly I was forced to remove the old device since it was still dragging the other chip down... has survived an about 8 hours running time so far. I also fixed the missing saucer fire sound by changing the 555 timer so I must be on a roll. (phut!)
 
Better than our next suspect: Empire Strike Back, replaced known faulty slapstic (funnily enough with one I think you programmed for me). Problem fixed, two hours play/soak test later and I thought I was suffering visual impairment from inhaling too many solder fumes but according to self test it would appear there is a problem with the matrix (insert naff joke here). That means this board set has been playable for around 2 hours in five years :) Nice!  
 
At least I entertain some notion of fixing such old technology, how I'm going to resolve the missing scaled sprites problem without schematics on my 'modern' 1986 Outrun board is beyond me, I presume it's be something fun like a knackered custom chip. On the plus side I have two 'genuine' (c)Beta Outrun's and a huge quantity of wire so I guess I'll plumb that sucker in, not sure about the steering shaker though as mechanically they were totally diferent.  Still, must admit I've banished Outrun to the garage for the moment and stuck my Sega rally in its place.....
 
 
 
 
 

--- On Wed, 15/10/08, Mike Coates <mike@the-coates.com> wrote:

From: Mike Coates <mike@the-coates.com>
Subject: Re: [uk-vac] Seriously belated thanks....
To: uk-vac@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, 15 October, 2008, 6:11 PM

what is this 'solder' you speak of, sounds interesting ...

inbox@phillipeaton.com wrote:
> Did you bother to solder it on top or just leave it there as is? ;-)

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