Another attempt at an Omega Race board repair...

ArcRevival

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Move over Omegaman ;)

So I fixed one acid damaged board ( gotta give Tronguy a shout out for hooking me up with an OR mini) and now my Omega Race is alive and well. It had a fair amount of damage, ruined traces, corroded chips that had to be socketed, through holes that were corroded , you get the idea.

I got in another boardset that I bought to try and repair. The person that previously repaired it changed out a gazillion chips on it, resoldered some chips, and put 4 traces on it. I tried out the board and it was totally dead. Would not do anything in test and spot killer was on.

I swapped in all the socketed chips from my good board and now spot killer was off, nothing showed bad in test, but graphics were corrupt. You could make out the game and play it but it looked like lightening bolts going through the picture and was all distorted. I decided to deal with the acid before troubleshooting anything else.

There was still a ton of acid damage on this board and lots of "zombie solder" as I call it because it's a dull gray color and looks like death. One area that I think get's overlooked a lot when people "repair" these are the "through holes". They get really corroded and need to be flushed out with good solder.

One thing I disagree with Omegaman on with all due respect is in how to clean solder pads. He uses chemicals, I scrape them. I feel like the board has been traumatized enough and don't want to subject it to more chemicals. To me, if a solder pad can't stand up to gentle scraping with the tip of a razor blade or hobby knife, it's not worth saving anyway. I also have a really soft metal wheel brush that I put on my makita cordless and gently clean the pads if needed, but most of the time I can get them to take solder just by gently scraping them until shiny.

I don't think there is really any wrong or right way, just different ways. I took pics and will post them later. I did a lot of work to the board and then tested it out and now I get nothing lol , but the gray solder had to be dealt with and I will figure out where I went wrong and post pics. The board is looking pretty Frankensteined out right now, but some of the resistors in the "death zone" are not common values, like 3.6k for example, so I used two 1.8ks in series. I also ran out of .01uf caps and had to use what I could find at Frys for now. Some solder pads were all ready destroyed so I had to deal with that too.
Another thing that get's overlooked, people cut chips or sockets off to replace them, then only worry about the solder side and leave the top side corroded, and put a new socket right on top of a bunch of corrosion.

Hopefully I can get this one going. Stay tuned...
 
Sounds like you have a whole lot of work ahead of you. Good luck with the board. It sounds like its nearly hopeless. I'd rather repair a board that is broken in two than one that is severly acid damaged.

I bought a OR board off EBay a few years ago and its one of the cleanest and least damaged ones I've ever seen. I never have gotten around to testing it. My OR cabaret quit awhile back and I need to fix it first. When you turn it on it sits there and clicks the coin counter over and over. I dread digging into it, knowing what a pain ORs can be.
 
Dang -- you're a glutton for punishment! Good luck! :)
 
I have most of the acid damage taken care of, now I just need to troubleshoot it.

You've almost inspired me to finish troubleshooting my last dead OR board. I successfully revived 4 boards, but I was so burnt out by the time I got to this last one, I swore I would never fix another OR board again. :D
 
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