Asteroid will not be destroyed

Pepz28ss

Member

Donor 2022
Joined
Dec 13, 2020
Messages
37
Reaction score
8
Location
Warren, Michigan
Does anyone know why only on player 2 one of the asteroids does not shrink when shooting it. It remains the same size no matter how many times you hit it . you have to turn the game off and on to start over.
If I play a 1 player game it works fine.
 
I went through the test menu thinking it could be a bad ram. But everything was good.
It just started happening all of a sudden . There wasn't any features changed or any thing like that.
I was reading a long time ago about player 1 and player 2 all controlled through different chips or something like that. The issue is only on player Two, I think if it was a feature it would be for player one and two. assuming
 
I went through the test menu thinking it could be a bad ram. But everything was good.
It just started happening all of a sudden . There wasn't any features changed or any thing like that.
I was reading a long time ago about player 1 and player 2 all controlled through different chips or something like that. The issue is only on player Two, I think if it was a feature it would be for player one and two. assuming

Have you tested your 5V? What is it measuring?

Always start with the basics.
 
I tested all the voltages and they were correct. You told about the voltages in the past. The 5V was at 5.2v
 
I turned it down to 5.00 and played a game. All the asteroids were moving and it didn't freeze. But the HV diode issue started, but I was able to complete the game this time I need to play a few more after the diode issue
is repaired. Thank you for your help. I tried to pm you, but I'm probably not doing that correct either. I will try again later
 
to get some clarity. does nothing happen to the asteroid or does it split into 2 asteroids of the same size? do you get the boom sound when hit? scale is drawn on vg side but it is only drawing the data that the cpu side computed and dropped off into the vram. I don't believe that the hardware has any division in it to delineate player 1 or two except for when it flips a screen for a cocktail or its controls for players. My first guess would be to verify program roms with a eprom programmer then again maybe a bad address in a ram. might be fluky enough to fail in game but pass ram test on cpu side
 
to get some clarity. does nothing happen to the asteroid or does it split into 2 asteroids of the same size? do you get the boom sound when hit? scale is drawn on vg side but it is only drawing the data that the cpu side computed and dropped off into the vram. I don't believe that the hardware has any division in it to delineate player 1 or two except for when it flips a screen for a cocktail or its controls for players. My first guess would be to verify program roms with a eprom programmer then again maybe a bad address in a ram. might be fluky enough to fail in game but pass ram test on cpu side
Yes all the sounds are there when you shoot and hit it, also it moves a little but stays in place. the size of the asteroid stays the same.
so it always seems to be on the right hand side and closer to the top when it happens. It's only 1 asteroid the others are still moving around and you can destroy them like normal. You can shoot it hundreds of times and you will still get the points for shooting a full size asteroid each shot.
 
it sounds to me to be something on the cpu side because that is the side that tracks and computes positions. I would verify rams and roms thought about a cross at video inverter but the 8.2 volts would not do the logic chips any good. lets see what the man thinks
 
If I had to guess, I'd say there's a marginal RAM, that maybe isn't being caught by self-test (if you aren't hearing any RAM error beep codes in self-test).

RAM errors are not displayed on screen, it's only audio tones. But you can get cases where a RAM that is on the edge won't be flagged in self-test, but can still be bad during gameplay. The best way to test it would be with a Fluke or Catbox, that can stress test the RAM over many loops.

You could also maybe try lowering the board voltage from 5.0 to 4.8 or 4.7V and see if self-test throws any RAM errors, as a healthy board should still work down to 4.7V with no errors.,

Definitely a weird one. Can't say I've seen this issue before.
 
Okay I will lower the voltage to 4.8V and see if there's any tones in self-test. I will play test again first to see if I can get it to start acting up.
I can play for a few minutes before the HV diode starts acting. The diode issue just started after the stuck asteroid was present. I wasn't playing a two player game lately, until I lowered the
voltage to 5.00V per your advise the other day, and the asteroid issue didn't happen.
 
I'm confused. What issues are you still having?
The asteroids and text are getting large over a few minutes still happening. The stuck asteroid hasn't happen since I lower the voltage to 5v
I'm not sure if that fix it or it's just not acting up at this time while the balloon effect is happening'
 
The entire screen expanding is an HV diode issue. Not anything digital on the game board.

You need an HV cage rebuild.
I know I had 2 different issues, I Rebuilt the cage 3 years ago but I had a problem with the rubber boot and springs for the diode. They were burnt and a little melted, So I did a temporary fix.
 
Your temporary fix wasn't good enough.

You can't get rid of the springs and boots, and just solder the diode to the wires. The leads of the diode will weaken and burn up over time, causing the issue you're having, which is bad connections to the diode.

The diode is heating up, which is dropping the HV, which is what is causing the picture to bloom.
 
I know, but I got 3 Years of play time out of it, I'm satisfied with that. That's why it was a temporary repair I knew that when I did it. I even bought 2 diodes when I made the purchase.
I didn't get rid of the springs and boot they were just burned.
 
Back
Top Bottom