Asteroids Cocktail Troubles

[csa3d]

The only way to know that for sure is to meter them. Does the manual specify what chip is bad for one beep ?

According to the manual:

However.. this page of the manual is printed WRONGLY because there are no ram chips at D2 nor E2... but rather at L2 and M2 (cross referencing the parts list of the same manual proves this).

So given that If I take out all but the first ram chip at L2, I get one high beep, one low beep.. I'd say Ram position 1 is working. When I put the second chip in M2 position, I get low beep low beep.. which is odd considering you are suppose to hear a high beep for every good ram which passes.

Also weird is that if I boot up the machin IN test mode, I hear only 1 low beep. If I then either hit the reset button or flip the test switch on and off again, I hear the tone patterns I describe above.

-csa

 

[csa3d]

I have received verified working boards for my machine (thanks road.runner !), so I thought I'd make some progress on this. I am however, stuck once again and looking for advice.

I managed to create a small fire on my HV board (see thread here) and now both verified working game PCBs (Asteroids and a modded Asteroids Deluxe) do not pass self test, only beeping one test tone. I was hoping that even though I'm an idiot on the monitor front, that the game pcbs would still play blind or at least pass self test audibly.

What next? I just want this game to live, please help!

-csa

 

[dezbaz]

I read your post on arcade controls

I see Bit_Slicer found and fixed the problem

Good effort

I have the same REV board as your cocktail, it too has a RAM problem, so I can't use the Asteroids Test pdf either as the RAM locations don't correspond

I wonder if anyone has resolved this with an amended troubleshooting guide?

 

[braze]

So given that If I take out all but the first ram chip at L2, I get one high beep, one low beep.. I'd say Ram position 1 is working. When I put the second chip in M2 position, I get low beep low beep.. which is odd considering you are suppose to hear a high beep for every good ram which passes.

/Rant On
The asteroids RAM test (and many of the atari 6502 RAM tests) are very simplistic,
usually stop on first failure, have aliasing issues, yada yada yada, and in many
cases like this one yield confusing and/or conflicting results.
/Rant Off

For the asteroids multigame I have completely rewritten the RAM tests and testmode
from scratch, hopefully improving on many of the short comings of the original tests
and adding new functionality as well. Still work in progress at this point, but in the
end will provide yet another tool to help debug these problems. -Scott