Asteroids Intermittently Working

r2084

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Having a strange problem with Asteroids. Turned it on and got a blank screen, both start buttons were blinking rapidly. Went around back and opened the back panel, thought maybe the cut off button wasn't pressed or something. Opened and closed back panel and it started working again. Played a couple of quick games and then it quit again during game play. Same thing, blank screen with rapid blinking start buttons. Tried searching for an answer but didn't see anything. Any help with this is appreciated.
 
Can you start a game and play with no video if yest its probably the monitor. If the deflection LED on in the monitor PCB? If not than I had one that I sent to Elektronforge for PCB reair that fixed the issue.

Of coarse check your power to the PCB first, Asteroids has test points clearly labeled.
 
Thanks for the tips, I had no idea where to start looking really. I'll have to check those things a little later tonight. I think test mode won't work b/c the screen is blank, no? It looks like the screen is getting shut off, but not completely sure. Sorry I'm not very technical with these things, I just like playing them!

I'll report back here after giving it another look later.
 
Having a strange problem with Asteroids. Turned it on and got a blank screen, both start buttons were blinking rapidly. Same thing, blank screen with rapid blinking start buttons. Tried searching for an answer but didn't see anything. Any help with this is appreciated.

Rapidly blinking start button LEDs on Asteroids indicates that it's "watchdogging". Essentially, the CPU isn't "checking in" often enough to indicate that everything is kosher, so another circuit resets the CPU.

This condition can be caused by a wiiiide variety of faults, but some of the most common, and easiest to deal with are:

1) bad power supply voltage. Check your voltage on the game PCB, and check for AC-ripple. If the DC voltage is off, adjust it on the AR board and/or re-pin the edge connectors' power and ground pins. If it has excessive AC ripple on the 5V line, consider replacing your "big blue" capacitor on the xformer block.

2) poor connections at the sockets of the CPU and/or EPROMs. Try carefully reseating (removing and replacing) the CPU and game code EPROMs. If they are causing intermittent connections, ultimately the sockets will need to be replaced, but reseating may fix it for a while.
 
Tried playing a game in regular mode and got nothing, the start buttons just kept blinking, blank screen, no sound. I put it in test mode and the start buttons lit up solid, no blinking. There was no sound and the screen was blank. Could see a glow in the end of the monitor neck, so it must be getting power. I thought I smelled a very faint ozone type smell, but could have been my imagination. I see an LED that is lit on the main board. I'll poke around some more when I get a chance and let you guys know what else I find. Sorry for the non technical jargon I use, don't really know what I'm doing, so all of your help and advice is much appreciated, thanks!
 
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