Atari 4 Player Football - GARBAGE!

texasmame

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No, not the game - what I have on the screen. ;)

Just random junk on there - it will occasionally scroll (the wrong way, even) but mostly just sits there. No sounds. Nothing does anything. Can't enter self-test, give credits, etc.

Okay, what I've done so far:

- Reseated/cleaned all removable IC from the main PCB AND reflowed all their pins
- Reflowed everything on the AR board
- Made sure 5v is coming from AR and 5V is at the test points on main PCB
- 9v coming from AR for the 10.3v but Bob Roberts says that shouldn't cause any problems
- 5v is showing at the game ROMs and at the edge connector where appropriate
- No defects found upon visual inspection of main PCB

Lastly, the reset button on the main PCB seems to do nothing as well.

Any assistance is appreciated! :)
 
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Sounds like a board problem(s), but a quick and easy step is to simply bypass the AR boards and put the game PCB on a switching PS. In the past, that has helped me narrow down the source of problems on my XOs and can be done in a few minutes.

Does the game PCB show any signs of prior re-work? Mine had some splashed solder under the sound chip that shutdown all the sounds.
 
I had pretty good success piggybacking the RAM and replacing those that made changes. Do you have a logic probe?
 
Sounds like a board problem(s), but a quick and easy step is to simply bypass the AR boards and put the game PCB on a switching PS. In the past, that has helped me narrow down the source of problems on my XOs and can be done in a few minutes.

Does the game PCB show any signs of prior re-work? Mine had some splashed solder under the sound chip that shutdown all the sounds.

Shows some signs but seems to be limited to the connectors and two chips. Again, the connectors show 5v getting to them and to the ROM chips on the other end of the boards, so thinking it's not a PS issue. . .
 
I had pretty good success piggybacking the RAM and replacing those that made changes. Do you have a logic probe?

This I may have to try. Why are you suspecting the RAM? I would think RAM if the game was actually coming up but had odd visual artifacts. No, just a digital multimeter here.
 
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