Atari System 1 - Garbage on Screen

Brandonh1091

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So, Roadblasters decided to crap out on me the other night. I've come to the conclusion that it's physically impossible for all of my cabinets to work at one time, lol. On startup, all I get is the garbled mess in the picture below. I actually got the game to boot into test mode once, and was able to play the game for all of about 10 seconds before it reset and went back to the same screen.

I've already tested the voltages across the System 1 board, and I'm getting a steady 5+. I'm going to check the usual tonight,...cold/cracked solder joints, etc., but I was just curious if anyone's had a problem similar to this, and what the culprit ended up being?
 

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Reseat the Daughter board.

Is the garbage static or does it change?

If it's static, could be CPU, so if you have a logic probe check the CPU for Clock, and activity on address and data lines.
 
Reseat the Daughter board.

Seconded, reseat the daughter board. I cleaned the edge with some deoxit and wiped it down well and it did wonders for the stability of the game. I also have a problem that my main board was left loose so it doesn't work well if its not slightly at an angle, I'm guessing some trace or cold solder comes loose enough when it's straight.
 
Sorry for the late reply guys. I haven't had much time to spend down in the basement this week.

The garbage on the screen is static for the most part, and completely removing the daughter board from the equation still gives the same results, so I'm definitely leaning towards a System 1 board problem like you guys mentioned.

Also, it does have the original big blues Mike, so I'll look into that too.
 
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