Black Widow ROM error/question

debaser138

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I've got a Black Widow board that has been giving me some problems for awhile now and I'm finally getting around to working on it. The game board works but the high score board shows the top three scores as blank. When I go into test mode I get an error saying that the EAROM is bad along with the ROM at K/L1 (error shows E 8). I had a friends Black Widow board recently and swapped the 10 ROMs from his board to mine and it then worked fine. My high scores were showing up (I kept my EAROM on the board) and no more errors in test mode.

So today I dug up my Pocket Programmer and burned a new ROM for K/L1 (105) and it's still showing as bad in self test even tho it verifies fine with ROMident. Awhile back I had burned a new ROM for L7. That ROM is a 2716 (whereas all the others are 2532's). The only blank 2716's I have are TMS2716. If I recall correctly these odd chips require 3 different voltages. I'm thinking the Pocket Programmer 2 cannot burn these properly without an adapter.

If I do a dump of the TMS2716 I burned for L7 and verify it with ROMident, it verifies fine. I'm wondering tho if the chip was not programmed correctly (as it requires 3 voltages) and this is throwing off the self test and causing the game to not read the EAROM.

Any ideas?
 
Not only are the voltages different, but they're a different pintout. A TMS2716 is NOT compatible or a drop-in replacement for a normal 2716. It'll program and verify, but it wont work on the board.
 
Not only are the voltages different, but they're a different pintout. A TMS2716 is NOT compatible or a drop-in replacement for a normal 2716. It'll program and verify, but it wont work on the board.

That's what I thought. I'll order some non TMS2716's and see if that fixes the problem.

Also, the TMS2532's are the same as a standard 2532, correct? All the blank 2532's I have are TMS2532's. Just want to verify.

Thanks.
 
That's what I thought. I'll order some non TMS2716's and see if that fixes the problem.
Do you have any standard 2732's? Double up the image and burn it to one of those - they have the same pinout as a 2716 but have an extra address line (which should be tied high on the board, on a 2716 it's VPP).

Also, the TMS2532's are the same as a standard 2532, correct? All the blank 2532's I have are TMS2532's. Just want to verify.

Correct. The TMS2716 is the only weird one. TI came out with a 16 kilobit EPROM before Intel did, and based it on Intel's older 2708 EPROM (three voltages, etc). Then when Intel came out with their 16 kilobit ROM, they called it the 2716... and it was a single voltage NMOS part. TI learned their lesson, and the next time they changed their part number, creating the 2532, which is electrically similar to Intel's 2732, just a different pinout.

-Ian
 
Do you have any standard 2732's? Double up the image and burn it to one of those - they have the same pinout as a 2716 but have an extra address line (which should be tied high on the board, on a 2716 it's VPP).

I don't but I did find a proper 2716 and burned that. Still didn't fix the problem.

Correct. The TMS2716 is the only weird one. TI came out with a 16 kilobit EPROM before Intel did, and based it on Intel's older 2708 EPROM (three voltages, etc). Then when Intel came out with their 16 kilobit ROM, they called it the 2716... and it was a single voltage NMOS part. TI learned their lesson, and the next time they changed their part number, creating the 2532, which is electrically similar to Intel's 2732, just a different pinout.

Good to know. Thanks for the info!

In looking thru my stash of eproms, I've got a bunch of TMS2532A's. Now I know those require a different programming voltage (21v instead of 25v which the 2532's use) and my Pocket Programmer can do this. I'm assuming they are interchangeable with 2532's, correct?

I'm thinking of just burning all new ROMs for this board as I know that one or more is causing the problems I'm having. I have enough 2532A's to do this but want to make sure they will work ok before I do that.

Another thing I noticed is that the ROMs from my friends board are labeled different than mine. Mine have 8319 printed on them where his have 8132. Both are labeled 136017. Anyone know what the 4 digit number represents?
 
In looking thru my stash of eproms, I've got a bunch of TMS2532A's. Now I know those require a different programming voltage (21v instead of 25v which the 2532's use) and my Pocket Programmer can do this. I'm assuming they are interchangeable with 2532's, correct?

Correct. The only difference is the programming voltage. When being read, they're identical.

-Ian
 
I burned all new 2532 roms tonight using the TMS2532A's I had in tubes but no change. Game plays fine but the top 3 scores are blank and it's not loading what is stored on the EAROM.

The only thing I can think is that the 2716 I burned is having issues tho the checksum is fine. I don't have another 2716 I can burn so I'll have to order some of those. I wish I still had my friends Black Widow board that had the ROMs that worked on my board to do some further testing.

The weird thing is that about 7 out of the 16 TMS2532A's I tried to burned failed. I checked each one before I burned them to see if there were erased and it said they were. Tried to burn an image to them and the software says it failed. The other ROMs burned fine. I guess it's possible they were bad but that's alot of them in a row to not work. These were purchased from Mark at arcadechips.com a couple years ago. Makes me wonder if my Pocket Programmer is having issues. It doesn't have many miles on it but I've heard alot of people complain about this burner.
 
Sometimes a chip can pass the erase verify, but still not work correctly. Program it full of 00's and erase it again. Also, how long are you erasing the chips for? It's possible to damage them if you erase for too long.

I'm not familiar with the Pocket Programmer, but if it's a parallel programmer, you might have issues running the software from within Windows XP.

-Ian
 
Sometimes a chip can pass the erase verify, but still not work correctly. Program it full of 00's and erase it again. Also, how long are you erasing the chips for? It's possible to damage them if you erase for too long.

These chips were already erased. When I do erase chips, I set them in my eraser for about 8 minutes. Sometimes that doesn't erase them all the way and I have to put them in for a bit longer.

I'm not familiar with the Pocket Programmer, but if it's a parallel programmer, you might have issues running the software from within Windows XP.

It's a Parallel port Pocket Programmer. I've been using it under Windows XP for awhile now and haven't had any issues in the past. The software for it supports XP.
 
So today I picked up a brand new 2716 eprom, programmed it and no change. My friend that had the Black Widow board that had the roms that worked fine on my game made a dump of them and sent them to me. For whatever reason one of them he could not get a reliable dump from and only 1 of them was being recognized by ROMident.

So, I compared the roms he sent me from his board with the prototype roms I downloaded from andysarcade.de and only 1 of them was match (106 I believe). When I compared the prototype roms to my roms, all of them were the same except for 105 and 106, neither of which was recognized by ROMident.

So I burned new roms for 105 and 106 using the supposed prototype dumps. Fired up the game and lo and behold, my high scores were there! Went into self test, no more errors.

So that still begs the question - why in the heck is my board not working properly with the standard roms? I can't find any info regarding what differences the supposed prototype roms have.

I did dumps of the original roms on my Black Widow board (when I first started working on it) and everyone compares fine to the roms I downloaded from andysarcade.de.

In any case, I got the board working properly which is awesome. If anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them.
 
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