Bubbles Problem?

bjk7382

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I just got a weird glitch while playing a game of Bubbles. The game has been playing perfectly for over a year, and never any problems with it.

I was playing, got quite a bit of the stuff on the screen, got close to the drain, it made a weird noise, and all sound cut out, and then it went to what is in the video. The broom doesn't move around the bubble when the joystick is moved, there is no sound, and all of the objects left in the sink disappear when you go over them, including the drain, and razors!

http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y8/bjk7382/?action=view&current=850A0119.flv

I hope this is a just a crazy one time glitch and there is nothing wrong with my game. All 3 power leds are on the power board, and the game plays fine after I hit the reset button on the cpu board.

Crazy.
 
show us a pic of your power supply with the 3 LEDs on it. It sounds like you may be having a cap failure and it is trying to reset.
 
Here is a pic of the power supply. It does have the bob roberts rebuild kit on it, along with new connectors about a year ago. The connector that has started burning has new pins on it and no longer gets hot. (I do want to buy new Trifurcon pins and some new headers, but the connectors are cool)

The bridge rectifier does get pretty warm, is is supposed to. It's almost too hot to touch. Also the large blue cap under the big black one gets pretty hot.

IM003046.jpg
 
The connector coming from the transformer is bad and needs to be replaced as well as the header that it attaches to. It does NO good to just replace the connectors if the header is burnt. The new connector will last roughly 6 to 9 months before it burns again.

Can't tell from the pic, but if the bridge (BR1) is mounted flush to the board it will get smokin' hot. It needs to be raised up off of the board for proper cooling.
 
Yeah, I have been planning on replacing that connector/header for a while, but keep putting it off.

And yeah, the bridge terminals are only about 1/4 inch above the board. So should I just add a larger gap in there, or should there also be a heatsink attached?
 
no heat sink needed, larger gap would help. It is an older bridge, replace it and leave a slightly larger gap when you install it.
 
Thanks for the tips, I will get that stuff ordered when my taxes come back. I plan on ordering a bunch of stuff for a few different projects that stalled out due to lack of funds...

That is a pretty strange glitch though, right. I have seen resets, rug patterns, and ram errors come up on williams games, but never anything like in the video.
 
Sorry to barge in, but that was a known bug. When Tim was writing Bubbles he noticed that memory to memory transfers occurred at 1 clock tick per transfer. Stack transfers occured with all registers per clock tick, so he wrote all of the internal memory transfers using the stack. The glitch usually happpens when there are a large number of objects on screen. Fixing the power supply cable is a good idea, but it won't fix the glitch. It will happen randomly. There are no known bug fixes for this.ken
 
Sorry to barge in, but that was a known bug. When Tim was writing Bubbles he noticed that memory to memory transfers occurred at 1 clock tick per transfer. Stack transfers occured with all registers per clock tick, so he wrote all of the internal memory transfers using the stack. The glitch usually happpens when there are a large number of objects on screen. Fixing the power supply cable is a good idea, but it won't fix the glitch. It will happen randomly. There are no known bug fixes for this.ken

Ken, your insight is always welcomed.
 
Sorry to barge in, but that was a known bug. When Tim was writing Bubbles he noticed that memory to memory transfers occurred at 1 clock tick per transfer. Stack transfers occured with all registers per clock tick, so he wrote all of the internal memory transfers using the stack. The glitch usually happpens when there are a large number of objects on screen. Fixing the power supply cable is a good idea, but it won't fix the glitch. It will happen randomly. There are no known bug fixes for this.ken

Thanks for the info. I can definitely say it happens very rarely. I have played hundreds of games, and this is the first time I have seen it. I just hope it doesn't happen when I am at a really high score, because it needs to be reset if it happens.

I am aiming for the world record. I know it seems like a lot, but once I get in the zone, I can get 400k-500k easy, It's just working out when the brushes speed up and the type of sink that is next (all roach, no roach, ect..) I think I will be able to get it.
 
No problem. I just didn't want you guys sitting and ripping the machine apart trying to fix a problem that can't be fixed (at least not without fixing the software).

ken
 
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