Captain Commando CPS-1

DarrenF

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OK, this one is taking me a bit out of my comfort zone (the 1980s, esp pre-JAMMA)...

Got a Captain Commando PCB on the test bench. It powers up to a solid red screen. I understand these CPS-1 PCBs have a suicide battery. Is a solid red screen the (or a) symptom of a suicided PCB? (which would presumably mean I need to follow the instructions at http://www.arcadecollecting.com/dead/dead.html)?
 
Sounds like it suicided. What's the voltage on the battery?
 
Excellent. A response from an expert in the field (based on the repair logs I just found online)...

Voltage on the battery is essentially nil.

For some reason, I expected (presumably based on things I've read) there would be _some_ signs of life on a "suicided" PCB. I thought it might run but with corrupted gfx, or at least have some audio when one of the program EPROMs removed... but I admit zero real-life experience on this.

So it sounds like I need to mod my C board and get some 120ns 4Mbit EPROMs. Can anyone recommend a source? Bob Roberts lists 27C4096, but it's always a mystery with him what speed EPROM you'll recieve...
 
I've got plenty of ROMs... you should download the code first and see how big the files are. They may be broken into 1Mb ROM files and not 4Mb. It's been awhile since I messed with them to remember which they are.

128KB = 1 megabit = 27C301 (or the common 27C010 if you move some jumpers on the B board)
512KB = 4 megabit = 27C4096 or equivalent.

I don't think I have the ROMs on my site at the moment but I do have them here.

RJ
 
Thanks for the knowledge.

I got the dead battery off the C board, cut those two traces, and tied the pins high.

I found a couple 27C4096-120 EPROMs (which is what I need, there are two 512kB files in the resurrection zip). Turns out my programmer, even though it has 40pins, requires a seperate adapter module (which I don't have yet) for these EPROMs. So I'll have to order that before I can see if this fixes the board...

Thanks again. I'll follow up in a week or so.
 
Got the adapter from Canada today.
Erased two 27C4096 EPROMs that were on the PCB.
Re-programmed with the files from the Dead Battery Society webpage.
Re-installed, and it booted right up.
Another PCB resurrected.

Thanks for the help, guys.
 
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