Centipede board issue

modessitt

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Okay, so I need to go help someone who's having problems with a Centipede. This guy is 45 mins away, and I already gave him 4 Centipede boards of mostly unknown condition (although one should have come up mostly), but he's having problems. His wiring harness had been hacked, and I gave him some original Centipede connectors I saved from a dying Centipede, and he wired them in and is still getting garbage.

So, I dug through my stacks and found another Centipede of unknown condition. I built a JAMMA adapter (minus the +/- 22) that I could take along to test his boards in one of his JAMMA cabs. I hooked up the board I had here (in the hope I could take a known working board along) and got the same garbage screen he was getting (he sent me a pic). I checked voltages, then pulled all the chips to clean them. Most of the ROM legs were completely black, and of course each chip had 2 or 3 legs break off. As I haven't received my ROM burner yet, I went ahead and repaired the broken legs and got everything back together.

SUCCESS!! I have a working Centipede. Well, sort of.

It seems I have no mushrooms. Or rather, I have none to start with (nor in attract mode). I can move around and shoot the Centipede, and when I get a hit I get a mushroom there. When I finish the level, those mushrooms count up and I get a new Centipede that I can shoot to get more mushrooms. But as soon as I end a game and start another, I'm back to no mushrooms again.

Obviously, I need to replace all the ROMs, and the 2 other similar-sized chips on the board (that also needed leg repair). Will this most likely fix the issue?
 
Interesting. I thought the pokey was for the sound? Okay, I'll give it a shot. i'm sure I have something else Atari around that uses the same pokey...

Pokey also has a random # gen. If itz broke, not so random. :p
 
How important is the -01 version of the pokey?? I checked my other Atari boards, and all I'm finding are -03's...
 
Okay, i figured the -03 would either work or not work - and not damage the board if it didn't - and I now have a working board.

My trip down was moved to tomorrow, so I'll be able to take a working boardset along.

Thanks for the help, y'all...
 
Gotta love the easy fixes! :D


Okay, i figured the -03 would either work or not work - and not damage the board if it didn't - and I now have a working board.

My trip down was moved to tomorrow, so I'll be able to take a working boardset along.

Thanks for the help, y'all...
 
Gotta love the easy fixes! :D

Not so fast my friend.

Well, it figures since I didn't have an audio amp for testing the sound, but the sound doesn't work.

I got down there and found my board didn't work in his machine either. After verifying the monitor and board were fine, we finally figured out the weird picture was being caused whenever the coin door was plugged in. Then we had a jerky picture and a hum bar, and that was fixed after replacing the brick with a rebuilt one.

But - we had no sound. I tried swapping several different pokeys on, and it didn't help. Now that we knew the other issues were fixed, we went back to another of the Centipede boards I gave him, and we got a 100% working board with sound. Tried swapping pokeys with the no sound board, and still had no sound on that board, and still had sound on the other, so it isn't the pokeys.

Any ideas as to why I have no sound?

I've got a few other Centipede boards (one with 0's and P's in the bottom half of the screen) to fix. Any good troubleshooting info sites for this out there?
 
But - we had no sound. I tried swapping several different pokeys on, and it didn't help. Now that we knew the other issues were fixed, we went back to another of the Centipede boards I gave him, and we got a 100% working board with sound. Tried swapping pokeys with the no sound board, and still had no sound on that board, and still had sound on the other, so it isn't the pokeys.

Any ideas as to why I have no sound?

Probably the LM324 @ J10.

I've got a few other Centipede boards (one with 0's and P's in the bottom half of the screen) to fix. Any good troubleshooting info sites for this out there?

If they play, but have the wrong chars, etc, then it's likely a bad playfield RAM. Try switching into test mode and count the beeps and/or look for an error code. The error codes are listed in the manual under Self Test.
 
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