modessitt
Volunteer: Encyclopedia Submission Moderator
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?
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?