Centipede board problems

gameguy1957

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Picked up a Centipede cocktail about a week ago. Ive already rebuilt the AC power block, AR-II and one of the trackballs.

So now it comes on but I've got some board problems. The removable chips have already been pulled, cleaned, and replaced. No sound on start so I don't know if it's giving any error codes on startup. Voltgages check out ok.

Here's what's going on with the board.

On first start, cold, gets either an almost completely orange screen with one or two gibberish characters on it or gets a black screen with a column of mushrooms down the left hand side of the screen (P1 point of view), about an inch from the side of the screen.

Sometimes it will show the first two or three high scores.

After warming for a while it will start showing all of the high scores, after powering off/on.

After even more warming, and another power off/on, it will start the attract mode, lock after a few seconds, and then reset.

If I let it warm for five or ten minutes and then come back to it then it will be playing all through the attract mode. At this point I can coin it up and play.

When a section of the centipede is hit it will place a mushroom at that point on the screen (only mushrooms on the screen up to this point is the one column on the left side of the screen). When I play long enough for the scorpion to make a pass across the screen it will always cross the screen at the same row (a couple of inches from the top of the screen).

The only sound that is made is when a spider appears. There is a low rumbling sound as long as the spidper is on the screen. When it is hit or bounces off of the screen the sound stops. Other than that there are no game sounds.

If the flea drops down it leaves a continuous column of mushrooms that stop only about an inch from the bottom.

When it goes to P2 then there is a column of mushrooms a couple of inches from the right-hand side of the screen. The control panel is not currently installed on that side, so I don't have any other info on it.

Any suggestions?


Thanks,


-JM
 
:D Thanks Dok! I can take care of it.

However if you have another board with a known-good Pokey, and you're comfortable working with it, try swapping it onto the Centipede board and see what happens.
 
I think I've got a couple of spare Atari boards and will try to swap the chips first. I'll get with you if the Pokey doesn't get it in better condition.

Do you do work on other boards? I've got a couple that need some work.

-JM

:D Thanks Dok! I can take care of it.

However if you have another board with a known-good Pokey, and you're comfortable working with it, try swapping it onto the Centipede board and see what happens.
 
Swapped a couple of chips from an unknown condition Atari board. Pokey swap made a small change. Instead of one long column of mushrooms, I got a column in about the same location that started at the top of the screen and stopped about midway down the screen. Then there was a second column a couple of more inches to the right. It started mid-screen (at the distance where the other column stopped) and continued to the bottom of the screen.

Powered off/on and got the same one long column again. So the chip may have actually made no difference.

I also swapped the 6502 on the boards. That allowed the game to start immediately instead of having to warm up.

Still no sound.

I think I have one more board (untested) that should have a Pokey on it. I'm going to try to find it shortly and do another chip swap to see what happens.

-JM
 
I work on a few others: :)

Boards I fix: Centipede, Millipede, Missile Command, Crystal Castles, Liberator, Warlords, Atari Basketball




I think I've got a couple of spare Atari boards and will try to swap the chips first. I'll get with you if the Pokey doesn't get it in better condition.

Do you do work on other boards? I've got a couple that need some work.

-JM
 
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