Centipede single ROM hack

brzezicki

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Hello I just bought a couple broken centipede boards off ebay, the sockets were horrible so I thought it would be nice idea to make a hack to easily bypass the 4 ROMs and replace them with a single ROM to simplify repair of those areas.

I just created and wrote up a hack to replace the 4 2716 EPROMs on a centipede board with a single 2764 EPROM. This hack is nice as the way I've done it I make use of the test points on the boards and a couple of "blank" 28pin sockets so there are no permanent modifications to the board.

Just thought I'd share it with you all in case anyone else has centipede boards with bad ROM sockets or damage in the ROM area or just wants to learn about doing a hardware hack.

The write up/proof of concept is at
http://www.paladingrp.com/brianb/board_hacks/centipede/centipede-single-rom.html

I just modified the hack a bit and submitted the hack to small pcb fabrication place so I can just do a "plug an play" replacement for future repairs or tests... hopefully that will turn out well, I never had boards fabricated before

The next hack I want to do is more significant... to replace those 8 2101 static RAM chips with a single chip as well as removing the need for the extra descrete logic chips to control, combine and switch the RAM banks. (I have at least 2 or 3 boards that have issues in the SDRAM section and would like to make a "plug and play" replacement to bypass them :(

-brian
 
Keep the 16 rams in Space Invaders in mind when you are doing Centipede !!!!
The arcade community will thank you forever if a single or dual chip replacement can be made.
 
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