Crystal Castles problem

danpiraino1971

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Having trouble with my Crystal Castles upright. Game plays for about 5 - 10 min then locks up screen goes blank and it makes a continuous tone sound. Thought it was powersupply pcb so I rebuilt it. That wasnt it. If I go back after an hour it will start up again and play for about 10 min again then lock up. Anybody have an idea? Maybe the cpu is going bad when it heats up?
 
Having trouble with my Crystal Castles upright. Game plays for about 5 - 10 min then locks up screen goes blank and it makes a continuous tone sound. Thought it was powersupply pcb so I rebuilt it. That wasnt it. If I go back after an hour it will start up again and play for about 10 min again then lock up. Anybody have an idea? Maybe the cpu is going bad when it heats up?

Could be CPU, but I kinda doubt it. My gut feel is RAM or a faulty logic IC. Feel around for hot chips when it hangs. Or try the freeze-spray trick. If you have a spare CPU, and it's socketed on the PCB, then it's certainly easy enough to try swapping it out, too.
 
I was having a similar issue with mine and fixed it by just resetting all the chips on the PCB. We had swapped out the power supply with another tested and working Atari one but that didn't do it.

By the way, what is the "freeze trick"?
 
Could be CPU, but I kinda doubt it. My gut feel is RAM or a faulty logic IC. Feel around for hot chips when it hangs. Or try the freeze-spray trick. If you have a spare CPU, and it's socketed on the PCB, then it's certainly easy enough to try swapping it out, too.

I check out the ram chips. Have to get some freeze spray and give that a try. Does anyone know if Bob Roberts has those ram chips?
 
None of the ram chips are getting overly hot. Ran game today. Ran for over 20 min. The whole time it would play then it would lock up for a little while then it would play again. It did this over and over for athe while until it just blanked out. Sometimes the video will come back up a little corrupted when it decides to play again. Not sure if its ram. Probably the logic chips connected to them. I haven't received any ram errors.
 
Poked around on the board with my logic probe. Im getting some dead data lines from the Roms through the 74LS244 and 74LS245 (I believe those are at 2E or 2F and 3E) right on to the pokeys, which also have dead pins. Don't get a signal at all on some of the lines. Pin 15 - 19 on every rom is dead. The data lines on the cpu are holding low but nothing dead there. Im wondering if it could be the Octal Buffer/line driver (74LS244) or the Octal Bus trans. (74LS245) that are on the data lines with the roms and pokeys. I'm not so sure its the pokey chips. Something must be causing the pins on both pokeys to go dead. I have more checking to do. I'm learning.
 
Did more probing and found that im not getting any signal on data lines BD0 thru BD7. At 2E there is no signal for BD0 - BD7 or DBUS . At 2H no BD0-7 or BITRD
Im think the problem to be at 2E. If not then, 2H and 2J.
 
make sure you don't have any loose or broken wiring at or around the edge connector.

I checked that out. Nothing broken there. But when I went back again to probe the board 2E (74LS245) has signal at BD0-7 and DBUS. All the BD0-7 lines have signal, 2J (74LS244) has signal at all pins. 2H (74LS257) has signal on all but pin 15, which is the BITRD line. Also the BITRD pin at 6L ( Atari# 82S129) has no signal. 3E (74LS245) still has no signal at pins 2-9 (SBD0-7) which connects to 11E ( Atari chip to trackball input) which has no signal at pins 15 -22 (SBD0-7) then the Pokeys connected to that have no SBD0-7 signals either. Also theres no signal on the D0-7 lines between the ROMs and 2F (74LS244). 2F is connected to 3E the
D0-7 lines between them have signal. So I got signal back at 2E like I said, then somehow I lost it again. So I switched of the game unplugged the edge connectors, replugged them, turned it on and I had 2E again. I jiggled the wires at the edge connection but I didnt get any change. Not sure why it did that. Nothings broken and I inspected it a few times. Edge connector pins and wires are all good. Something happened there but I don't know what. I have BD0-7 back up but im still missing SBD0-7 at 3E, 11E and both pokeys. Missing BITRD at 2H and 6L. Missing data signals between ROMs and 2F. Im focusing on 2F and 3E now. But still wonder if something else is causing the problems with those chips or one is affecting the other.
 
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Well I don't understand how the logic works so I am at a lose over what needs to be fixed. I have +5vdc to the board and 10.3 vdc. Address lines on the mpu are stuck high and data lines are stuck low. I am getting nothing on the SBD lines or the BITRD line. clocks 1 and 2 are pulsing. R/W is stuck high. I wish I knew what would cause that. I checked the power buses down the board and I get 5.12 to 5.07 vdc down the board. so Im not loosing power. What would cause the SBD lines to show nothing when probed with the logic probe? I was thinking bad IC in the circuit, but not sure thats right. Well if you have an idea im open to suggestion about what it could be. Board is not working at all now. no sound, no coin up or blinking tackball with a blank picture on the screen.
 
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