Dead board diagnosis—where do you start?

deaniatley

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Picked up a Midway Galaga that's completely dead, no video, no sound, nothing. Curious what everyone's go to first steps are when tackling a non-booting board.
Do you hit power/voltages first, swap chips, scope it, or shotgun the usual suspects? Would love to hear different approaches...
 
Here are a bunch of related threads you can spend time with. I just searched for threads that have posts by me containing 'logic probe' in them. Some may be more applicable than others. But that should give you examples of how people go about starting to troubleshoot dead boards.

There are also many more here, this was just a quick search for threads I know I've posted in. If you repeat the search but remove my name, you'll find more.


Also see these threads that are all about 'dead galaga':

 
Here are a bunch of related threads you can spend time with. I just searched for threads that have posts by me containing 'logic probe' in them. Some may be more applicable than others. But that should give you examples of how people go about starting to troubleshoot dead boards.

There are also many more here, this was just a quick search for threads I know I've posted in. If you repeat the search but remove my name, you'll find more.


Also see these threads that are all about 'dead galaga':

Awesome, thanks for pulling those up! 🙌 I'll dig through the "logic probe" threads, looks like exactly the kind of walkthroughs I need.
Appreciate the Galaga links too, that's gold. I'll start with power checks and then break the probe out.
 
1 connections
2 power
3 ... for Galaga PCB specific - a renewal kit
4 read KLOV repair threads

(Feel free to mix and match)
Don't forget a visual inspection for any physical damage, cold solder, bad cables, broken or missing chips, damaged traces, etc.

Scott C.
 
there is also a sticky right in this forum section.
 
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