Defender repair headed south, plz help!

Mrwitty

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Hi, I'm in a bad place with my defender right now. I had a rug/reset issue, so after much reading here I bought a 4164 ram upgrade and the harness from Riptor here at Klov, the game seemed to be more stable for longer, but still reset etc. then I went to turn the game on a couple weeks ago, and sometimes I got nothing, monitor was black, although when I powered down u could see a flash of light disappearing on the screen-so something was happening. Anyway I ordered the battery upgrade and p/s rebuild kit from bob roberts, I reflowed everything and lightly sanded the pins, everything went well I thought, I have 4.90 volts now at the ram chips 11.98 at the test points on the p/s but I now I still get nothing , no start up noise, I tried resetting, I'm wondering if it is stuck in reset? When I try to soundboard "reset" button I get the free ship sound, but it just cycles that same sound over and over. I have a decent test meter tonight here at the house, does anyone have any ideas? I have reseated all the roms as well. Help please?!?
 
Open the back and watch the ROM card. There are 4 LEDs on it. They should flash once and then go out. If they come back on, they are indicating an error. You will need to look up in the Defender manual what the LEDs are indicating.

The sound board is a stand alone item. Hitting the SB reset button causes it to cycle the first sound in the list, over and over and over and .... until it is powered down. At this point, you have proven the sound board works, so ignore it for now.

ken
 
Initially when i had the reset/rug issue it would say ram error or multiple errors and #2 and 4 were lit. Now it is all 4 solid all the time. I cant seem to get into bookeeping or anything now. i hit the main reset button on the pcb and its always all 4 lit now. A couple weeks ago it would sometimes do that and sometimes not, i figured with better voltages maybe it would be more stable and that would go away, but whatever happened its like stuck now with all 4 led's and no picture on the screen. I read in a search about the 2 and 4 led's being ROM #9 so a reseated it yet again, I dont know. I live in the sticks and have no parts to substitute etc. Could something in the monitor have gone so far south that now it is messing up the game from even booting?
 
thanks dokert, i know you and most everyone on this forum knows a lot more than i do. The last time the game played successfully i was at about 55,000 points with a few free ships and it reset, ever since then it has been very difficult to make happy. Should I send the ROM and RAM boards out to someone on this forum? I like to think Im fairly thorough and careful, I pulled the P/S board back out last night and double checked continuity on every new and old solder joint header pins etc... Should i try clipping the one final capacitor on the power supply to get me closer to 5.1 volts and try again?(sorry I dont remeber its exact location or ID), I beleive i saw a thread somewhere where you mentioned that Dokert??
 
im sure you are right, im up for any suggestions as to what to try next. I want to keep this game up and running for the kids and me too. Is it worth pulling the ROMs or RAMs out one at a time to see if i can get anything other than 4 solid LED's? I kinda figure the RAM is good being brand new. I also tried the reset switch on a continuity test and it did seem to work best i could tell. It would either beep for cont. then stop with the switch depressed or vice-versa.
 
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