Fixed my Star Wars with a little help from Gauntlet

jMacArcade

New member
Joined
Apr 1, 2012
Messages
337
Reaction score
6
Location
Massachusetts
Fixed my Star Wars with a little help from Gauntlet

Last month I brought home a non-working SW upright. When you turned it on it would go bzzzt, turn off, then turn on again only to go bzzzt and then turn off again. I thought I had a turkey and considered for a moment making it into chair with a phone. After the drugs wore off, I decided to fix it.

I rebuilt the PS, ARII, HV, and deflection boards. Fired it up and it would work to a point. The game would run fine in service mode but crash in game after a couple seconds.

What was killing me was the service mode reported no errors. It also cycled through the different tests automatically without me pushing the aux coin button. Never owning a SW before, I thought this was normal behavior. It wasn't until I noticed on the BIP test things were way out of alignment. However, I was scratching my head over how in the hell I was going to align those squares in four seconds when it jumped to the next test.

Then it dawned on me. The flipping aux coin switch had to be wired backwards. Sure enough, it was wired NC so the game just cycled through the tests. Once I fixed that, the game came up with BAD RAM at VG 4P! Wow! This is why the game would reset at the moment a TIE fighter would shoot a fireball.

Now I am thinking crap. Its a long weekend. I have to order a SY2128-3 so I am not going to have this game fixed for another week.

I started going through all my boards trying to find a replacement. Naturally, I do not have it. Until I picked up an old, rusty, nonworking Gauntlet board and noticed that the sound section uses two AM9128-10FC RAM. I pulled the datasheets for both. Not only were they the same 2048 x 8 RAM but were also pin for pin identical!

I threw it in and bang....No Errors Detected! Star Wars fully working 100%.

Now to install my ESB kit!
 
Congrats!

Enjoy it...

... Altan

Last month I brought home a non-working SW upright. When you turned it on it would go bzzzt, turn off, then turn on again only to go bzzzt and then turn off again. I thought I had a turkey and considered for a moment making it into chair with a phone. After the drugs wore off, I decided to fix it.

I rebuilt the PS, ARII, HV, and deflection boards. Fired it up and it would work to a point. The game would run fine in service mode but crash in game after a couple seconds.

What was killing me was the service mode reported no errors. It also cycled through the different tests automatically without me pushing the aux coin button. Never owning a SW before, I thought this was normal behavior. It wasn't until I noticed on the BIP test things were way out of alignment. However, I was scratching my head over how in the hell I was going to align those squares in four seconds when it jumped to the next test.

Then it dawned on me. The flipping aux coin switch had to be wired backwards. Sure enough, it was wired NC so the game just cycled through the tests. Once I fixed that, the game came up with BAD RAM at VG 4P! Wow! This is why the game would reset at the moment a TIE fighter would shoot a fireball.

Now I am thinking crap. Its a long weekend. I have to order a SY2128-3 so I am not going to have this game fixed for another week.

I started going through all my boards trying to find a replacement. Naturally, I do not have it. Until I picked up an old, rusty, nonworking Gauntlet board and noticed that the sound section uses two AM9128-10FC RAM. I pulled the datasheets for both. Not only were they the same 2048 x 8 RAM but were also pin for pin identical!

I threw it in and bang....No Errors Detected! Star Wars fully working 100%.

Now to install my ESB kit!
 
Back
Top Bottom