Galaga Hates me!

kb0jjn

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I have a Galaga board that I have been wrestling for about a week now.

I can finally get it to power up and play. I can play it for hours and let it play in attract
mode. I have repaired many of the broken pins on the custom chip and use this board to
test them on. I can flex the board and keeps on going. Fixed right? Wrong, power it down
for about 5 min and all kinds of problems. I get the boom sound and attract sound then
boom sound attract sound over and over. After about 5-10 min. of this I power it off and on
again, it works as before.

I have a laundry list of parts to throw at this damn thing. It is a flakey chip I am shure but which one? All of the chips I have repaired are NOT the problem as I can easy eliminate them in the other working (actually working) board. I am leaning to a 74ls367an chip.

My power supply is at 5.15 vcc and 11.6 on the 12 volt line and I am just using my power connector and heavy barrel video tube.

I have also tried to heat up slightly with a lamp and once it is working/on it will not fail.

ANY thoughts....I hate intermittent problems.....
 
Sounds like a cracked ceramic resistor issue.

Resistor packs are the newer type. Maybee socket.

I just got done reading the art work issue with you and Longjohns.

You are a great seller and gave him the benifet of the doubt.

As for this board. It is pissing me off. Once it is working it is working. Once you turn it off for more than 5 min. It doesn't want to start, kind of like and old car in the snow of Minnesota.

I will look at all resistor packs and sockets but it is hard to find the problem when it is working. When it locks up inputs are low, 08xx's pulsing, but one of the 74ls368's is giving me strange logic on probe.
 
Resistor packs are the newer type. Maybee socket.

I just got done reading the art work issue with you and Longjohns.

You are a great seller and gave him the benifet of the doubt.

As for this board. It is pissing me off. Once it is working it is working. Once you turn it off for more than 5 min. It doesn't want to start, kind of like and old car in the snow of Minnesota.

I will look at all resistor packs and sockets but it is hard to find the problem when it is working. When it locks up inputs are low, 08xx's pulsing, but one of the 74ls368's is giving me strange logic on probe.

It only took me 4 tubes and 8 piece of art work.. laughs
and you wonder why I hate shipping to Canada. LOL

If you have a floating ground issue on the chip. It will give you strange readings
 
It only took me 4 tubes and 8 piece of art work.. laughs
and you wonder why I hate shipping to Canada. LOL

If you have a floating ground issue on the chip. It will give you strange readings

Yeah I'll not do shipping outside US.

I'll leave it powered down tonight so it won't work when I first power up and can probe some more.

If I start to work on this thing any more tonight, it may never ever work again.

When it is working I can't really get it to fail untill I turn it off for 5-10 min. which is the time it takes me to fix a broken leg(s) on a custom chip.
 
The problem with this Galaga was a z80 chip at location 4j. When my chips came in today I put one in that location (4j) and tested. It has been running 8h 41min at the time of this post with no errors. So if any one else has probelms like this it may be worthwile to just replace the cpu. These were cheep enough, something like $3.

You gotta remember that these chips (cpu's) are the driving force for these boards and have been running for hours on end and they are about 30+ years old.

So yes, I finally stopped pulling out my hair and have a seconed working Galaga bord set.:)
 
You better charge a lot to do the work! :)

I charge $90 plus shipping to fix one and that's cheap for the 2 to 3 hours it takes.
 
You better charge a lot to do the work! :)

I charge $90 plus shipping to fix one and that's cheap for the 2 to 3 hours it takes.

With a person of your talents? Does it really take you 2 or 3 hours to fix a galaga board?
Son, you would have staved in the repair depot business but then again repairing one board is different from repairing a pile of boards. It doesn't make sense to build a jig to test one board but If collect enough boards I will build one and share the bed poor man's bed of nails design.
 
With a person of your talents? Does it really take you 2 or 3 hours to fix a galaga board?
Son, you would have staved in the repair depot business but then again repairing one board is different from repairing a pile of boards. It doesn't make sense to build a jig to test one board but If collect enough boards I will build one and share the bed poor man's bed of nails design.

Go download the instructions for the Galaga Renew Kit from my website and look for yourself. There are a large number of sockets and resistor packs to replace and you CANNOT hurry when doing a Galaga board as they are VERY easy to pull traces off the top of the board. Once done you must go through and make sure there are no fine solder shorts on the top of the board where traces go between IC pins before you can even start installing the new components.

Add to that you must clean the custom chip legs and repair broken pins on them.

After all that work you still have to troubleshoot any remaining problems.

It's a labor of love, even at $90 (including parts, but not including shipping) to make a Galaga board reliable again.

RJ
 
You do all that for 90 dollars?


Go download the instructions for the Galaga Renew Kit from my website and look for yourself. There are a large number of sockets and resistor packs to replace and you CANNOT hurry when doing a Galaga board as they are VERY easy to pull traces off the top of the board. Once done you must go through and make sure there are no fine solder shorts on the top of the board where traces go between IC pins before you can even start installing the new components.

Add to that you must clean the custom chip legs and repair broken pins on them.

After all that work you still have to troubleshoot any remaining problems.

It's a labor of love, even at $90 (including parts, but not including shipping) to make a Galaga board reliable again.

RJ
 
You do all that for 90 dollars?

The chips alone on one set of boards are worth at least that. They are like $30 each for the customs and they usually need to B repaired. I have several of the 07xx that are bad and a few of the 54xx.

I don't think I really want to repair these boards for a living. It gives me something to do.

I like the fact that I can still work on these circuit boards and get them working. The surface mout is so prevelant today and with my eyesight, I don't even bother with them. That is why I jumped into fixing these boards. I know that someday these boards will become very hard to come by.

The newer technology is so small that it is better to just swap out the entire bord set (Board Jockey).

The time it takes to just replace the sockets, resistor packs and the tools to do all of the work $90 is really cheep. I think I have spent over $500 in parts, shipping, renue kits, programmer, plus the cost of the bad boards.

What makes it all worth it is the fact I have found a great bunch of people who helped me to help myself to do this...One of the things that truley makes me happy.

A very heartfelt Thanks to ALL KLOV members. :) :)
 
I feel your pain with the eyesight thing. I fought having to use readers for years now they are a must. I have a Galaga set to fix and if he does in for ninety bucks I might send it to him. I can do the soldering but time is an issue with me anymore.

Glad to see a fellow Ham here!

Tracy

The chips alone on one set of boards are worth at least that. They are like $30 each for the customs and they usually need to B repaired. I have several of the 07xx that are bad and a few of the 54xx.

I don't think I really want to repair these boards for a living. It gives me something to do.

I like the fact that I can still work on these circuit boards and get them working. The surface mout is so prevelant today and with my eyesight, I don't even bother with them. That is why I jumped into fixing these boards. I know that someday these boards will become very hard to come by.

The newer technology is so small that it is better to just swap out the entire bord set (Board Jockey).

The time it takes to just replace the sockets, resistor packs and the tools to do all of the work $90 is really cheep. I think I have spent over $500 in parts, shipping, renue kits, programmer, plus the cost of the bad boards.

What makes it all worth it is the fact I have found a great bunch of people who helped me to help myself to do this...One of the things that truley makes me happy.

A very heartfelt Thanks to ALL KLOV members. :) :)
 
I feel your pain with the eyesight thing. I fought having to use readers for years now they are a must. I have a Galaga set to fix and if he does in for ninety bucks I might send it to him. I can do the soldering but time is an issue with me anymore.

Glad to see a fellow Ham here!

Tracy

Cool. :)

Oh and there are many of us hams here! I just don't put my call sign up because if I did, people would look up my address and just start shipping things to me. EEEEK!

That would result in me having a garage full of boxes of boards to fix.
 
Yes, I understand repair these boards is a labor of love and I am glad you provide kits and give a repair option to those who need your services. I understand the amount of work involved in repairing arcade games since I do repairs for friends.

I understand about the eye site issues, I have used a web cam and a USB Microscope to inspect SMT parts. There is a reason why my LCD screens keep on getting larger. Laughs.
 
Cool. :)

Oh and there are many of us hams here! I just don't put my call sign up because if I did, people would look up my address and just start shipping things to me. EEEEK!

That would result in me having a garage full of boxes of boards to fix.

I know the feeling. I have been moving stuff all around. I have been putting stuff on pallets, bording up windows and my Heavy Barrel is on it's side and up about 4 feet off of my shed/man cave floor. It usually doesn't flood but with the storm comming, I am taking little chances.

My main radio antenna is down right now but I still have my Antron up (just in case). One day soon I will update my info from DE to MD in the book. I have to do it soon as I think my license will expire soon.

73's
de kb0jjn

Update on this board set: It ran for about a day and a half and locked up. So I replaced the cpu @ location 4E and has been runing with switcher ps with
no errors even while moving stuff all around. Even while putting Heavy Barrel on Totes. Maybee I will see if a Huricane can make
it fail lol.
 
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