Gorf has Blue Screen

troxel

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Working on a Gorf that has starfield upon start up and that's it. Coin up the game and it goes to a blue screen. Sounds like the game is playing, but can't see anything but a solid blue screen.

I took off the RGB Interface Board Assembly and resoldered the header pins. Didn't see any cracks in them.

Just looked at the game for a couple of minutes. Any ideas on where to start with this?

Thanks again.

Edit: Checked voltages, reconnected all the boards, and reseated all socketed chips. Same outcome, but now greeted with an all GREEN screen. Would it be the TBA530? How would I check this using a scope?
 
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I'd look at 2 things. First I'd swap the RAM board positions to see if you get something different (which would indicate a bad RAM board). Where it's playing blind (sorta, cause the first screen's background is blue... so it sounds like it starts to load it), I'd suspect the pattern board.

Any spare boards you can flip around?
 
Thanks for the info. I don't have a spare board. I will try switching the RAM boards around and see what kind of affect that has on it. Any other ideas to check for?
 
Switched Ram cards around and no difference. Put the game in test mode and get the star field along with flashing red bars. Does this screen indicate RAM error?

Thinking about burning a test rom for it, but not sure what EPROM can I use to replace the masked ROM (9332a). Is a 2532 a direct replacement? Is there anyway to go with a 2732?
 
I had a 2532 and tried to program, but all I am getting a starfield pattern when I insert in X1. Not sure if I programmed it correctly. Should the burned ROM be recognized by WinROMIdent? Also, not sure what this meant in the readme file, "The included binary image should be padded with 0xffs..."

Any ideas?
 
I burned my gorf test rom to a 2532 and im pretty sure it works with boards strapped for eproms or masked proms. Its been a while since I used it.
Got a 2732 laying around? Give that a try.
 
Tried a 2732 and getting the same result. I'm thinking I am not burning the Eprom correctly. Try reading the downloaded file straight to WinROMIdent, and says it's rom size is not a power of 2. Do I need to convert or do something different to the file in order to burn it?
 
You shouldnt have to do anything, just burn it. Are you using the one Mark Spaeth made? I think there are a couple of them out there.
 
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