Missile Command Keeps Rebooting after 4 seconds (Timiskander)

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Missile Command Keeps Rebooting after 4 seconds (Timiskander)

I have a missile command that keeps rebooting on me i would say the game only stays on for about 4 seconds then reboots again. Timiskander get ahold of me if ya can this was yours I bought it for steve then bought it from him remember? Any tips?. Tim if you see this let me know if your able to drop some parts off to alpaca steve. The test rig i was gonna build him got buried, i never got to it and never answered any of his communications. (Heby) i had the parts for two days and he was already bugging me if there done so thats when i said ok I forgotball about it. Shoulda emaiked him or called and today I got in touch and I'm gonna finishea this maybe in two weeks. then PM ME. Thanks.
 
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I have a missile command that keeps rebooting on me i would say the game only stays on for about 4 seconds then reboots again. Timiskander get ahold of me if ya can this was yours I bought it for steve then bought it from him remember? Any tips?. Tim if you see this let me know if your able to drop some parts off to alpaca steve. The test rig i was gonna build him got buried, i never got to it and never answered any of his communications. (Hes kinda like a big baby) i had the parts for two days and he was already bugging me if there done so thats when i said ok. Im not gonnna do this project. Ill be in the area this weekend maybe then PM ME. Thanks.

That doesn't seem right to me at all.

You never answered any of his communications or did any work on his test rig?

It might just be me but, that is bad business. Should at least keep line of communications open. Maybe said something like, I got the parts and will get to it soon or I just don't fell up to it and you can come and get your parts.

as to your problem; What is the voltage to the chips?

After 2 days you did not have it done yet? :)
 
Got in touch with him today gonna finish the test rig. What chips should ibe checking?
 
I have a missile command that keeps rebooting on me i would say the game only stays on for about 4 seconds then reboots again. Timiskander get ahold of me if ya can this was yours I bought it for steve then bought it from him remember? Any tips?. Tim if you see this let me know if your able to drop some parts off to alpaca steve. The test rig i was gonna build him got buried, i never got to it and never answered any of his communications. (Heby) i had the parts for two days and he was already bugging me if there done so thats when i said ok I forgotball about it. Shoulda emaiked him or called and today I got in touch and I'm gonna finishea this maybe in two weeks. then PM ME. Thanks.

Hey stranger ;)
I don't really have any inside info on that game... I just picked it up for Steve W.
If it is resetting, I would check the usual suspects (5V on the board, big blue, connectors, etc...). If you are coming this way with those parts you can drop them off any time, I see Steve M on a regular basis.
cheers
/Tim
 
THERE HE IS I BEEN WAITING FOR YOU TO SHOW UP MAN. Got any good deals? I need a few more 25$ midway cabs!!
 
I'd first try disabling the watchdog to see what happens.

I don't have a MC board or schematic in front of me, but if it's like other atari games at that time frame they have test points all over the board.

find a "ground" test point and the test point that says WDDIS (with a line over it)

get a length of wire and two 1/4" "quick disconnects (female) and attach the quick disconnects to both ends of the wire and attach one quick disconnect to GROUND and the other to the WDDIS (with line above it).

this should disable the watchdog which is in charge of rebooting the game when it gets stuck.

more than likely what will happen when you do this is rather than reboot, the game will probably lock up.

if it doesn't lock up and works OK, the next thing to look at is the watch dog circuit and see why it's tripping unnecessarily. (or you can just keep it disabled if you have it at home and only turn it on when your playing it like I do)

if it does lock up, then probably one of the ROMs are bad or one of the RAMS are bad. (or associated address/data buses or decoders or buffers)

you may have a problem however when you do this the game might not actually boot up, you might have to manually hit the reset button by hand.

-brian
 
There's also a reset circuit that causes the CPU to reset a few seconds after power is first applied to the game, that might be constantly cycling too. normally that circuit just fires once, but it could be possible that it's constantly firing.

not sure what controls it as I don't have the schematics but if it's a 555 timer their is a set of capacitors and resistors that control the firing of those.

I'd look at that after if disabling the watchdog doesn't stop the rebooting.

Do you have a logic probe?
 
Everytime I've had an issue with a resetting Atari game it's almost always been a bad ARII.. Might want to rebuild it if you haven't.. Or go all the way around it and start probing the pcb.. Heh.. It's 99.9% of the time low voltage.. -5 or +5
 
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