Multi-board PCB problem isolation? (Gorf and many others)

joemagiera

Thread Manager
Joined
Mar 22, 2003
Messages
6,162
Reaction score
1,073
Multi-board PCB problem isolation? (Gorf and many others)

When you have a PCB set like Gorf, which has 6 separate boards (and the cage itself) that make up the boardset, how do you go about problem isolation if you don't have a known good boardset to be able to test and swap boards with? Anyone have any general guidelines?

I find myself with several Gorf boardsets and none work. I'm sure between all the sets I can put together at least one good set, but how can I get an indication of what board is good and what one isn't?

If I had a good set, it's be easy to swap out untested boards one by one, but I haven't found one in the Chicago area. hint-hint, anyone have a known good Gorf boardset in the Chicago area that I can borrow for a couple of weeks?
 
I have a Wizard of Wor (same boardset)...

I started with 5 (yes 5) non-working boardsets.

I mixed and matched until I managed to get one complete boardset that worked. I then tested more and managed to put together an ALMOST complete boardset that worked.

Your best bet is just mix and match boards until you find one combo that works. Also keep in mind that the cage itself could be the problem...

Finally, look in all the slots of the cage... these PCB's had stickers on them that dried up and fell down in to the cage where they easily got stuck in the edge sockets when pulling and pushing boards in. 2 of my 5 cages had stickers stuck in one of the sockets.
 
Your best bet for fixing those types of caged boards is to build a card extender so you can work on the board outside the cage.

You can buy them if you look hard enough... or you can build them if you find some perfboard that has an edge connector that either fits or that can be trimmed down to fit. Just epoxy a socket connector to the other end of the board and run some point to point wires down to the edge connector on the perfboard.

RJ
 
Ouch!!
I have fixed a WOW and a 2 Gorfs and they are not fun.. I did what Frizz did and got another set, and swapped boards until I isolated the problem board. If you remove one of hte brackets you can work on the first board while its in the cage. These boards are where I really learned how to use my fluke 9010. If you have bad ROMs, regardless of what you read on the internet, you need 2532s with some pin mods.
 
Back
Top Bottom