My first broken machine.

MrHiu2

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I have had my Root Beer Tapper for a total of 4 weeks now. Up until this point, nothing has been wrong. Sadly, I turned it on today, and the character sprites were screwy. The Soda Jerks torso was in the corner, the mugs did not show up until in the hands of customers, etc. Everything else is in order; Sounds are good, controls are fine, display is good, game works. Anyone know what might be wrong? Is it something with the ROMs? I'm new to this, and know only BASIC components of a machine.

Anyone else have any experiences of their first broken machine?
 
Easiest and cheapest thing to try first would be to re-seat all the ROMs. Unplug the game and use a flathead screwdriver to gently pry up the socketed ROM chips one at a time and reseat them in their sockets. Be careful not to bend or break any pins on the chips.

Sometimes ROMs work loose when a game is moved, and they can even walk themselves out of the sockets over time as the game board heats up and cools down and the board flexes from the temperature changes.
 
I have had my Root Beer Tapper for a total of 4 weeks now. Up until this point, nothing has been wrong. Sadly, I turned it on today, and the character sprites were screwy. The Soda Jerks torso was in the corner, the mugs did not show up until in the hands of customers, etc. Everything else is in order; Sounds are good, controls are fine, display is good, game works. Anyone know what might be wrong? Is it something with the ROMs? I'm new to this, and know only BASIC components of a machine.

Anyone else have any experiences of their first broken machine?

First thing I would check would be the power supply. Check your voltages and make sure they are correct. If you don't know how to do that, then you'll want to search on here or Google, as there is lots of good information on how to do that.

If your voltages are good, I would look at the ribbon cables between the boards. Those tend to go bad on the Bally/Midway games.
 
Checked Power Suppy

I checked the power supply, and its all good. Turned the machine off, and unplugged it as well.
 
Easiest and cheapest thing to try first would be to re-seat all the ROMs. Unplug the game and use a flathead screwdriver to gently pry up the socketed ROM chips one at a time and reseat them in their sockets. Be careful not to bend or break any pins on the chips.

Sometimes ROMs work loose when a game is moved, and they can even walk themselves out of the sockets over time as the game board heats up and cools down and the board flexes from the temperature changes.


I will get to work on that, being that I believe that is where the problem lies. Thank you for your help!
 
I had a similar issue on my bud tapper.

test voltages on the rom chips of the top board (the one you can see while the 3 board set is mounted in the cab)

I found my +5 was like +4.62 on the legs of those chips, even though I was getting +5 from the source.

As soon as I got the legs of those rom chips at +5 all was better. And I had allthe crazy shit going on that you appear to be describing.
 
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