My Star Wars Died after Big Blue Replacement.

Madaracs

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I received new Big Blues from the Real Bob Roberts today and decided I would put one in on my SW. I recently got a new board set and everything was working good.

I attached the orange wires to the + and the purple to the negative and secured the cap, reattached all of my connectors and powered up.

The game powers up but the monitor didn't.

Also, when I power it up I don't hear the startup "The Force will be with you." That I had previously.

It did coin up when I hit the button. However, the monitor chassis light was blinking and then it started drawing weird random yellow lines so I shut it off.

I put the old big blue back in and it is now doing the same thing. Argh.

What a way to ruin my night. :001_ssad:
 
Have you checked your fuses by the "Big Blue" ??

Unplug the game.

Pull the fuses one at a time and with an ohmmeter, check for continuity.

Also, check out the fuse holder itself to make sure that the terminals ARE making GOOD contact on the fuse holder - you may have to replace the terminals or you can squeeze them tighter with a pair of pliers or wire crimpers.

While installing the "Big Blue" you could've nudged one of the wires loose.
 
Did you miss one of the wires, there should be 4 wires connected to each lug on big blue.
4 Orange and 4 purple respectively.
And Ouch...Check your A/R Board for +5 volts at the sense lug.
I hope you figure it out.
 
I'll check the continuity of the fuses.

The connections all looked good--I double and triple checked.

Yeah, 4 wires on each. Secured tightly.
 
It sounds like it's going to be something simple like a bad connection somewhere (hopefully!)

I replaced my Big Blue in my Star Wars with one of Bob's and it works just great.

When I got my Tempest, it kept going into lala land and it was due to a burnt fuseholder. Everthing was making good contact but there was obviously some kind of resistance taking place. I replaced it, all has been well ever since.

I'm not sure if you had said that you moved the edge connector or filter board off of the main board for anything.. It wouldn't hurt to clean the board contacts with a soft eraser and re-attach the filterboard and harness to clean surfaces.

Good Luck
 
Do all three pcb's have a lit red led?
Reseat the small three board connector at the rear of the boardset.
(Real unlikely, but rule that out)!
You can run the Star Wars pcb without the RF board that connects the two
Main Boards together on the front, it holds it in the pcb case. Sometimes a bad
diode on that board will take out your power. Just remove the 2 screws and slide it off.
And reconnect the harness. Reseat the wire inner connect, it runs from the main board to the sound board too.
Hopefully one of these will help narrow down the issue.
 
Not fixed but isolated.

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I've isolated it to the boardset.

Per the suggestions above I tried the following:

-Tested the continuity of all fuses on both the power supply and the monitor chassis.

-Fuse connectors are gorgeous on this machine. They look like new. Everything is/was tight but I double checked anyway.

-I had recently disconnected the RF shield to try and fix a sound problem I was having with the left channel dropping. So that was already done. I've read numerous posts regarding the pesky RF shield and almost unanimously everyone suggests to get rid of them.

-Quintuple checked all connections.

-Checked voltages (on the main CPU board only--they all checked out.)

-Finally, I swapped my old board set which is still having issues with the multiplexer back into the machine and the whole thing powered up without issue.

So the problem seems to be with my new boardset which has Clay's ESB kit in it. I just got it and it had been working perfectly until I swapped out Big Blue.

There are a couple of very suspect 35V 100uF caps on that bad boy near the edge connector. They're beginning to bulge and they've corroded a portion of the board. I'm considering replacing those today and giving it another shot. I have the parts and the repair won't take more than 30 minutes.

Again, thanks to all for your suggestions. Great troubleshooting session--I hope it's useful for someone else down the line. I'm just relieved it's not my WG6100 and that at the very least I'm back to where I was with my machine.

*Phew!*
 
There are a couple of very suspect 35V 100uF caps on that bad boy near the edge connector. They're beginning to bulge and they've corroded a portion of the board. I'm considering replacing those today and giving it another shot. I have the parts and the repair won't take more than 30 minutes.

You saw caps that were that far gone and tried powering it up anyway? :( Anything with visibly bad components gets shut off until I can replace the faulty part and fix any surrounding damage, unless it's not my machne and it "MUST BE WORKING ASAP" in which case whatever, I like money.
 
OK! I did it! My first real repair that actually fixed something!

Long story, but I did some basic troubleshooting to determine where the last problem with my new board set was. Since I have a partially working set, I am able to use some of the parts to figure out what's going on.

It was suggested that I swap the CPU out of my old boardset with the one on my new SW/ESB boardset (the one that I thought Big Blue killed.) I was a little nervous about breaking the ESB kit, so I decided to swap out my [original] entire CPU board and run it with the new AVG board [SW/ESB] Same results--game wouldn't play blind and the monitor just flickered. I was getting the "May the Force Be With You" post sound intermittently though.

This was good because I could reasonably assume that the new SW/ESB CPU board is good.

(Keep in mind that my "New" boardset has Clay's clever kit from 1996--at least that's what the date on the PCB for ESB kit says.)

So now that I believed the issue to be something on the AVG board itself I took my known good AVG chip and swapped it. No go. Same results. I was now beginning to suspect either RAM or the AVG Star Wars chip at L-1. (#105)

So, here is what I noticed--there was a couple of issues. First, looking closely at the SW AVG chip at L-1 I noticed that the solder joint for the ESB hack had broken. Also, the connector between the sound board and the AVG board wasn't tightly gripping the wire and it was loose in the sheath. I resoldered the lead on the chip and also put a new connector on the board connection wire for the ESB kit.

This allowed me to run the game blindly! Then I was able to put it into test mode.

And wouldn't you know it...

BEEP BEEP BEEP BOOP! BEEP BEEP...

So checking this handy chart:

1) RAM 2F/H on the CPU board (a 2Kx8 for the CPU)
2) RAM 5F on the CPU board (a 2Kx8 for the Matrix processor)
3) RAM 5H on the CPU board (a 2Kx8 for the Matrix processor)
4) RAM 3L on the AVG board (a 2Kx8 for vector RAM) ***
5) RAM 3M on the AVG board (a 2Kx8 for vector RAM)
6) RAM 4P on the AVG board (a 2Kx8 for vector RAM)
7) RAM 4L on the AVG board (a 2Kx8 for vector RAM)
8) RAM 4M on the AVG board (a 2Kx8 for vector RAM)
9) RAM 4P on the AVG board (a 2Kx8 for vector RAM)
10) NOVRAM 1E on the CPU board (a 2212 Xicor 256x4 NOVRAM)
11) EPROM 1F or 1M on the CPU board +++
12) EPROM 1 J/K on the CPU board
13) EPROM 1 K/L on the CPU board
14) EPROM 1F or 1M on the CPU board +++
15) EPROM 1 H/J on the CPU board (The daughtercard for ESB)
16) EPROM 1 L on the AVG board ***

I was able to determine the RAM at 3L on the AVG board was bad. I swapped it from one my spare boardset and BAM it's back up and running!

WOOT!

Now, I just have one issue. That left sound channel keeps dropping... time for a new thread...
 
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Now, I just have one issue. That left sound channel keeps dropping... time for a new thread...

How are the speakers hooked up in these, I never looked inside my SW cab to see. Are the wires soldered directly to the speaker or are the wires attached with disconnects?
 
How are the speakers hooked up in these, I never looked inside my SW cab to see. Are the wires soldered directly to the speaker or are the wires attached with disconnects?


I'm not sure. I'll look. But I will say that my previous board set does not have this issue. My first suspect was the volume pot but that appears to be just fine.
 
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