Omega Race PCB repair

Man that was a tough one, mainly because I was thinking is it corrosion or bad IC's....I even had dreams about the bloody thing!

At least I will sleep tonight. I will leave it running all evening and make sure its good to go.
 
Great, that boardset...dare I say it...looked worse than mine! It was a real bear to get going again too. What a success in then end though!
 
Thanks guys :)

I think it would be a good idea if I take a picture of the main pcb and highlight each section of the board.... CPU, vector Ram, State machine, Vector timer Etc. It will be a useful reference for future repairs.
 
omegaman said:
Thanks guys :)

I think it would be a good idea if I take a picture of the main pcb and highlight each section of the board.... CPU, vector Ram, State machine, Vector timer Etc. It will be a useful reference for future repairs.
Click to expand...

Definitly!
 
yeah.. if you can put together a flow chart..that would be awesome!
 
step 1) drink a beer
step 2) remove damage/correded sockets and chips, and clean pcb
step 3) check for bad traces, add sockets, and chips.
step 4) check ram/rom addressing with any form of micoprocessor tool.
step 5) stat dinking with video section.. bug catcher works good here.. understand schematic, and what is doing what to get what on screen.


i officially declare omegaman the omega race repair guy :p
 
KI4SWY said:
step 1) drink a beer
i officially declare omegaman the omega race repair guy :p
Click to expand...

Step one Check!

He's the man in my book.. I am SO tempted to ship my other one
over to him but I want to try fixing it myself first based on his advice
so far. He's got such cool tools however. Gotta find one of those digital
IC testers and IC comparator.
 
omegaman said:
I was thinking of making an updated version of the micro doctor, not sure how much interest there would be in it though.
Click to expand...

If you could make something similiar to a fluke/microdoctor that is a
software/hardware combination I bet it would be a winner.

Maybe USB computer interface for the pods, software app to handle all testing, and reasonably priced interfaces for all the popluar CPU arcade/pinballs use..

I bet you could get 400-500 each easily. While things like the fluke are neat tools.. they arent very easy to use. A software app could make PCB testing a much more user friendly experience. Software would also be easy for you and others to update moving forward, especially if its opensource.
 
A software control solution would allow memory maps to be put directly into the tool to eliminate a
lot of looks ups, etc. Would be easy to program functions like writting to all the video ram also...
Hmm. I wish I had the skills to make something like that. I'd buy one..
 
Right this set is all done now, The boards have been running fine for hours. I checked the power PCB over and modified the sense lines. See below for before and after. It's very easy to do, only 2 links to install....the holes are there already.
Once you have the links installed you can test the +5v and +12v with the game boards unplugged. If you set the 5v line to 5v then reconnect the game board and measure the voltage level at one of the IC's on the board, adjust the 5v until you have 5.1v or thereabouts.

IMG_0935.jpg


IMG_0938.jpg


IMG_0939.jpg
 
sense line mod

Granted I didn't take the time to look at the schematics closely after your post so please forgive a possibly dumb question...

Instead of installing solid wire jumpers, could you install resistors, say 100 to 220 ohms or so, and achieve the same goal of being able to measure the outputs without the boards connected? If yes, then the sense lines would still work as originally intended and the boards would still get exactly the same voltage that you set before they were connected. This would eliminate the need to measure voltage levels at the boards and re-adjust.

Bill B.
 
Hi Bill

I don't see why not. I used zero ohm links as I didn't see the need for any adjustment of load once the correct voltage has been set. I doubt there would be same issue as the Atari games as Midway fitted better connectors at the board, it's more of a "better safe than sorry" approach :)
 
Got the boards back in the mail today. They look great. Thank You!

Minor issue though.. In my haste to remove the boards and cut off the
battery I neglected to take pictures of how everything was hooked up.
It appears most of the connectors are not keyed that plug into the
boards.

Anyone have a set of pics of the boards hooked up so I can see the wire colors?

Thanks,
Mike
 
Here is mine, I hope you have better luck than what I just had happen with my set :(

HPIM1482.jpg
 
That's my original board there before I started. It ran for years; I gave it new caps and sorted out the other problems with my game before I wanted a backup set. I posted a bit on my backup set, what rotten luck I had.
 
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