Omega Race squiggly vectors

hatrick

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I just brought a dead "barn find" Omega Race board back from the dead. I replaced and socketed (after removing alkali damage) the 74LS245, 74LS32, and 74LS04. That brought the game to life, but with RAM errors. I replaced all of the suspect vid RAM, and the game now works. Well, works as in I can play a game and all of the graphics and sounds are present etc. The odd thing is that all of the lines are squiggly instead of straight. Not horribly squiggly, but just not perfectly straight.
I know for a fact it's a board issue, the issue was also present when I tested the board with my Battlezone monitor.
Any idea where to look next for this issue?
I'm so close to getting this thing 100% working.
 
Have you replaced the caps? I don't know that it'd cause squiggly vectors, but I know on several of my acid damaged boards, the caps are really nasty looking, and I could see them causing that problem.

DogP
 
Clean the edge connectors on both boards. I had squiggly lines on mine until I did that.

I cleaned the edge connectors on the daughter board and mother board with a fiberglass pen, and even tried a second daughter board for kicks and the problem remained.
 
I cleaned the edge connectors on the daughter board and mother board with a fiberglass pen, and even tried a second daughter board for kicks and the problem remained.


Did you try a pencil eraser? I've never heard of the fiberglass pen trick.
 
Did you try a pencil eraser? I've never heard of the fiberglass pen trick.

The fiberglass pen is supposed to be better than a pencil eraser. I've always meant to try one but now that I have kiddos in the house... I have an almost unlimited supply of erasers!!! :D
 
The fiberglass pen is supposed to be better than a pencil eraser. I've always meant to try one but now that I have kiddos in the house... I have an almost unlimited supply of erasers!!! :D

The fiberglass pen works GREAT. I don't know how I lived without one for so long. And something must be wrong in my house, all of the pencils are missing the erasers! Maybe my kid just makes LOTS of mistakes. :D
 
Yeah, no. We have NO erasers that are actually *ON* the pencils. We have those industrial sized erasers that can erase a ream of paper! :D
 
I'm not sure if it's right or wrong to do so... probably wrong. But when I get bad connections, I clean the edge connector with a soft wire brush, and then I run a little bit of solder on it to thicken it up a little... JUST a little. Worked wondering on my Pole Position interconnect board connection. Just don't put on so much that you'd end up stretching out the connecting "springs" in the connector though... a very little bit will do the job.

Anywho, back to the topic. If the caps or connector cleaning do the job, please post a follow up. My Battle Zone has a VERY slight wiggle to some of the lines and it drives me nuts. The lines on the radar have a slight bend to them... it doesn't move around or jump or anything, but instead of looking like "|" on the bottom, it looks more like "j" (minus the dot on the top).
 
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