Pole Position progress (Video board fixed)

Scucci

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Still missing every sound except the engine sounds... but, hey... progress is progress.

This video board was having the same issues as the other video board I was working on... missing a lot of graphics. I already had the sockets pulled off of this one and just put in new sockets and she was up.

I guess the next shot will be to replace the sockets on the CPU board and hope that actually does something besides waste sockets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxF7TzMWgPw
 
Still missing every sound except the engine sounds... but, hey... progress is progress.

This video board was having the same issues as the other video board I was working on... missing a lot of graphics. I already had the sockets pulled off of this one and just put in new sockets and she was up.

I guess the next shot will be to replace the sockets on the CPU board and hope that actually does something besides waste sockets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxF7TzMWgPw

Congrats on the progress. I remember the 3 months I spent on mine... It's a great moment when you see life! I did replace the 3 40pin sockets on mine as I was able to verify a few bad pins.. so it definitely helped in my case. Good luck with the rest of it.
 
Congrats on the progress. I remember the 3 months I spent on mine... It's a great moment when you see life! I did replace the 3 40pin sockets on mine as I was able to verify a few bad pins.. so it definitely helped in my case. Good luck with the rest of it.

Yeah, it's nice to see it up and running again. It was up for a while a few months ago, but still missing sounds. It failed an over-night stress test and came up with RAM errors. I've had this cabinet for well over a year now, and I still haven't been able to play a full game on it... I can play it now, but without all the sounds that are missing, it's just not the same.

I think I'll dig into the CPU board tonight when I get home from work... Might as well replace every socket on the CPU board, probably won't hurt anything as long as I don't rush and lift any traces. I have JUST enough of the big sockets... I'll probably have to order more of them for other projects. But I did an order of 100 24pin sockets, so I've finally got enough of them to MAYBE get through this PP project. (I have a lot of boards to tinker with).
 
Okay... oddly enough, that worked. lol

I say oddly enough because I tested every socket on this board in I don't know how many different ways.... but I replaced the 3 40 pins on a CPU, got it up and running. lol

Saddly, and ironically enough... the CPU board I fixed is the one that has every sound EXCEPT the engine sound. lol Oh well, easier to fix one sound than all the others.

I FINALLY have my "tree" sounds... I'm happy.

EDIT: Extra little bit of info... Q3 and Q4 on the CPU board where shot as well... wasn't getting good voltage to the RAM (23)... only 3.4 was leaking through.
 
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Time to order in more sockets... figured out some more problems... this time it's the sockets on the 42 pin customs.

When I take the game out of freeplay it'll reboot over and over and over again until it finally comes up after about 5 minutes of me messing with the board... by then it'll have 80 credits built up. lol So, I put it back into freeplay, boots right up. I started tapping chips and when I got to one of the 51XX at 9M it started "adding credits" (was in freeplay, so it just made the sound).

So... there we go, another problem. Sockets should be here in about 2 weeks (I get all my stuff cheap from China). I'll be replacing every socket on the boards until then though. So far everything has been fixed by replacing sockets... all the customs have been good, the RAM is good, the CPUs have been good, everything seems to be in order... everything has been caused by these crappy sockets.

I thought Galaga had crappy sockets... they got NOTHING on Pole Position sockets, these things are terrible. Even with 0 battery damage on by boards the sockets are falling apart.
 
Got 2 more sounds today (same chip)... replaced the 06XX and that got the 54XX in the game and now I have explosion sounds and screeching tires. I'm only missing engine sounds.
 
Found it. (I think)

The LS174 at 11A has pin 15 stuck low... Sadly, I don't seem to have any spare 174s... so... yeah, that sucks. But, looks like I'm 1 chip away from having this thing up and going. Hopefully.
 
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Replaced that chip... wasn't the problem.

I pulled my head out of my butt today, looked again and saw that the enable out line on 11C was floating... put in a socket and pulled a 7497 from another board, put her in and PRESTO... finally... a 100% (plus added sounds) Pole Position... shwew.

$50 for the cab and fried boards and crapped out monitor (flyback dead)...
3 months of working the boards a year or so ago...
Months of letting them sit out of frustration...
Another $50 is parts (sockets, misc ICs, etc etc)...
A few more weeks of work...

And FINALLY she's running... took a while, but I guess now I have to get a monitor rebuilt for her, get the cabinet put back together, and I can finally pull her out of the "project room" (kitchen) and get her against the game wall.

... atleast I know how to fix these POS's now (for the most part)... so I guess that's good.
 
i oughta hire you to fix mine...

I couldn't imagine working on these things with a time table over my head...

I still have 4 more sets to fix, given that I've managed to lose a few custom chips (literally lost)... I think it'll probably boil down to 3 sets in the end with some sitting around waiting for junk Dig Dug's to fall into my lap.

If I get at least two hammered out by the end of the month... I MIGHT think about taking a look at other people's... ... but I really doubt it (read as "not going to happen"). ... I think I'm starting to come off of my "Let's fix some Atari games!" mood.

All my 42 pins sockets came in today, and I'm still having trouble convincing myself to turn on the soldering iron. This set zapped me. I know I have a partially working CPU board, and a decently working video board... but they've all been gutted to get ready for the repairs... and I didn't label which was which. lol So... screw me.
 
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