Robotron glitch- carpet pattern reset

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This subject seems to involve a lot of myth so I was wondering if someone can explain the technical rationale why it happens.

when in upper waves of robotron, when firing aggressively at the enforcer robots on the side walls. you can cause the program to go into carpet pattern reset mode and reboot.

I recently sold my upright robotron that ailed from this.
since it was a real robotron i followed all the forum information about 4164 ram, conflicts with linear vs switching powersupplies, fresh batteries, ribbon cable connectors, dirty pins, etc.

nothing really fixed it. so my friend who bought it has been researching extra stuff like the nicad battery upgrade on cpu, cmos retro board update, etc. all lots of little nickel and dime money.....

FAST FORWARD.... i just started playing blue label rom Robotron on MAME .138.
and i can trigger carpet pattern resets there too!!!!!!!!!!!
since it's running from my computer i know it has nothing to do with all the mythological williams hardware stuff.

now that i think of it, have seen this happen on the 19-1 board as well, except you don't get a carpet pattern, the screen just freezes.

So what exactly is the nature of this defect, and is there a set of roms available out there that truly fixes it?

curious to hear from the Williams experts. Thank you.
 
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I thought this had to do with shooting into the corners regardless of level. I did have it happen to me in MAME one time.
 
glitch

ill tell you this has happened to me a couple of times once i had a 6 million pt game going. to avoid this i stop shooting at the end of rounds towards the corners when fighting the robots.
 
Cool thread. I know about the quark in the corner bug, but not about other objects causing this.

ken
 
yah, thanks fred for posting that don h. stuff. pretty much the definitive explanation!

what is the source for a set of ROMs with the bug fixed, to put in real robotron?
i don't see anything like that at bob roberts....
 
I know a couple people have burned "fixed" roms. I think they ended up getting them from one of the console collections that were emulating Robotron. I don't know which collection had them though.
 
I know a couple people have burned "fixed" roms. I think they ended up getting them from one of the console collections that were emulating Robotron. I don't know which collection had them though.

I don't remember the name of that collection either but it was put out in the '90s. AtHomeTech knows, as he sourced his there.
 
I thought that WMS had an official release way back when that fixed this. I dont recall the color (Red maybe) but I do know that Blue was the ROM set with this issue.

Had a 9.2 million point game going at CAX a few years back. Was going for 9999975 but the damn game reset on me! Happened in front of a good sized crowd too. LOL!
 
I found an orange/yellow rom set out there but the program looks smaller?

Depending on date of these fixes, if indeed there was ever an official release from Williams of fixed Roms.
I guess it 100% definitevely proves that all the old marathon scores for robotron are false. they must've kept restarting games after reset, or tag teamed.
(beyond the math by Ken that shows the scores are false)
 
I wonder if an email to Eugene Jarvis is in order? I could ask if he ever fixed the bug and we'll know for sure...

EDIT: And here I cant find his email address because of our retention policy.... Figures.

Edit: Edit: Email sent to the next best guy. Lets see if we get a response.
 
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I got the rug pattern reset last night. I played a game all the way up to wave 13 with no issues. My game ended and I started another one. This time around the game reset to rug at wave 5. Another instance last night I had a game completely freeze but i was still able to move my character around on the screen. When I would move over other objects they my character would act like a mini eraser clearing enemies completely off the screen. I reset the game again and it worked fine. WTF.
 
are you playing real robotron? sounds like that might be some other things going on.
like i mentioned in my initial thread statement. confirming the 5v is ok and such.

on MAME i caused the reset at wave 8 the other day, but i was watching and indeed i hit an enforcer in the corner at an angle upon the reset happening.
 
are you playing real robotron? sounds like that might be some other things going on.
like i mentioned in my initial thread statement. confirming the 5v is ok and such.

on MAME i caused the reset at wave 8 the other day, but i was watching and indeed i hit an enforcer in the corner at an angle upon the reset happening.

Are you asking me? If so then yes I am playing the real deal.
 
ah, yes. well the obvious reset issue is the 5 volts dropping for the CPUboard/RAM.
--so is it a rebuilt linear PS, or using switcher.

have you switched to the new 4164 ram conversion (bob roberts) to take overheating or faulty ram out of the equation?

if it's just the enforcers on the wall issue, then that'd require new Roms they mentioned that athometech / Ken might have available?

Yellowdog replied on this thread I see, he is the master of williams board repair and might have some ideas for you?
 
ah, yes. well the obvious reset issue is the 5 volts dropping for the CPUboard/RAM.
--so is it a rebuilt linear PS, or using switcher.

have you switched to the new 4164 ram conversion (bob roberts) to take overheating or faulty ram out of the equation?

if it's just the enforcers on the wall issue, then that'd require new Roms they mentioned that athometech / Ken might have available?

Yellowdog replied on this thread I see, he is the master of williams board repair and might have some ideas for you?

It has a rebuilt original PS. The 4164 ram conversion was done long ago. Yellowdog just recently did a lengthy repair jonb on my board and since then I developed a RAM 31 issue that I have not been able to isolate. I have been having a blast playing the game but unfortunately I will have to send the board back for him to look at again. Had I not found out about him the game would be long gone.
 
I sold my robotron to a friend who is going to be sending boards off in the future.

i got a little tired of the constant "issues"
But I've been having a lot of fun with MAME robotron, interfaced with my homemade Robotron cabinet with a J-pac jamma interface board.
pure joy to not have to putz with the constant board stuff.....
 
I'd be very curious to get my hands on the fixed roms and patch them into the jrok rom set. . . or does the jrok set already have the fixes? I'm possibly not good enough to have ever had this happen. :)
 
I've never seen a jrok board in person but it would be interesting. I bet it is already patched considering the extreme technical effort that went into it?
 
FWIW, the Jrok board I had never did this. Rolled it several times while I had it too. But thats not that out of the ordinary for a real Robotron to do... Used to roll them back in the day a lot without resets.
 
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