Sinistar Problems

Sarzac

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I've been having some problems with my Sinistar machine over the last few days and was wondering if anyone could offer some advice or tell me what the problem is.

A few times during play the game has frozen up and the graphics become completely garbled (the attached picture shows what it looks like). When I turn the machine off and then on again, it typically starts with the same garbled graphics, shifting slightly over the course of a few seconds or so, and never loads the game properly. The game will occasionally start working again with no problems, but then it will freeze up again during play. Just a few minutes ago, it happened very quickly, right before I could kill Sinistar on the first level.

I assume that this is some sort of problem with the board, but any advice and/or help here would be most appreciated.
 

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I recently had the plug on the power supply repaired. It had gone bad about a month ago (not powering on at all) so I had an electrician friend of mine come over and fix it. Prior to this, the game was working fine. Could he have done something there that would be causing the current problems?
 
Is your power supply original or do you have a switching power supply installed? If you could post some pics of the transformer at the bottom of the cabinet and the board on the side of the cabinet that has the wires from the transformer going into it. If you are running the original PS, then another thing you can check (with the power off) is the 15-pin connector that runs to the transformer at the bottom of the game - pull the 15-pin connector off and check for burnt pins. If any of the header connector (pins) are burnt, then the header needs to be replaced. Dokert and YellowDog here on KLOV rebuild them and also usually have rebuilt/tested ones ready for sale.
 
Check connector 4J1 that comes from the transformer and goes to the original linear power supply for burnt pins at pin locations 1,3,5 if you have an original linear power supply installed. Also check 4J4 for burnt pins as well.

Pics of your power setup would be helpful.
 
Also, open the back door when powering it up. You will need to pull the interlock out (unless it was removed or disabled). While powering up, there is a 7 segment LED on the ROM board. If there are issues found by the POST (Power On Self Test), the numbers will flash on the LEDs.

The most likely case, is that it is flashing 3 numbers: 0 + x + y. The 0 indicates that it is a RAM issue and the x and y are the bank and chip number of the bad chip found.

ken
 
Just had one today that was putting out 4.90vdc to the RAM and was locking up. Adjusted the power up to 5.00 at the RAM and rebooted to a perfect working board set.
 
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