Star Wars question

Well game play is all good. self test is all good. The problem is with the green scrolling words go up the screen in attract mode. The blue "Star Wars" words show at bottom of screen then fade out without scrolling up. Then right after a green vector arcs out of the center of screen down to the lower left corner at the moment when the narration in green and "Star Wars" in blue are suppose to scroll up the screen. But everything else works just fine. I also replaced the AVG with an Arcadeshop replacement, but no change.
 
Well game play is all good. self test is all good. The problem is with the green scrolling words go up the screen in attract mode. The blue "Star Wars" words show at bottom of screen then fade out without scrolling up. Then right after a green vector arcs out of the center of screen down to the lower left corner at the moment when the narration in green and "Star Wars" in blue are suppose to scroll up the screen. But everything else works just fine. I also replaced the AVG with an Arcadeshop replacement, but no change.

How do the other screens of attract mode behave? The Flight Instruction and High Score screens don't really scale or scroll text, so I'm more interested in the Scoring Screen which at least scrolls text up from the bottom (Tie Fighters 1,000, Darth Vader Ship 2,000, etc).

Also, after getting the 16 beeps did you press the 'aux coin' button inside the coin door to advance to the other screens of the self test? First is the switch test but then come the Mathbox tests and a few pushes later the Scale Tests - Linear and Binary. Read page 2-8 of the Operator's Manual carefully and compare to the expected behavior.
 
The other parts of the attract screen work fine, some of the letters might not be drawn perfectly, like the A's for instance. Score screen scrolls up fine then fades out. Yes I advanced to the other screens no errors on any of those screens but when I get to Linear and Binary the square stays static and doesn't shrink down like it is suppose to. I am not sure what exactly that points to. The diamond screen is not being drawn right either. lines get drawn off to the right side of the screen and the letters trail off to the right side of the screen as well. I was thinking this was a deflector problem but not sure now.


How do the other screens of attract mode behave? The Flight Instruction and High Score screens don't really scale or scroll text, so I'm more interested in the Scoring Screen which at least scrolls text up from the bottom (Tie Fighters 1,000, Darth Vader Ship 2,000, etc).

Also, after getting the 16 beeps did you press the 'aux coin' button inside the coin door to advance to the other screens of the self test? First is the switch test but then come the Mathbox tests and a few pushes later the Scale Tests - Linear and Binary. Read page 2-8 of the Operator's Manual carefully and compare to the expected behavior.
 
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The other parts of the attract screen work fine, some of the letters might not be drawn perfectly, like the A's for instance. Score screen scrolls up fine then fades out. Yes I advanced to the other screens no errors on any of those screens but when I get to Linear and Binary the square stays static and doesn't shrink down like it is suppose to. I am not sure what exactly that points to.

That points to a problem in the vector scaling circuit which makes complete sense. Could be the LS02 at 3E, the LS04 at 5P, the LS32 at 5J, or the LS175 at 6L.
 
Ok thanks... Now I have a place to start. Have to get my probe out and see whats happening. Just curious why that wouldn't affect anything else on the game.


That points to a problem in the vector scaling circuit which makes complete sense. Could be the LS02 at 3E, the LS04 at 5P, the LS32 at 5J, or the LS175 at 6L.
 
Ok thanks... Now I have a place to start. Have to get my probe out and see whats happening. Just curious why that wouldn't affect anything else on the game.


An uneducated guess:
It might be just that the movement that is provided by this specific circuit isn't really noticed. Since the ships vectors are provided by the PROMs and the AVG handles most of the other graphics... the scrolling movement provided by that circuit likely only is noticeable on a screen such as the titles where you're looking specifically at what it can do. While flying it might be happening but you just don't notice.
 
Ok thanks... Now I have a place to start. Have to get my probe out and see whats happening. Just curious why that wouldn't affect anything else on the game.

douglasgb said:
That points to a problem in the vector scaling circuit which makes complete sense. Could be the LS02 at 3E, the LS04 at 5P, the LS32 at 5J, or the LS175 at 6L.

Yeah me too! Have you played an entire game? Not sure there is much scaling in the Tie Fighter wave as they're mostly recalculated as they move through 3d space. But flying in to the Death Star would seem to be scaling... please let us know!
 
Thanks...I will have to make that my project for the weekend. I checked it out in the schematics...hope for the best.

An uneducated guess:
It might be just that the movement that is provided by this specific circuit isn't really noticed. Since the ships vectors are provided by the PROMs and the AVG handles most of the other graphics... the scrolling movement provided by that circuit likely only is noticeable on a screen such as the titles where you're looking specifically at what it can do. While flying it might be happening but you just don't notice.
 
Flying through the death star looks normal to me. The towers and the trench look normal. The deathstar explosion all normal. One thing i do notice and not sure if this is related, is when you aim at the white on the yellow towers and fire they don't blow up but if you hit the base of the tower sometimes they will, I say sometimes..i can't remember if this is normal. All game play looks normal.



Yeah me too! Have you played an entire game? Not sure there is much scaling in the Tie Fighter wave as they're mostly recalculated as they move through 3d space. But flying in to the Death Star would seem to be scaling... please let us know!
 
One thing i do notice and not sure if this is related, is when you aim at the white on the yellow towers and fire they don't blow up but if you hit the base of the tower sometimes they will, I say sometimes..i can't remember if this is normal.

That's not normal. I guess for a gameplay refresher either have a look at Star Wars in Mame or youtube for the real thing. If fact this sounds like quite a quirky fault, might be interesting if you have the facilities to get some video footage of it running.

The only thing I will say is that whilst I don't know how good the RAM test on star wars really I managed to put a higher speed ram in a main board once and it used to pass the self test but hang as it tried to zoom into the death star. Therefore, seeing as they are socketed if you have any spares it might be worth testing or swapping out the RAMS.
 
I know its been a while since I played the game over the past 10 or so years i have had it. I could probably get a video and youtube it. As far as RAM not sure if I have some. I have to look. Hopefully I can get to looking the board over this weekend.


That's not normal. I guess for a gameplay refresher either have a look at Star Wars in Mame or youtube for the real thing. If fact this sounds like quite a quirky fault, might be interesting if you have the facilities to get some video footage of it running.

The only thing I will say is that whilst I don't know how good the RAM test on star wars really I managed to put a higher speed ram in a main board once and it used to pass the self test but hang as it tried to zoom into the death star. Therefore, seeing as they are socketed if you have any spares it might be worth testing or swapping out the RAMS.
 
Years later I never figured out the problem but it turned into a new issue that is now causing the board to woop 16 high pitched beeps pauses then repeats like it would in test mode. The problem is, it's in game mode when it does it. Before this happened I turned it on to find a dot on the screen with random images popping up scrolling from the middle to right of the screen then would go to a dot again. Game was basically playing blind. I removed the board and decided to reseat the six 9128 ram on the AVG board. The result we're these 16 woops in game mode. I checked ram to see if I installed right and they were. There was a little corrosion on the bottom ram chips and the sockets looked a little corroded so I replaced them. I have no replacement ram so I put them back in. No results however. I will be buying six new ram and going from there if nothing changes.
 
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