Starship 1 Board Dead

Smitty420

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Had to take a break from the Stunt Cycle as I was going in circles.

Started with this board and I have a clock signal and it gets broke down as expected. Board is watchdogging, signals look low on all pins on processor. Hook up FlukeEmu and it says I have a DB 1 pin held low. Poking around I am thinking of pulling ROM chips to test but I can't find anything about these chips on line. When I do a google search it comes back with something definitely not these chips.

I have another board #2 which had a bunch of broken chips. When I pulled the ROMs they broke in half. They were also labeled cryptically. The board with ROMs pulled does not have DB1 being pulled low, it comes back as Buss OK but there are no ROMs and the other chips might be necessary but these other ROMs on board #1 are soldered down. If I can test them then I will pull them, I probably have to pull them either way unless I can make new ones to test board number 2. Board #1 looks the same weather the processor is in the board or not. No code from ROMs.
 

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So I started looking where the smaller BPROMS could be loaded on the board I find a possible scratch across traces which could be DB1 trace. Cleaned all traces in this area and this is what I get now. I can't get it to coin up maybe I can get free play to work. Next will be a test mode and free play and a speaker. I will need the opamp from the other board.
 

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Looking for the problem, I thought that I must be running some program as the reset is now being held high but the board seems to reset when coined up and doesn't really get to the game state. Probing the ROMs seems to get activity but probing the BPROMS @P1 & R1 there is no activity all pins are dead. Going back I find chips with pulsing inputs but no enable pin -SSWA- seems to be missing on L1 & N2. Going to where it is created is an LS42 @ J2. There are signals on input but only on some output and the others are all high. This could be normal for this chip but I would think I would be getting something so I will pull this chip as I do not have one to compare and see if my trouble starts here.
 
Well that led no where, chip was good. Pulled out the HP pulsar so I can put some signal into these chips with all low inputs to see if they are the problem. Every chip I test seems to be working, this is frustrating. All the program chips are soldered down. I think I need to check these even tho I expect them all to be good. Then I will try to test the RAM I can test. I can only test a small section with my FlukeEmu 0000-03ff. This board will not pass a ram short test but will read and write successfully to all locations. My first thought was connection errors but maybe something else. It seems I am missing an enable pin somewhere the graphics ROMs seem to only be getting enabled for a very short burst. I would think the ROM B signal would look a bit more like the ROM A signal. And strange how they are divided up with the signals to the chips that aren't there, there seems to be a couple of extra enable signals not labeled anything going from J1 to E1& F1 would be and another from J1 to the proms @C/D1&2. There is also an enable 1signal going to these ghost rom chips from B5 a 007519. A chip that is also supposed to provide Decode C, D, F and something to what I believe to be the data buffers. These signals seem to be doing nothing. So the first BProm I will test will be this one B5 the address prom.
 
It looks like the coin switch is stuck on or not wired up correctly. Depositing a coin or simulating that process happens so quickly that
the screen doesn't even show the word coin, when it detects a coin drop there is just a brief pause in the moving graphics.
Picture below is from the bottom of Page 5 of the Operation, Maintenance and Service Manual
 

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It looks like the coin switch is stuck on or not wired up correctly. Depositing a coin or simulating that process happens so quickly that
the screen doesn't even show the word coin, when it detects a coin drop there is just a brief pause in the moving graphics.
Picture below is from the bottom of Page 5 of the Operation, Maintenance and Service Manual
Unbelievable, I am so glad you posted your response when you did and saved me attacking this board unnecessarily. I already pulled a couple of chips I didn't need to but did get the hang of using the pulsar to get some kind of use from it tho I do not think it is working properly. I had one of the coin switches hooked up but not the other. Grounding that out got me running. I do not have a TDA1004 just yet but some are coming.

Test mode does not seem to work unless it is just a white screen and tones which I do not have just yet. I suppose I can put the scope on the output and see the line wiggle.

Seems the only thing really wrong with this board was that is was just beat up. Grocery bags have been around forever. I wish old operators would have just put useless PCBs in paper bags rather than throw them around. I suppose some of this could be during shipping but I recall them packaged ok. The other board had at least 10 destroyed chips and the ROMs were both ceramic and both split in half.

Now I just need to figure out what ERoms were used for the main code E3,H3. And I can get my other board working. Files are 2kb in size.
Thanks again for the reply.


 
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