Tofu's score of the day "Stargate"

tofudrifter81

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Hey Klov'ers. Scored a Williams stargate today. Decent shape, back door has some moisture damage but all in all pretty decent. Plays with sound for about a second or two when the main game play kicks in then silence. It has flashed 1-3-1- on the lcd screen and boots up with a ROM 31 error. if I push the test switch in the coin door it will boot up and let me coin up and play with sound then it dropps out. Hopefully you Williams guys out there can point me in the right direction.
 

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Nice pickup. I should have never sold mine. The numbers on the 7 segment LED indicate the type of problem and the location of the affected IC. Under normal circumstances, it should read "0". Unfortunately, I can't remember how to decipher the type of problem and location. I am sure somebody here can tell you, though.
 
Nice. Regarding the error, there are a few things I would make sure are good before trying to decode any value shown on the display on a Williams. First gotta check the power supply voltages because if the power isn't right it will be flaky or not work. Then, I had all kinds of issues with my Joust. Sometimes it would not start up at all meaning no number shown, other times I had 131 errors or other errors, sometimes it would work but have strange artifacts on the screen during gameplay including left behind pixels or parts of things, and the high scores would get corrupted. Turned out it was a bad 40 pin ribbon cable.
If the power is good, I would try reseating the 40 pin ribbon cable. When removing be sure you pry it up with a small screwdriver. Trying to pull the cable by hand could break or damage it further. If it works after reseating, improves, or you see different results than before; I would at least replace the end of the ribbon cable that is removeable if not the entire cable.
Another thing is the wire connectors on the boards will go bad due to loose wires, broken connections, dirty pins, etc. Try reseating them. I wound up replacing most of the male connectors on my Joust. The new pins are square and make better contact than the old smaller round ones. That was the first thing I tried. Still having all the issues noted above, I then did the 40 pin ribbon cable and it has been rock solid since.
 
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The numbers that flash are the subsystem and then the part number. 1 = RAM, 2 = ROM. So 1-3-1 means RAM chip 31 (bank 3 chip 1).

There are a lot of reasons you could be getting this. Pull the power cables and reseat them. Corrosion can cause voltage drop outs. As stated above the 40 pin ribbon cable from the ROM card to the main board can be an issue. Before removing it, try pressing on it and on the ROM side first. If the numbers change, it probably needs to be recrimped.

Check the voltages on the 4 corners of the RAM chips as well. They should be:

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ken
 
Hey thanks for the quick reply guys, I'm off to the Klassic arcade's soda pop festival today and will try all the suggestions this weekend. if I wanted to buy new 40 pin and 20 pin ribbons and new connectors does any one sell them so I can just replace for piece of mind. I saw on a older post when searching that Bob Roberts sells them but couldn't find them on his site?
 
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