WTB: atari pokey chips

gwarble

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hey all,
does anyone sell or know of a good source for pokeys these days?
i have 1 good and 3 testing bad (P0/P1 in test mode) across my two millipede boards i'm trying to fix, need to find some replacements

thanks
- joel
 
Arcadechips.com and mikes arcade are the only places that I know that have them. Good luck
 
Dang, they sure have exploded in price! Less than a year ago i think i got one for $12, a few years back $5...

Too bad the last one i got is one of the failures, didnt last very long
 
So i've heard not all applications use all functions of the chip... Is there a way to find out what part of the pokey has failed? And then what part of the pokey is used in a particular application?

Ie: failed chip in P0 gives me only mushrooms dropped in the left column, in P1 gives me no bullet hitting mushroom sound... I'll see if the other two bad ones give different results
 
Damnit i guess starting to look for pokeys was a bad omen, tempest isn't happy with me

Had tempest on, doing something else and i heard a game start... Now firing is constantly on, powering on starts a game immediately, and self test gives me a Q

Do these really just fail out of the blue!

grrr

/end rant
 
Constant firing and a Q error code are definitely a bad pokey, or if you're lucky a dirty or broken pokey socket. But it's easy enough to troubleshoot by swapping them, if you have another good Atari board and pokey.

They've definitely jumped up in price in the last few months. Folks' supplies must be getting low.
 
Yeah i'll for sure try reseating, swapping, crossing my fingers

But they sure have, i'm looking at $72 for four chips! Insanity but whatchya gonna do
 
Yes, if you have the means to desolder them, as they aren't socketed.

indeed:

atari_7800_ballblazer.jpg


everything in electronics isn't made to be easy as 1-2-3 for you.

if yer in this hobby without any intent of soldering/de-soldering, you are in the WRONG hobby! :)
 
thanks for the tips guys

i remember hearing about them over the years, i never thought i would have to resort to that for my own limited use (but it did seem to make sense for those producing products, unfortunately it didn't seem to help get the multi-asteroids kit out any sooner)

i may give it a try, never had to remove a 40-pin chip keeping it intact, but its probably worth a shot
 
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tedious but successful

i took the last good one from the millipede board and fixed tempest, then took two from ball blazer carts (thanks scott), put them in sockets (so any extra solder wouldn't f up the socket on the board), and got millipede back up... still gotta pull two more for the other millipede pcb

the five bad ones i have now are all 1981 or 1982, 4 from millipedes are AMI/Korea and 1 from tempest is "S"/Singapore... all the ball blazer carts are 1987 or 1988 AMI/Philippines... for what its worth
 

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With today's technology why can't anyone produce something to replace the pokey and quad pokey? I know that QPE boards available but you still need to have 4 good pokeys.
 
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