Here is a sad fact and its one I picked up on quite a while ago when I compared the Chipmaster Pro to my Boardmaster 4000.
Both of these devices test the Z80 CPU out of circuit yet the Chipmaster Pro seldom gives a PASS result where as the Boardmaster always gave me a true PASS or FAIL result.
I bring this up now as Andrew96 reminded me of this issue and has even made a short video of it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCA_KPoa18I&feature=youtu.be
As he states, ABI refuse to fix this problem and that is just unacceptable.
Be warned before you shell out a good amount of cash on one of these devices. You can’t even add your own test without spending another load of cash on the extra software.
Got this original Konami Vendetta PCB from a batch of faulty boards I recently bought:
Board was really brand new as it was come out from the factory but once powered on I was greeted by a flashing white screen sign that the watchdog circuit was active and the board kept to resetting:
Usually the watchdog is on because there is some troubles in the main code execution.So I started with my multimeter the check the main CPU (a custom marked ‘053248’) area and found an high resistance between ‘D1’ (DATA LINE 1) of the CPU and the program ROM:
Obviously, for the proper CPU operation, all its address and data line must be daisy chained with the main code ROM as confirmed also by schematics:
So I used a provisional patch wire and board booted fine:
But external appearance matters too.So, following the path of this data line, I found the point where the track was interrupted (picture on the right was taken with USB microscope) and I patched it with some AWG30 wire: