Fluke 68000 POD ROM revisions

 General, Technical Info  Comments Off on Fluke 68000 POD ROM revisions
Mar 072015
 

Yesterday I received an email (and it was also posted on the UK-VAC forum) with some information on the 68000 POD firmware version.
Here is the info:

Fluke 68000 pod ROMS

U4.bin : 0x2361d749
U5.bin : 0xa6f59007
version 2.0

U4.bin : 0xa8859970
U5.bin : 0x486343c7
version 5.0 (this version is in https://www.jammarcade.net/fluke-pods/)

The version of a Fluke 68000 pod can be obtained by:

-Put the ribbon cable of the 68000 pod in the self test socket
-Press setup on the 9010a and check the following, changing if necessary:
SET-TRAP BAD POWER SUPPLY? YES
SET-TRAP ILLEGAL ADDRESS? YES
SET-TRAP ACTIVE INTERRUPT? NO
SET-TRAP ACTIVE FORCE LINE? NO
SET-TRAP CTL ERR? YES
SET-TRAP ADDR ERR? YES
SET-TRAP DATA ERR? YES
SET-ENABLE HALT? NO
SET-ENABLE BR/ACK? NO
SET-ENABLE INTR? NO

First disable the self-test performing WRITE @ F000 0028 = BF
and then do a READ of address F0000012, you get the value 0020 for version 2.0
and 0050 for version 5.0, this is explained in the 9000A-68000 Interface Pod manual in chapter 6-7.
If you get version 6.0 please let me know, this version has Quick Ramp, Quick Fill, Quick Verify
and the pattern verification option of Quick RAM.
PAL of version 2.0 pod is the same as of version 5.0 pod

If you want to re-enable the self-test, you can cycle pod power off and then on or do a WRITE @ F000 0028 = FF

Guddler had dumped his ROM’s some time ago when he was troubleshooting his pod and they didn’t match mine.
Based on the above information it would appear he has version 2 of the firmware and I have version 5.
I’ve amended the downloads section accordingly and also added Guddler’s dumps too for completeness.

If anyone has any other versions then it would be nice to get these too, especially the version 6 mentioned in the text above.

Altered Beast repair log

 PCB Repair Logs, Repair Logs  Comments Off on Altered Beast repair log
Mar 042015
 

Today I received a batch of some faulty PCBs and among them there was an original Altered Beast boardset:

Altered_Beast_PCB

Once fired up all was working fine except for the colors, they were clearly wrong (kinda pinkish):

colors_issue

For first I went into TEST mode.In all Sega System16 games(that support it) you can enter in TEST mode by pressing down at same time TEST,SERVICE and P1 start switches.But color RAM test was passed successfully:

Color_RAM_TEST

Near the two 6264 color RAM @J9 and J10 I noticed a couple of 74HC273 which input were connect to data BUS of the RAMs (as they latch input data).Probing the one @L11 revealed some outputs stuck HIGH though inputs were toggling fine.Piggybacked it and colors came to normal (well, almost, sky apart) :

colors_piggybacked_74HC273

Time to desoldering and testing it out-of-circuit:

74LS273_out_of_circuit_testing

Replaced it and board was 100% fixed.Job done.

 

 Posted by at 8:22 pm