A few updates.
*Small bug fix when loading larger files so they now load.
*Removed a couple of the more obscure routines as I wasn’t happy with them.
*Now, if the loaded file is an uneven size it will offer to pad the file for you. Minimum size for this is 0x400.
*Fixed a bug with bit manipulation when saving/loading settings
This board is a bootleg board but seems to follow the original fairly accurately.
On initial boot up this didn’t do a great deal but then other times it actually started up with various errors.
A fault like this always makes me look at the reset circuit.
This board uses a 6809 as the main CPU and a Z80 as a sub CPU.
The reset pin for the 6809 is pin 37 and using the scope I could see that most of the time it didn’t do what a reset should do.
Tracing it all back I came to this
The reset circuit on this is as simple as it gets really with a capacitor, resistor and diode.
I removed and replaced the capacitor and now the game boots up every time.
Now, although the game booted it appeared to crash when entering attract mode or starting a game with this fault
I remembered Bryan McPhail had the very same issue some time ago and he mentions that the sub CPU needed to be running.
Checking the ROM for the sub CPU I found pin 1 (A15) was dead. Further inspection of the solder side of the PCB I found this
I patched this up as neat as I could and covered it using an overcoat pen
Now the issue was fixed
Last thing to do was deal with the sound.
My initial inspection of the PCB showed the volume pot had been messed with
I removed it and found some bad track damage underneath and on top
I fitted a new pot and patched all this up nicely but I still had no sound.
Tracing it out revealed that the bootleggers mixed up the two SPEAKER connections so SPEAKER+ was connected to SPEAKER- on the JAMMA edge and vice versa.
I spoke to Muddymusic to see what he wanted me to do. The option were hack the board to swap them or make an adapter. The prior option was chosen and I cut the two traces and ended up with this solution.
Now everything works great
Next up in the box of brokenness is a Pacland.
Visual inspection revealed the amp had blown up
I also saw the usual corrosion on the legs of some of the customs
and the socket didn’t look too great either
As you would expect there were some pins missing from the chip when I removed it
I soldered legs on best I could and opted to fire the board up.
This is a good start and using the error code list compiled by my good friend cmonkey I knew that this was a RAM fault.
Checking RAM 9N I found several address lines were dead
Using the schematics I could see those address lines came from a 74LS32 @ 10J
I confirmed the outputs were bad and replaced the chip.
Now I get this when booting
Game is booting but some scroll issues and some jailbars too.
I could affect the scroll issues by pressing on that custom chip I resoldered at the start. I removed it again and attempted to further clean the legs but I just made it all worse. In the end I opted to solder it into a socket.
It looks crappy but it got the job done
Scroll issues fixed I now turned to those jailbars.
This ended up being an easy fix. I removed the ROM at 6T and checked it in my programmer. Bit 5 was stuck high so I replaced the ROM which fixed the jailbars.
Last thing to deal with was the sound. Obviously I wasn’t going to get far without an amp and I don’t have any spares. Lucky for me, my friend Smarty sent me a replacement gratis which fixed the sound and completed the repair.
Thanks very much to Smarty for the amp.
Bought a cheap Desert Breaker for my collection which the seller declared as having no sound.
This game is running on system18 hardware. Since the sound was totally missing I first tested the z80 which was good and then I desoldered the SRAM which was
a Toshiba @IC79 , normally very unreliable in comparison to other makers and infact it was faulty.
It fixed the sound but playing I noticed that some sprites had missing lines
This problem could be either the custom chip 315-5361 ( sprite generator ) or the srams connected to it ( IC21 and 22)
Since all the address line were good, I proceeded to desolder and test the srams which were infact bad bad.
Game was fixed totally
A fresh box of broken boards from Muddymusic arrived recently and Asterix was the first one I pulled out.
Here is the picture I was sent of what it does on boot up
That’s reporting a couple of bad RAM chips but when I did the visual inspection I saw what looks to me like some reflow work has been done in the past and been done badly too. Excess solder and a couple of lifted traces. There were also some bent pins.
I straightened out the best I could and patch a couple of traces too.
The game now passes it POST but I get this in game
At first glance this looks OK and I initially missed it until I ran the MASKROM check from the test menu and it reported a failure at 7K (no picture of this, sorry). If you look at the “ASTERIX” logo there are a few issues around the outline with blue parts.
Going back over those customs and checking all the pins individually I found one pin that needed reflowing. Doing this fixed all the issues.
