Bucky O’ Hare and Martial Champion PAL dumps completed

 PAL Updates  Comments Off on Bucky O’ Hare and Martial Champion PAL dumps completed
Jun 272014
 

My colleague Porchy today dumped two PAL chips I sent him some days ago.They were both 24 pin PLD and both were reversed into a GAL22V10 target device.One is from a Bucky O’ Hare, the other from a Martial Champion, both original PCB.The first was tested by me and it’s working, the latter is untested since my board is faulty.Anyway, now we have complete PAL dump set of these two games.

 Posted by at 9:26 pm

Liquid Kids PAL dumps updated

 PAL Updates  Comments Off on Liquid Kids PAL dumps updated
Jun 272014
 

Since I was working on an original Taito Liquid Kids PCB I took the chance to test the PAL dumps from the archive already present on the database.I found that all of them were correct and working in a GAL16V8 but the last one wasn’t.So I redumped this PAL and added also the missing PCB location to the filenames.

 Posted by at 5:08 pm

Lethal Enforcers PAL dump added

 PAL Updates  Comments Off on Lethal Enforcers PAL dump added
Jun 272014
 

Here is the dump of the only PAL from an original Konami Lethal Enforcers (ver UAE) PCB.Dump is tested working in a GAL16V8 replacement device.Probably this PAL marked ‘054884’ is present also on other Konami PCB like happens for other ones so, please, contact us if you should notice it.

 Posted by at 4:54 pm

Juno First repair log #3

 PCB Repair Logs, Repair Logs  Comments Off on Juno First repair log #3
Jun 262014
 

Third repair log from the batch of Juno First boards.
On power up the board was completely dead. No clocks were present on the CPU or many other IC’s.
As this is a bootleg board the available schematics do not fully apply and the clock circuit is normally handled by custom chips so this was a bit of a learning experience.
To help in dealing with this problem I started making my own schematics up.
junobl

Using a logic probe I could see that the outputs of the 74LS161 @ H14 were all HIGH. As there is no clock present to this chip it should not have counted anything at this point and they should all be LOW. This meant to the board was booting up in an incorrect state and the clock circuit was never starting.
I desoldered and replaced the offending 161 chip.
IMAG0616

The clocks were now all present but I just got a static blue screen and the watchdog was constantly resetting the system.
Using my in circuit Arduino tester I knew the ROMs could all be read correctly by the CPU. I also knew all the program RAMs were fine.
Replacing the 6809 CPU allowed the game to boot properly.

Next problem was the sound or lack of it.
The sound CPU is a good old Z80 so I fitted the Fluke and did a ROM check. This reported back an incorrect signature and when I removed the ROM I see this
IMAG0618

The VCC pin was missing. I soldered a new pin onto this and this board is fully fixed.

The last bootleg board has been a major pain and at this point in time I have admitted defeat with it. I have also been harvesting parts from it to fix the others so it will be written off.