Jul 142012
 

This came up on eBay the other day and thought I may as well have a go at repairing it.
According to the listing it failed its startup tests and the picture showed this too however when I got it, it passed all startup tests no problem.
So, here is what I was getting at first boot up

Picture is upside down and garbage on the screen during game. There is also no music but SFX are present.
I removed and reattached the ribbon cables and that gave me this

The video board on this has been messed with before with some pretty bad soldering and not so great wire links added.

There are a couple of points here that are completely trashed, luckily though these are not used so I can ignore them. I removed the links and remade them which brought the screen the right way round again and fixed some colour issues.

There is now clearly a problem with the sprites, every other line is missing. I recalled that my friend Elgen had the very same issue on his bootleg board so asked him what lines he patched. He sent me some pictures but unfortunately it wasn’t my issue. It did however point me to the correct part of the board.
At location IC84 is a TMM2018 RAM. I noticed when my hand was near this chip, some of the missing lines on screen would appear. Checking the outputs from this RAM revealed some weak signals.

These outputs fed into the 2 chips that Elgen had pointed out to me so that confirmed what I was seeing.
I removed the RAM and replaced it with a 6116 I had which then gave me this

All graphics problems sorted. Now onto the music problem.
Going from previous experience I knew where to look.
The YM2151 is responsible for our nice FM sounds. I could see the inputs pulsing away but the outputs at pins 19,20 and 21 were all stuck high. Replacing this gave me that oh so familiar music.

Job done

 Posted by at 12:32 pm

Spectrum divIDE repair log #2

 Computer Repair Logs, Repair Logs  Comments Off on Spectrum divIDE repair log #2
Jul 092012
 

Another divIDE repair today.
Very simple, with the device connected I got this

As Ive found with all of the divIDE boards that Ive repaired the EEPROM was blank. A re-flash sorted this problem out.

There is apparently a reason why this keeps happening and has got something to do with the way the Spectrum regulates power at startup.

 Posted by at 4:38 pm

Various PAL dumps

 PAL Updates  Comments Off on Various PAL dumps
Jun 302012
 

More from Luiskiko
Added:
Arabian Magic
Mutant Fighter
Mutant Fighter bootleg

Thanks to Luiskiko once again

 Posted by at 1:27 pm

Wonderboy bootleg PAL dumps

 PAL Updates  Comments Off on Wonderboy bootleg PAL dumps
Jun 262012
 

Dieter sent me some dumps from his Wonderboy bootleg board.
All the PAL’s were unprotected and he converted them to GAL’s and has tested tham all.

Thanks to him for these

 Posted by at 3:43 pm
Jun 212012
 

Looking at various methods of adding IDE capability to a Spectrum I came across the “simple 8 bit” interface.
I had a couple of board made up cheap and here it is in all its simple glory



The card sits in the Z80 socket and the Z80 CPU sits in a socket on the PCB, all very simple.
Its only 8 bit and has its limitations but I look forward to experimenting with it

Works very well for my very limited testing but I’m not at all familiar with Spectrum’s so will probably take a little while before I can transfer anything “commercial” over the the CF card.
If anyone know a nice easy way to transfer images on the the CF card for use with the +3e ROM’s then please let me know

 Posted by at 5:41 pm