My first job to do was to make the machine actually work, which naturally was the first thing I started on when the game was delivered to me. First thing I did was to check all of the voltages coming out of the power driver board, all seemed to be in order but I replaced a few bridges and caps (as is usually recommended for these boards) just for good measure. It has had a few connector hacks here which will be fixed later on as the goal at the time I did this was just to make the game run.
In these pics, the MPU has been replaced with a Rotten Dog MPU, bought from MAD Amusements, as the original wouldn’t boot, it was riddled with corrosion and I wasn’t convinced that it’d be reliable even if I HAD been able to repair it. Luckily for me I was able to use the original MPU chip and eprom, the sticker was missing from the eprom’s window, lucky it hadn’t been exposed to any sunlight.
The original display was dead too, cracked glass and I later found out blown regulator circuit feeding too many volts into it. Also I discovered that someone had plugged the ribbon data cable from the MPU to the display upside down on the MPU board!! I only realised this when I was replacing the MPU board. I’m wondering if this contributed to the destruction of the display??
As for the display, this was also replaced with a Rotten Dog LED display also bought from MAD Amusements.
