Dark Seal

Glitched graphics. Screen changes as board is flexed. Moved around board pressing chips until pressing the custom surface mount chip at B6 changed the effect. Noticed that the corner most pins had come up from the board. After an unsuccessful effort to resolder them, I used some enameled 38 swg wire to solder from the affected pins across to a convenient point on the tracks. Having completed this the graphics are back to normal. The wire is very delicate, and located where someone was likely to grab the board to disconnect the jamma connector, so the work was then covered in some hot melt glue to protect it.

Similar Posts

  • Carnival

    Carnival on a Gremlin / Sega Vic Dual PCB. Just had blue bars on screen, although probing the Z80 showed it was trying to run code. Using a logic probe I discovered that the /WRITE signal of the ram chips was always high. This signal comes from a 74LS10 at U77. Checked this chip and…

  • Mr Do!

    Blank screen, Blanking line to output colour proms always enabled. Trace back to 74161 in timing circuit – output stuck, input clock all look OK – replace chip and picture appears. Blue video only – The video lines are controlled by three transistors near the edge connector, checking these revealed that 2 were not giving…

  • The Invaders – Zaccaria

    Totally dead, no screen display (blank white screen).  For this I used the Fluke Z80-S2650 adapter to check out the ram and rom, and located two errors. The rom mapping was incorrect, with a large range of locations returning random values. Examining the board (since I have no schematics), all of the chip select lines meet up…

  • Pacman

    Screen filled with coloured lines, unstable, no sync (see above) – check clock signals from horizontal and vertical scan generators (74161’s at 2R,2S,3R,3S) – no signal feeding into pin 2 of horizontal generators. Follow trace back to 7474 at 3N, signal going in, nothing coming out – replace chip and screen display back to normal….

  • Moon Cresta

    Boots up, and plays, but incorrect sprites – most noticeable little bug changes into ‘END’ at one point. Check 74ls138 at 8n, controlling graphics banking, and pins strobing. Replace chip and now uses correct sprites. Quiet missile sound and explosion sound. Both of these effects use the op-amp chip, LM324 at 7T. Replace this chip…

  • Sega System 16

    Altered Beast – Colours missing, no reds, other colours looked like diminished palette (like windows in 16 colours) – used test mode to perform ram test, and one ram chip identified as faulty (I10). Replaced this and red was back, but still reduced pallette. Looking at colour circuit, and it uses resistor arrays driven by I11…