AE#89 Atari Asteroids Deluxe Arcade Repair Part 2

[@notJW13383]

Another interesting and informative video. The summary of the replaced components at the end was a nice touch, please continue to add this. Thanks and keep up the great work!

[@rafaellarios3707]

I have been following you for quite some time now. Even my wife knows when I watch your videos after hearing the musical intro she says: "you're watching your gringo friend again, huh?" Great work you do over there! I have done computer repair since 1981 and it's always enjoyable to hear you going through the troubleshooting process. I don't feel lonely anymore. Thanks again for sharing your great work. Greetings from old Mexico.

[@artifactelectronics]

I'm always happy to hear from like minded engineers bringing back computing devices to their former glory. Especially with support from their spouses.

[@christophS2468]

Great repair. Fond memories of playing the original Asteroids quite a bit one Christmas vacation a long time ago in Pennsylvania.

[@artifactelectronics]

Oh how the simple pleasures used to amuse us. We even landed on the moon with an HP-25 at that time.

[@GeorgeWMays]

So cool. Thanks for the video. I love to see what it takes to bring these things back to life. It is surprising to see how well the vast majority of the components have fared over time.

[@gearheadted9210]

thanks for the tip also on the strain relief pliers,been fumbling around too long with those!

[@JohnDoe-uq3mx]

there's a trick to hold down both buttons down to make them static space ships go away in attract mode. i'm not sure what that does.

[@gearheadted9210]

cool series,looks like you have had some practice at gameplay as well,now i gotta find an asteroids deluxe,thanks for sharing!

[@isoguy.]

That was awsome fix and double awsome to see the game played on a retro crt, the missiles looked like a photon torpedo because of the slight delay in the screen refresh. Thank you so much for showing us the game in action. 👍👍👍

[@Discretesignals]

I was actually holding my breath when you were playing the game. Funny how something that old can still instill excitement. I wonder how many people got gamer rage from playing asteriods?

[@artifactelectronics]

Judging from the number of bent control panels I've seen I would say quite a few got gamer's rage.

[@insanedruid3143]

Yeah, mee too!

[@ronsherr1]

Love watching your repair videos. You would have taken first place on that board if you hadn't had the camera in your way! Great stuff!

[@paulclauson2478]

Checked fuses and they were good

[@1959Berre]

Though it is widely assumed, that a fuse will protect the equipment in case of a calamity, the fuse is there to prevent your house from burning to the ground in case of a dead short. Usually, the equipment has released some magic smoke by then; albeit a rather limited amount, compared to the smoke a burning house would release.

[@robbieburns1664]

Another good video, Arti. This is my favorite channel. Keep them coming. And you're either pretty good at asteroids or else were damn lucky here. I have it on the Atari 7800. I like that port best out of all the others, but this deluxe looks like it is better still. I don't think I had ever seen it before, or at least I had forgot about it. BTW, that's about the 3rd time now we have seen your face in a reflection, lol. So you might as well not be camera shy anymore.

[@bblod4896]

That is a cool tool, on my buy list. Thanks.

[@andymouse]

I noticed your new mains lead are the same colours as we use in the UK but the original was i think USA colours, any reason for that please ?...great fix, great game...cheers.

[@artifactelectronics]

Somebody (maybe even myself) must have replaced the power cord. The original power cords adhered to US standards.

[@telluridecolorado8918]

Hi Arti --Really enjoy your videos I subscribed to your channel a few weeks ago. I loved Asteroids arcade game when i was a kid. Still looks like fun. I do a lot of electronics repair myself, so it's nice to learn from other with similar skills. I just bought 2 TRS-80s and soon i'll start doing full restorations on the 2 machines. I've posted a video here on KZbin of the two computers if your interested.

[@artifactelectronics]

Your machines a re in great shape, awesome find!

[@kennynvake4hve584]

If you take a look at pliers that are used for removing spark plug boots...they are very similar..

[@paulclauson2478]

My asteroids deluxe monitor doesn't come on and my one and 2 player lights stay on with no flashing any ideas?

[@artifactelectronics]

Sounds like the cpu is stalled.

[@SzymekCRX]

Leaving a comment for Your enjoyment :)

[@artifactelectronics]

Greatly enjoyed, thx

[@billwilliams6338]

ARTIFACT ELECTRONICS , // 1.) The 6502 MPU chip that is Clocked at 1mhz and a 6502A MPU chip that is clocked at 1.5Mhz which is only 5Hz of a difference? // 2.) If an arcade game uses a 6502 MPU chip that is clocked at 1mhz and you put in a 6502A MPU, why won't this work and what kind of logic problems would this cause, which logic IC chips won't work correctly and what kind of problems will it cause?

[@artifactelectronics]

1) The difference is 500 KHz or 50 %. 2) An 6502A will work just fine in place of a 6502, but not the other way around.

[@JohnDoe-uq3mx]

Artifact Electronics, I watched a few amusement channel videos where they suggested to manually tie all PCB isolated grounds to the chassis ground. Would that be a good or a bad thing to do?

[@artifactelectronics]

That depends on the power supply configuration, but I would not recommend just tying ground to chassis. Just make sure that you have sound ground connections throughout you board set.

[@billwilliams6338]

What formula can i use on my calculate to summed up the contents of a ROM chip? I can read the contents of a ROM chip using an external EEPROM reader software program, but how do you summed up all the contents of a ROM chip?

[@artifactelectronics]

uint16_t checksum = 0; for (int32_t i = 0; i < file_size; i++) { checksum += file_buf[i]; }

[@billwilliams6338]

i ment using a handheld calculate what formula can I use to calculate to sum all the ROM contents? If a ROM chip has 11 address lines that ROM chip can only hold 2048 bits or bytes of data. When Reading the ROM contents how can you look at the hexidecimal values for each ROM address location and add up using a handheld calculate its 20488 bits or bytes of data?

[@artifactelectronics]

Read the eprom with an eprom programmer or download the binary file, if available. Either way you end up with a file that you need to print out from a debugger in hex format. Then you need a calculator that can work in base 16 mode (hex) and add up all of the numbers.

[@Kaavoort]

I had a similar problem with my Asteroids Deluxe. I replaced the RAM chip that the beeping error code indicated. After that, I was no longer getting an audio error codes, yet it killed the video output. Would that mean I messed up replacing the chip? Or more likely that the RAM check passes but now something else down the line has a problem?

[@artifactelectronics]

I would guess that something went wrong with the replacement procedure. It sounds like the CPU isn't running at all. You might have created shorts or something didn't get connected. Use a multimeter in continuity mode to check that every pin of the replacement is connected properly using the schematic as a reference. There's also the possiblity that traces running under the replacement chip got damaged.

[@billwilliams6338]

Any reasons why the Checksum is 16bit in arcade ROM chips, and why not 8bit checksum or 32 bit checksum. Why 16bit checksum to do the ROM content error checking?

[@artifactelectronics]

In the early days one simply summed up the contents of a ROM and the lower 16 bits of the sum became the checksum. It was a simple and thus widely used method.

[@billwilliams6338]

When adding up all the hex numbers in the ROM file, will this be the checksum value or ROM signature value?

[@artifactelectronics]

Both

[@johnrazor8720]

Enjoyed watching the repair of the video game. I wasn’t clear on how you determined which chip to replace. Did it self-diagnose and point to that specific chip?

[@artifactelectronics]

It gave me a beep pattern when turned on which identified the the bad chip. The diagnostics are not 100%, but in this case they led me right to the problem.

[@kennynvake4hve584]

cut right down the center of the chip...

[@kennynvake4hve584]

Its cheating but I would just solder a socket to the existing pins..then plug in the new chip.