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caius

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Bought on eBay from the States a Time Soldiers PCB which arrived to me some days ago (by the way, thanks to 'coolmod' for his mediation and forwarding) :



Auction described the board as “TESTED NOT WORKING-GARBAGE ON SCREEN-MISSING CHIP”

The missing chip was actually one of four program ROMs:



I programmed a blank EPROM and finally powered the board up.All I got was a partially dimmed screen in which I could recognize the power-on TEST which probaby failed since the board kept resetting:


As usually I do, I started my troubleshooting with a visual inspection.Board was in very good shape but flipping it I noticed scratches on solder side, some quite deep :



A couple of traces looked really severed under the microscope and my multimeter in continuity test confirmed it :



Patching the broken traces fixed board completely :




The repair was pretty easy, just a quick fix hence it gave me time to look for something on the board to reproduce.The long custom SIL marked 'ALPHA-INPUT84' was a good candidate :



This custom IC handles inputs and Time Soldiers, being a rotary joystick game, uses four of them (two for 8-way joysticks of both players and the other two the 12-way rotary joysticks).Later Alpha-Denshi games like Gold Medalist use a part marked 'ALPHA-INPUT87' that externally is identical but with slight internal differences :



The two parts are not interchangeable but I was able to merge both designs in a single reproduction part: :



Testing on PCB was successful on Time Soldiers PCB, all directions of both players worked with 8-way joysticks (could not test rotary because I don't have them)


Another PCB and custom IC preserved!
 
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Superb! This is used on a lot of games!

Gold medalist
Gang Wars
Time soldiers
Sky Adventure
Ikari Warrior 3
Kyros
Super stingray
Paddle mania
Sky soldiers
Super champion baseball
+many more!
 
Thanks for the list!Maybe not the most wanted reproduction but it's always good to have it in my opinion ;)
 
Thanks for the list!Maybe not the most wanted reproduction but it's always good to have it in my opinion ;)
The other parts on this board are quite good, all hitachi and stuff.
With this input repro available it makes the hardware simple and easy to repair / maintain :D

It will be used on many others too, the list is just what have seen over the years / common stuff.
 
The repair was pretty easy, just a quick fix hence it gave me time to look for something on the board to reproduce.The long custom SIL marked 'ALPHA-INPUT84' was a good candidate :

You almost seem sad that it was so easy ! :rolleyes: Who else would say "we'll it's all working but let's try to reproduce something, just for fun"

amazing.


Now you make me wanna find a board for my rotary joystick!
IMG_3568.jpg

Thank you !
 
You almost seem sad that it was so easy ! Who else would say "we'll it's all working but let's try to reproduce something, just for fun"

amazing.
Ahahahah!Thanks.Well, we are not speaking about a 'CPS-A-01' or other full digital ASIC so the part was really easy (for me at leat) to replicate.Here 's the "naked part" :




Now you make me wanna find a board for my rotary joystick!
And I'm looking instead for a rotary joystick!it seems they are not really cheap and easy to find.
 
The other parts on this board are quite good, all hitachi and stuff.
Yes, it seems all boards from Alpha-Denshi manufacturer make massive use of Hitachi TTLs which are well known to be reliable unlike Fujitsu and Texas Instruments ones...
 
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