Room 34

IT WORKS! (No soldering required.)

The key was deciphering the "3 FF" and "2 FF" codes. Page 6 of the owner's manual indicated that they corresponded to chips F2 and L2 on the board.

I pulled those two chips out and re-set them in their sockets, and now it works perfectly.

Thanks. That's helpful to know.

Something else to consider: the machine WAS working fine for me previously. I have owned it for 10 years, and while it has mostly been sitting unused, and it did have an issue a few years back where the video collapsed down to a bright point in the center of the screen, it has otherwise worked fine. The last time I fired it up, several months ago, there were no problems.


I am thinking the most likely scenario is that a chip has come loose. Hopefully that isn't going to require me soldering. (Again… you have no idea how incompetent I am with a soldering iron.)

Hmm… another update. I found a PDF of the original owner's manual: http://www.arcade-mu...A/Asteroids.pdf

Page 6 talks about the "3 FF" and "2 FF" in the upper left. Looks like they are indicators of failing ROMs/PROMs, and since they're showing FF that looks like total failure.

:/

I may be in over my head on this. Looks like some ROMs need to be replaced. Soldering may be involved. (Did I mention I am dangerous with a soldering iron?)

Update: After a couple of weeks away from it, I decided to give the Asteroids machine another look tonight. Some interesting developments:

1. I inspected all of the fuses. I missed this before, but one of them was blown. So I went to Radio Shack tonight and got a replacement.

2. After replacing the fuse, the display still didn't work. But then as I continued inspecting, I noticed there were some latches that could be released to lift up the table top. (Yeah… I'm not an expert on these things. I had never noticed that.) So just for the heck of it I opened it up, and I discovered an instruction sheet for putting the unit in self-test mode.

3. In self-test mode, the screen came on immediately! I took a photo of the test screen so I could remember the codes that came up. Basically there was a row of 0's (which I assumed was good), and on the left, "2 FF" and "3 FF". Haven't deciphered that yet.

4. I Googled (not sure why I didn't try this before) and found some good troubleshooting sites, including: http://arcarc.xmissi...oidsrepair.html Which gave some good suggestions for what to do in my situation (both player buttons flashing quickly, with no video).

That's all I'm going to be able to accomplish tonight, but I am now more confident that this thing is not dead and that I will be able to get it working.

Here's a photo I took of the self test mode screen.

I'm afraid much of what you said is beyond my understanding of electronics (and is one of the reasons why owning an arcade cabinet is not for the faint of heart). I can replace a fuse, but that's about the extent of my abilities.

One thing that may be relevant though, suggesting the problem may not be with the CRT: it's impossible to start a game. I neglected to mention this in the video, but I had pressed the 1-player start button, and nothing happened… I expected to at least get game sounds, indicating the game was playing, but I didn't. Could it be that there's a loose connection on one of the cables, or a chip that's come loose? Since it hasn't been moved or jostled much, I didn't expect anything to have come loose inside, but I suppose it's possible. But then again, I expected that the purpose of the two red lights I saw inside was to indicate the boards were functioning normally.