On Sat, 6 Feb 1999, fishd wrote:
>
> I'm in the process of testing a couple of Major Havoc boards
> with the Tempest/MH adapter but having problems getting the
> spinner to respond.
...and while his fix was simple, that brings to mind something
I saw a long time ago and never managed to fix.
Running a Major Havoc board (no conversion kit) in a Tempest or
Gravitar harness. Game powers up, plays fine for a few moments,
but over time (30-40 seconds), the spinner becomes gradually
less responsive and eventually completely unresponsive. Power-cycling
the machine fixes the problem, but only for a few more seconds.
It "feels" like an analog problem, say, a capacitor charging or
discharging - the longer the machine is off, the longer it works
before it fails again. Power off for a minute, get 30-40 seconds
of spinner time. Power off for 5 seconds, get 10 seconds of spinner
time.
Obvious cause: Bad board.
Unobvious fix: Sending the board to someone with a known working MH
setup results in the board and spinner behaving fine.
Obvious cause: Bad spinner.
Unobvious fix: ...so why can I play Tempest normally?
Obvious cause: Bad wiring.
Unobvious fix: Problem reproduced on two separate wiring harnesses.
Anyone else seen this kind of behavior? If so, what was the fix?
(Things to do: Stick scope on CLK and DIR lines when I get things
set up to test this again someday...)
Later,
Doug.
-- dougj | @ | hwcn.org |Received on Mon Feb 8 11:10:41 1999
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