Re: Tempest Eats EPROMs

On Sun, 8 Oct 2000 21:57:04 -0400, you wrote:

>My vectors are hungry!
>
>I'm working on a Tempest board. Self test indicated a bad EPROM. Changed it.
>Self test indicated another. Changed it. It worked. Played it. Powered down.
>Powered up later, another bad EPROM. Changed it. All worked ok. Put the
>board away.
>
>A week or two later (now), put the board in a machine - bad EPROM. Changed
>it. All works ok.
>
>WHY? Why are the EPROMs dying? All are original Atari labelled EPROMs. Do
>they "just go bad"? Should I expect the others to go? Should I replace them
>all on general principals? What would you do?

        While it is certainly possible for EPROMs to go bad, for a bunch of
them to go bad in succession like that is suspicious. Personally, I'd be
more inclined to suspect some of the glue logic in between the ROMs and the
CPU - more likely, one of the address decoders or buffers is getting flaky.
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Received on Sun Oct 8 22:32:07 2000