Re: VSM troubleshooting, Asteroids

I guess this would be a good time for anyone wanting to read up on 'Analog Signature Analysis'. I just posted a small write-up on how to make a Curve Tracer/Octopus so you can rip through a number of ICs pretty quickly. Thanks to Matt McCullar for the tips :)

http://www.ionpool.net/arcade/tech/octopus.pdf

tom

On Tue, 12 February 2002, "TomW" wrote:
>
> Would it be possible to cause a reset the counter=0 at a specific point ?
> What I'm thinking is loading the vram with valid - no draws. Then Step one,
> let the counter point to the first address, and reset, we check that addr
> line for activity, any others should only pulse on reset. Then let it
> count/point to address 2, check the address line for activity, etc. Its not
> the cleanest but in theory it should allow us to verify the program counter
> is sequencing correctly. I've got a huntron tracker 2000 that helped me find
> one, but it seems to catch me off guard.
>
> If I can find the bottom of my workbench, I'm going to have to start working
> on this again.
> TomW
>
> > Vector Generator Program Counter
> >
> > Yes I had an issue with this on a board too, turned out to be a bad
> 74LS367,
> > a logic comparator found this but I was trying to find the problem with
> the
> > 670s & 193s as I new the program counter wasn't working properly....
> >
> > Scale is an output of DDMA7-DDM4 clocked by !LATCH3 + !LATCH0 * !ALPHANUM
> >
> > So round & round we go, if the 74LS42 Decoder could be removed &
> controlled
> > then I could step thru various chips of the state machine one at a time?
> >
> > Kev
> >
> >
> >
> > > Not having any of that in front of me.. ;-) I should have said
> > > the vector
> > > state stack... Top left hand side of the schecmatic... Darn,
> > > can't remember
> > > what it was 'offically labeled'. Yeah thats it, loaded the ram ok
> > > and the stack had
> > > the offests into ram. If the pattern was all localized, the stack
> > > never got full enought
> > > to excersie it. So in game mode it would die, in test mode it was
> > > fine..
> > >
> > > Also the the whole thing needed to excersize the Scale0-3 as
> > > well.
> > >
> > > TomW
> > >
> > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > So the 9010A didn't catch the Vector Ram failure?
> > > >
> > > > Curiosity forced me to pull the schematics, the RAM
> > > > failure should be caught
> > > > by the 9010A, unless you have a problem with one of
> > > > the 273 latches
> > > > (right?).
> > > >
> > > > The 3 signals that didn't work properly for me using
> > > > the Flukescript were
> > > >
> > > > !OPTS
> > > > !SINP0
> > > > !SINP1
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Kev
> > > >
> > > > > It puts a medium sized PLUS on the screen. I jumper
> > > > the watchdog
> > > > > and let if fly. I was going to put scope patterns in
> > > > a doc for
> > > > > the various test points during the draw but never
> > > > got around to
> > > > > it. What I'd like to do is increase the scaling, and
> > > > have the vsm
> > > > > code put in three different places in the vsm ram.
> > > > I've run into
> > > > > a few cases that it ran fine, but only because it
> > > > was located low
> > > > > in the vsm ram (its such a small pgm it does not
> > > > fully test the
> > > > > vsm address space). The game would die, but the vsm was fine.
> > > > > Turns out that one of the high order bits (I forget
> > > > the chip) was
> > > > > out in the vsm ram. So to make this run in low vsm
> > > > and then again
> > > > > in high vsm memory space would be nice. Did anyone
> > > > ever document
> > > > > the vsm command structure ? That would be helpfull,
> > > > this PLUS is
> > > > > from the atari catbox documentation and I just
> > > > adapted the tests
> > > > > to the 9010. On of these day's I'll make it pretty..
> > > > >
> > > > > TomW
> > > >
> > > >
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Received on Wed Feb 13 05:09:33 2002