Re: Armor Attack sounds and rom versions

Sorry, I should've said IC26, not 28. Since your [engine/squeak/morse]
group of sounds are all much louder than the [tank fire, jeep fire, hi
explosion, lo explosion, and chopper] group, I am wondering if the capacitor
C43 (0.33uF) is bad and is not passing the output signal from IC25 pin 6
through to R91 (8.2k). Also, if the value of R91 has gone way up, it would
reduce the gain of that entire group of sounds. If you turn down the
volume, does the engine sound okay at all levels? If yes, then maybe you
can barely hear the other group? If that is true, then the problem could be
either C43 or R91 or maybe one of the transconductance opamps (current amps)
at IC19/20/21/22 is leaky and pulling all of the sounds from that group
down. Anyways, I am getting the impression that there's a gain problem
between the two groups of sounds. It may also be possible that the cap C14
(0.4y uF) is shorted and shoving a big DC bias into the TL081 at IC26 pin 2.

I wish I had your board on my bench for a little while. Why don't you pop
it into your transporter and beam it over here?

William Boucher

----- Original Message -----
From: "andre" <livnfree_can@yahoo.com>
To: <vectorlist@vectorlist.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 8:42 PM
Subject: Re: VECTOR: Armor Attack sounds and rom versions

Bill, not sure if you have a different schematic but I don't have an ic28.
Reguardless, I replaced all tl081'swith no change.. swapped out a couple
other logic ic's and no change..
I did try the other sound board in the game and it seems to work fine. The
engine noise on that one is very faint compared to everything else. I guess
on the bad sound board, I could say the engine noise is overwhelming
compared to all other sounds...its really loud.. The morse does have a
'slight' distortion to it as well and when turning on the machine, the
explosion sound almost seems to have a slight reverb to it as it fades..

--- On Tue, 6/2/09, William Boucher <boucher@mnsi.net> wrote:

> From: William Boucher <boucher@mnsi.net>
> Subject: Re: VECTOR: Armor Attack sounds and rom versions
> To: vectorlist@vectorlist.org
> Received: Tuesday, June 2, 2009, 8:57 PM
> Swap the audio boards and see if the
> tank sound problem follows the audio board or stays with the
> CCPU. The shift register 74LS259 at F2 on the CCPU
> might be bad and causing inappropriate sound behavior.
>
> The tanks have two speed related sounds, the engine and the
> tread squeak. The squeaks stay the same but just repeat
> faster as the tank speeds up. The engine rumble
> frequency has 15 levels. The sound should not get
> louder and it should not get distorted. The tank
> engine sound is the single most complex sound circuit and it
> consists of several chips and about 50 discrete passive
> components. It's too complicated to go into it here
> but if the engine sound is okay at the lowest level and if
> the squeaks are okay too, then the logic is probably working
> okay. It may be then that the opamp (8-pin DIP TL081)
> at location IC28 is bad. This is especially suspect if
> the explosions and the morse code beep are also
> significantly noisy or distorted. It is possible that
> the problem is in the final power stage of the amplifier
> (i.e. bad transistor Q12 or Q13 or bad TL081 at IC24.
>
> It's really hard to guess since I haven't actually heard it
> but maybe that'll get you started.
>
> If you get the Armor Attack manual pdf, there's a really
> good description in there of how all of the sounds are
> generated.
>
>
> William Boucher
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "andre" <livnfree_can@yahoo.com>
> To: <vectorlist@vectorlist.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 8:19 PM
> Subject: VECTOR: Armor Attack sounds and rom versions
>
>
> >
> > Got the Star Castle working fine, so moved onto the
> AA. I have 2 boardsets, bot seem to be different. Boardset 1
> has a sound board that does not state a game name on it.
> Boardset 2 has a soundboard that states Armor Attack on it.
> > -Boardset 1 works fine, sounds seem to be normal. The
> odd thing is is when a game starts, your jeep is not in the
> center.. it is over on the left side of the central large
> open area. Also, once a helicopter comes out, they
> repeatedly come out as soon as one explodes.... non stop...
> Is this a different version of this game or something messed
> up? All else seems to work as I remember it...
> >
> > -Boardset 2 seems to work fine, except for the
> sounds.. When you start you start in the middle, and
> helicopters have a delay between them so gameplay seems
> correct. The only issue on this is as the tanks speed up,
> the pitch of their engine noise speeds up but it becomes
> very distorted when it does. At its first speed, it sounds
> fine... just as you kill them and it speeds up does it get
> bad. I have replaced all the electrolytic caps on the sound
> board... any ideas what would cause that? Is the engine
> noise 'supposed' to change as they speed up?
> >
> >
> >
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Received on Wed Jun 3 23:54:46 2009