Not strictly an arcade machine so I hope this is allowed.
Deal or no deal red hot deal, scorpion 5 board, no DES. all 7 power LEDS lit steady alongside a steady lit red LED. doesn't boot, no lights, error messages or sound.
Pressing the reset button doesn't alter the state.
First things first, a visual inspection of the board and associated connectors. some signs of flux around the varta 3.6v battery shows it's been replaced but not fly wired away from the board.
A quick prod with the multimeter supports this with a healthy 3.5v which is surprising as the seller tells me it's been stood in a summer house unused for quite a while.
The cabinet itself smells very damp but doesn't show signs that it's been wet.
I unplugged the game card and powered on, same lit LEDs no boot situation.
I unplugged the stake and jackpot dongles and all the connectors from around the board to check nothing attached was preventing the machine from booting. I half knew this wouldn't be the case because they tend to give an error rather than do nothing if a peripheral isn't in a good state.
I powered on again. Still the same.
I verified the clock of the CPU with the scope, the signal fills a 25us division perfectly and looks clean so that's the 40mhz clock healthy with a good clean signal on both DC and AC coupling.
I then probed the RSTO pin. it's was held low meaning the CPU is stuck in a reset state.
I didn't have a great understanding of how the Motorola MCF5206E works at this point. the manual for it is some 499 pages long with around 40 of those pages devoted to the table of contents.
I thought it best to make sure the reset path wasn't physically tied to ground which it wasn't.
This isn't how the reset path works. RTSO is the pin that the CPU itself pulls low though a resistor to assert a reset state in RAM etc after it receives a reset assert from RTSI. I didn't know this at the time but I do now. and now you do too.
I removed the board from the machine so i could inspect the under side.
It looks super clean with no visible repairs.
I had a cup of tea, a little bit of a vape and considered my next move.
Determined to keep it simple to begin with I had a look at the reset button.
Probing with the meter in continuity revealed that the button was constantly in a made state.
It seems the damp had got into the little tactile button and it was as if the button was being constantly held down.
I gave it a good swill out with some IPA (not the beer) until it behaved as expected, refitted the board, connectors, dongles and game card. Crossed my fingers and powered it up again.
Same 7 steady lit green LEDs and now a blinking red one. I closed the front and the previously dead DMD showed the machine was initialising but it eventually went into an alarm state showing reel 4 error 28.
I opened the cabinet again and span the 3 main reels to see how they felt compared to the 4th, fearing that damp may have killed off the reel motor for the 4th.
When I came to spin the 4th reel it was snagged up on the frame that holds it. I freed it off gently, powered up to a working Noel Edmonds.
He was alive all along but kept subdued by a dirty damp finger on the reset button.
I need to replace some of the little 5mm and 10mm lamps and all of the small feature segmented displays are missing the same 2 segments which leads me to believe it's a problem with the way they are being driven rather than the displays themselves.
I can't see all 6 of them failing on the exact 2 segments.
The machine now seems perfectly happy, accepts money, goes into demo mode with the door open and dumps the hopper on command.
I paid next to nothing for it and I picked it up nearly on my way home from visiting family.
The guy who sold it did a lot of the pushing and shoving despite confessing to a heavy, thick hangover although having a tail lift on the back of my van did alleviate most of the pain.
I just need to fit some wheels to the bottom, give it a clean and get it into the living room now.
Happy days.
Deal or no deal red hot deal, scorpion 5 board, no DES. all 7 power LEDS lit steady alongside a steady lit red LED. doesn't boot, no lights, error messages or sound.
Pressing the reset button doesn't alter the state.
First things first, a visual inspection of the board and associated connectors. some signs of flux around the varta 3.6v battery shows it's been replaced but not fly wired away from the board.
A quick prod with the multimeter supports this with a healthy 3.5v which is surprising as the seller tells me it's been stood in a summer house unused for quite a while.
The cabinet itself smells very damp but doesn't show signs that it's been wet.
I unplugged the game card and powered on, same lit LEDs no boot situation.
I unplugged the stake and jackpot dongles and all the connectors from around the board to check nothing attached was preventing the machine from booting. I half knew this wouldn't be the case because they tend to give an error rather than do nothing if a peripheral isn't in a good state.
I powered on again. Still the same.
I verified the clock of the CPU with the scope, the signal fills a 25us division perfectly and looks clean so that's the 40mhz clock healthy with a good clean signal on both DC and AC coupling.
I then probed the RSTO pin. it's was held low meaning the CPU is stuck in a reset state.
I didn't have a great understanding of how the Motorola MCF5206E works at this point. the manual for it is some 499 pages long with around 40 of those pages devoted to the table of contents.
I thought it best to make sure the reset path wasn't physically tied to ground which it wasn't.
This isn't how the reset path works. RTSO is the pin that the CPU itself pulls low though a resistor to assert a reset state in RAM etc after it receives a reset assert from RTSI. I didn't know this at the time but I do now. and now you do too.
I removed the board from the machine so i could inspect the under side.
It looks super clean with no visible repairs.
I had a cup of tea, a little bit of a vape and considered my next move.
Determined to keep it simple to begin with I had a look at the reset button.
Probing with the meter in continuity revealed that the button was constantly in a made state.
It seems the damp had got into the little tactile button and it was as if the button was being constantly held down.
I gave it a good swill out with some IPA (not the beer) until it behaved as expected, refitted the board, connectors, dongles and game card. Crossed my fingers and powered it up again.
Same 7 steady lit green LEDs and now a blinking red one. I closed the front and the previously dead DMD showed the machine was initialising but it eventually went into an alarm state showing reel 4 error 28.
I opened the cabinet again and span the 3 main reels to see how they felt compared to the 4th, fearing that damp may have killed off the reel motor for the 4th.
When I came to spin the 4th reel it was snagged up on the frame that holds it. I freed it off gently, powered up to a working Noel Edmonds.
He was alive all along but kept subdued by a dirty damp finger on the reset button.
I need to replace some of the little 5mm and 10mm lamps and all of the small feature segmented displays are missing the same 2 segments which leads me to believe it's a problem with the way they are being driven rather than the displays themselves.
I can't see all 6 of them failing on the exact 2 segments.
The machine now seems perfectly happy, accepts money, goes into demo mode with the door open and dumps the hopper on command.
I paid next to nothing for it and I picked it up nearly on my way home from visiting family.
The guy who sold it did a lot of the pushing and shoving despite confessing to a heavy, thick hangover although having a tail lift on the back of my van did alleviate most of the pain.
I just need to fit some wheels to the bottom, give it a clean and get it into the living room now.
Happy days.