Space firebird boot blank screen
- Thread starter Lurch666
- Start date
I had 5 of the 2101 from Bulgaria in the board at the start but didn't know until later that it was the other ram chips causing the problems so those you are getting should be fine as my board is working with 5 Bulgarian 2101s and 3 American 2101s
Well when jonhughes sold me this board he messaged that he was the high score holder (some 78000 points) and said that when I got the board running I should try and beat his record.
Always up for a challenge here is my attempt.
Needless to say it didn't go well-I never could remember the patterns and I was never very good at this game anyway:
Small glitch occurred around the 6 minute mark but apart from that the boardset seems to be working fine.
The one player was not connected to the edge connector so had to add a wire to sort that out but all is good now.
Always up for a challenge here is my attempt.
Needless to say it didn't go well-I never could remember the patterns and I was never very good at this game anyway:
Small glitch occurred around the 6 minute mark but apart from that the boardset seems to be working fine.
The one player was not connected to the edge connector so had to add a wire to sort that out but all is good now.
I received the 2101's this week, and populated the 2 boards that had no rom and thought I would be done as the boards were working fine otherwise.
Good news is, the ram works fine, and both boards are running.
Bad news is, 2 other faults have developed (don't ask me how, I have no idea).
One of the boards has a problem with the video board, the 'bomb' that drop down from the aliens are double vertically and move in steps, not smooth.
The other board also has graphics problems, but these are on the cpu board (found out by swapping boards). Hard to describe so I'll add a picture. One of the lines of the spaceship is repeated, these lines are mostly not steady but kind of flicker and move with the spaceship left/right.
I tried to find the fault on both boards, but these small glitches are hard to find... looks like a logic ic in both cases but if you have any suggestions, just let me know.
patzik2021-04-05 21:50:23
Good news is, the ram works fine, and both boards are running.
Bad news is, 2 other faults have developed (don't ask me how, I have no idea).
One of the boards has a problem with the video board, the 'bomb' that drop down from the aliens are double vertically and move in steps, not smooth.
The other board also has graphics problems, but these are on the cpu board (found out by swapping boards). Hard to describe so I'll add a picture. One of the lines of the spaceship is repeated, these lines are mostly not steady but kind of flicker and move with the spaceship left/right.
I tried to find the fault on both boards, but these small glitches are hard to find... looks like a logic ic in both cases but if you have any suggestions, just let me know.
patzik2021-04-05 21:50:23
"One of the boards has a problem with the video board, the 'bomb' that
drop down from the aliens are double vertically and move in steps, not
smooth."
I got this with the other ram that wasn't 2101.
It seems that only fast 2101 ram will work with these boards so I'm wondering if some of the 2101s are either bad or mislabeled.
Try swapping the 2101 ram around and see if it makes a difference.
drop down from the aliens are double vertically and move in steps, not
smooth."
I got this with the other ram that wasn't 2101.
It seems that only fast 2101 ram will work with these boards so I'm wondering if some of the 2101s are either bad or mislabeled.
Try swapping the 2101 ram around and see if it makes a difference.
I tried swapping the ram, but this made no change. Also took a look at the board from the picture above, and thought it might be caused by 5v being low (I changed the power supply when working on the board) but it was the opposite of what I expected. The closer I was to 5v the worse the problem got. When lowering the voltage to about 4v on the board it was almost gone, but this off course is not a solution.
Ronnie Dent
Active member
Sorry to bring up an old thread! But I'm having a similar issue with a boot set as in the voltage if set to 5v the image is wrong I just get a section of the graphics mid screen, lowering the voltage brings the image to somewhere near what it should be but the scoring at the top is not showing! I'm wondering if it could be video ram related? The game is running in demo and all looks to be ok, I will post some images shortly.
Thanks Ronnie
Thanks Ronnie
Ronnie Dent
Active member
So here is it with 4.4 volts still not right but better
And voltage up to 4.9
And voltage up to 4.9
Ronnie Dent
Active member
Thanks, I'm lucky I have a few working sets to hand, I tried swapping each and every 2101 ram and all other socketed chips but no joy! The problem is knowing what to look for.
I have 2 of these booty sets and both were dead so I used a cpu board from one set and gpu board from the other to get to this state, would love to get both sets working again
Thanks Ronnie
I have 2 of these booty sets and both were dead so I used a cpu board from one set and gpu board from the other to get to this state, would love to get both sets working again
Thanks Ronnie