(Topic ID: 143256)

Atari 1st gen test rom

By beaky

8 years ago



Topic Stats

  • 7 posts
  • 4 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 8 years ago by beaky
  • Topic is favorited by 3 Pinsiders

You

Linked Games

#1 8 years ago

does anyone have a copy of the leon atari 1st gen test rom and the documentation to go with it?
the link for it doesn't seem to work
http://www.pinballeon.com/atari2/atae2.htm

i have had a Middle Earth machine dropped off for me to repair,
1st problem i had had was no clock, sorted that out,
now it fires most solenoids, and lamp outputs in rhythm with the reset going high low,
It will even do this with no cpu chip or roms installed.
I have programmed 2 new 2716 roms for it and done the mods to be able to use these roms, installed new sockets for cpu and roms.
I understand the reset will go high and low when the mpu program strays from its normal instruction sequence (quoting the atari trouble shooting book) and when the board is held in rest by holding in the reset button no lamps or solenoids are energized

i have repaired 100's of bally / Williams (all systems) sterns, sega, zaccaria and data east boards.

I will be following the instructions on the diagnostics flow chart tomorrow but if all fails i would like to have a test rom to help

#3 8 years ago

thanks,
followed the atari trouble shooting guide and got to "Call atari service center"

#4 8 years ago
Quoted from beaky:

thanks,
followed the atari trouble shooting guide and got to "Call atari service center"

That's funny sh!t!

Maybe we could find Nolan Bushnell's call number.

#5 8 years ago

did they answer?

edit:
I've got nolan's business card somewhere (from a company he started after he left atari). I wonder is the phone number is still current?

#6 8 years ago

The direct link to the test ROM, which is futher down on the page I linked to earlier

http://pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=File:Ata2.zip

1 month later
#7 8 years ago

the fault ended up being the chip select (c6 - 9301) and the ram chips. I bought the ram chips before i even tried the test rom.

I fitted the old ram back into the board after i got it to boot just to satisfy my curiosity, 1 was faulty, the second one ran for about 5 minutes and then it died.
Board won't come out of reset with game roms fitted with faulty ram. Test rom will run with faulty ram and there is no ram check in the test rom software but it did the job and i am grateful that someone took the time to make one.

The early atari MPU boards will constantly turn all the solenoids on and off if the program doesn't run so if this happens to anyone you know why.

The Atari trouble shooting guide doesn't even tell you to check the chip select signals at the roms, kicking my self as it is one of the first things i check when the data east test rom won't run in a data east or system 11 board

i still have 2 more faulty chips that need to be replaced before i fit it back into the machine (C13 and C14 which are 9334 I.C.s) which are for some of the solenoids.
74259 is the 9334 equivalent so i have ordered these, they are a lot easier to get than the 9334
the board i am working on has one 9334 fitted at C13 and the rest are 74259 (C14 to C20) even though the schematic says they are all 9334.

The board has now been modified to use 2716 roms as the original proms had legs that where rusted through.
board now boots and runs and doesn't go into reset.
thanks for the links guys.
I have another customer that is sending me an atari board that wont boot so hopefully it will be a little easier to trouble shoot.
It is also for a middle earth

Promoted items from Pinside Marketplace and Pinside Shops!
$ 12.00
Tools
Nezzy's Pinball Prints
 

Reply

Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.

Hey there! Welcome to Pinside!

Donate to Pinside

Great to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!


This page was printed from https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/atari-1st-gen-test-rom and we tried optimising it for printing. Some page elements may have been deliberately hidden.

Scan the QR code on the left to jump to the URL this document was printed from.