Quoted from cfh:you may be barking up the wrong tree on this.
on the -17 MPU board, have you replaced the chip sockets? on every -17 board, and i do mean every one, the sockets need to be replaced. especially if it's those brown sockets (though the black closed frame ones are bad too.)
what happens is as the game warms up, the chips actually expand a bit and push themselves out of the old sockets. all you need is one millisecond of non-conductivity, and that will lock the MPU board.
you didn't say what you did to the MPU board itself, this is why i ask. Personally i run with a combo U2 2732 EPROM (so there's no need to change the U6 socket) on -17 chime games using an original -17 MPU board.
+1 on recommending doing the single 2732 at U2, it is the ideal setup. One less socket to swap out, one less place to have a physical connection issue. The cut/jumpering is pretty easy for that setup as well.
There is not much documentation about doing so, but this single eprom at u2 works for all the stern mpu-100 games as well.
With the -17 MPU, from the factory you either have the closed from AUGAT sockets (crappy), or the close frame brown/orange socket(extra crappy). You can pull the housing off the augat socket, pull each pin one at a time, you can leave the paper in while you pull pins. The brown/orange sockets you need a good desoldering tool and take them off in one piece, it usually desolders well and falls out.
Fredericksburg, VA
