I wonder if switching from a 6808 to a mid 80s/90s 6802 on a Williams sound board could possibly have the same issues with speed?

I replaced my Firepower sound board's 6808 with a 6802 & removed the 6810 (that was faulty) the sound seemed normal. I have a few spare genuine 6802's I could swap over & see if their is a difference. Date codes for the 6802s I have are from 78-80, except for one Motorola with a 91 date code & a Hitachi which is unknown.

I repaired a spare system 6 sound board a while ago & replaced the 6808 with a 6802 & removed the 6810. I did a quick test for a few minutes at the time & all seemed ok.

I pulled it out the other day to finish it with some new headers & caps. I noticed after it was on for a few minutes the sound would drop out altogether & come back with a high pitch sound sometimes. Switching the game off & on again their was a similar pattern.

I noticed when touching the 6802 chip very lightly, not pushing it, sound would come back & go off when releasing, at first this would indicate a socket problem, but the RN socket was good & I really wasn't putting any pressure to make/break a pin contact which was weird. I tried another NOS 6802 ic I had & was the same - one 6802 chip was 83 date code & the other 91.

Anyway, I reconnected the W14 track (which I had cut) to disable the 6802 onboard RAM & installed a 6810 back in the board, this fixed the problem & have tested for some time with no issues. For some reason this board did not like using the 6802 onboard RAM. Might put a 6808 back anyway as their is a 6810 to keep the original configuration.

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That's pretty slack with the wrong package! you really don't know what you are getting. The other thing that is common is the genuine chip depicted in the pic & the remark fake is what gets shipped - I got caught out recently with some 3081 IC's that had genuine NOS chips in the pic, but received the ones that looked like all the other remarks - however, they did work.

The 6821 & 6810 on my board are remarks I think with those dates. I bought those years ago before I realised about the fakes. They came from a supplier on the net & not an ebay seller - can't remember who.