So I have a wrecked Firepower that is almost ready to try, 11 months after I picked it up. It's been a pure-forged middlefinger-generating trial by fire along the way. But I'm nearly happy to say I've fixed both the sound and the speech boards... almost? Here's the quick history and what's going on now:

- Sound board was dead when I got it. So I recapped it and it worked for sounds, but not speech. Meanwhile after borrowing its CPU chip to test on the game's MPU, it died. Turns out the red herring in that scenario was the original PIA went bad. The upshot is right now I have a sound board rebuilt with a new 6802 using its internal ram, a new 6821, new crystal, new sound rom, and new caps, which seems rock solid and plays all sounds in the self-test anytime, all the time.

- After getting the sound working, speech was MIA with no attempt to play. I replaced the 1458's. I replaced the ROM sockets, speech roms, and the two larger caps on the board. I also replaced the ribbon cable and have toned all its pins end-to-end when connected.

- Now, when I connect the speech board, it works - sometimes?! Sometimes the self-test loops several times successively, with all sounds and vocabulary... and then stops. Sometimes it plays once then stops. Sometimes it doesn't play anything at all. Sometimes it will play the sounds once, then no speech, and then nothing. Sometimes it plays for a bit then degrades into chip-tone static and dies. Sometimes it comes right back to life immediately. Other times I have to walk away for a while.

NOTHING in Clay's Guide, Mark's Guide, or PinWiki refers to this set particular symptom. And I've replaced all the "typical" components and it would seem things ostensibly work... but only when they want to? What could cause this inconsistency?

Bump... or have I stumped?

Pinwiki says the IC7 4069 and/or IC2 7442 can be suspect at times... do these symptoms fit that criteria?

They have. I never heard a peep from them, even with new roms, until changing the sockets. The originals were all RN-branded, I pried the covers off to inspect the pins and several of them were tarnished beyond use (the original roms also had tarnished pins). Replaced the sockets and the new roms finally came to life... sorta...

I've already replaced the sockets; checking my work 'til I'm blind.

I know I'm not above a mistake but since I did cut out the original dead PIA then add a socket and a new PIA, and it works... same as with the old speech rom sockets being visibly bad, and no speech at all until I replaced them... I'd like to think my work is OK. Double checking it anyway, I cannot find any shorts or bridges or blobs or loose connections, etc. I use SIPs when possible to make things easier to inspect and check.

I've not had luck flagging the ribbon cable. I already replaced it, but suspect the original was fine also. With the boards connected I can tone from the board-side of each ribbon trace with no shorts, etc. Wiggling it doesn't seem to make a difference. I know for certain that its not moving at all between the times when everything works / doesn't / works again / etc. Touching it while a test is in progress does not cause any change.

BTW to make troubleshooting easier, I replaced the W1 jumper pads with single machine pins. That way I can easily insert a 0-ohm resistor jumper for troubleshooting with/out the speech card attached, in game, without removing the boards. I thought that was a clever idea.

Bump-before-I-do-something-stupid-tonight-bump

Since they were the only things mentioned as "rare but possible maybes" on PinWiki, last night I replaced both the 4069 and the 7442 chips. I didn't make anything worse, but I didn't make anything better, either.

So I'll take the moral victory that my work is at least good enough not to break things worse. But the true problem is still evading: sound and speech works for a little while before cutting out completely. Seems speech board related because the sound board alone plays forever.

Any other ideas? I want to rule everything out before I consider getting a Kohut speech board.

Yep, new roms, ordered a couple months ago... they were the first suspects (originals were nasty looking!) before I tried the 1458's.

So you wanna hear something crazy?

Speech or no speech be damned, I finally decided to install my Rottendog MPU/Driver and debug the rest of the machine with the playfield out of the cabinet. Wanting to hear the other sounds for the first time, I disconnected the speech board and the game "played" with sound! So I installed the playfield, etc. Connected the speech board, ran the test and got sound, no attempt speech. Whatever, I just wanted to play my game... I even closed up the backbox just to enjoy it as is (expecting no speech). Played fine more or less, so I turned it off to debug a couple switches and the next time I turned it on there was still no speech - but blank breaks in the audio where it would have been. The next time I turned it on, speech was there! And after some crackly static during the machine's first 5 minutes of run time, it's worked fine for the last 24+ hours. INCLUDING for guests, which we all know is when pins love to embarrass you. No problems with speech or sound some 20+ games in.

During all that time I've made no meaningful changes to either board since my previous update.

Doesn't matter... I'll take it for now even if I won't hold my breath.