well here is another crazy one. atleast its making me pull my hair out.

had this board come from a frankenstein, the machine turned on fine but i could see the battery has started to leak...
i removed the board and replaced the cpu socket, the eprom and ram sockets. the crystal, the resistors etc everything in that area that looked like it was corroded.

now i figured simple easy, i mean damn the thing worked before.

now i turn on the board. pia led is stuck on solid with no cpu ram or eprom in it. if i compare to a working board only 5 volt is lit on the working one so obviously something aint right.
if i put only the cpu chip in the board, i have clock at pin 36 and 38.
but pin 5 the vma is dead, even if i bend the pin out and then test it there is still nothing...not high or low or pulsing. cpu aint pulsing on address and data lines. compare the same thing to a working board and the vma does pulse if bend out.

i have checked all the traces sofar and cant find anything wrong. double and triple checked to see that i put the right components inplace...

anyone have some ideas? spend a few hours on this thing already and i cant give up but geez its making my head hurt.
wish there was somehere here i could take the board to who knew abit more but hey africa welcome to it.

i know but its a data east cpu board in there...

trust me on this u can even check the schematics or pictures online....

wish it was a simple this time but without anything in the board it should have a 5 volt on only from what i compare to a working board...

also the eprom wont run no matter what u do cause the cpu chip is dead, there is no activity on the address and data lines. if i compare it to a working board the cpu runs perfectly fine, so its not the chip.
also leons test rom wont be of much use cause well if the cpu aint running the code cant run

let me try and explain better here..

if i check a working board without any chips in only 5 volt is lit...

on this none working one 5 volt and pia is lit... however someone on facebook made me look at the reset and there is nothing not a high or a low. if i cut the first pin of the pst the reset returns and the cpu runs but still the pia is locked on.

im starting to think there might be a short or something... cause if i put my probe on any ground trace there is nothing. this is weird. ever seen something like that? surely there should be ground lol.
if i remove my 5 volt from the cpu board and check with my probe from ground, then there is ground.

i dont even know what to make of that whole story.
i kinda left the board alone for awhile cause it kinda drove me nuts, found another board for the game and it worked fine played everything.
this evening i turn the game on and the cpu board wont boot. 5 volt on only, no pia no blanking.
took it to the bench no booting, cpu aint running. lol wtf i dont even know anymore. i have another 2 boards that does exactly the same thing. are data east boards known for being troublesome? wowsers.

okay so i had no choice but to work on the board i started this post for. since the one i have in the game has crapped out and just 5 volt led on, ill figure it out somehow and post results here as i learn more.

anyhow onto the board at hand
weirdly it did the same thing as before. pia on only and nothing else happening.
then i checked voltages to the board with the power supply connected on the bench. well i figured the lower voltage was okay it worked before on the previous board, but alas it was not. i dont know how or why but my alligator cable seems to not supply enough current or something, i checked with another cable and the voltage was clearly higher but still not happy, i then doubled the 5 volt line and this made it alot beter think i was way closer to 5 compared to before i had 4.20 hence my problem, obviously the blanking circuit or some would say watchdog wont let the board boot up if too low. also if its abit low it might reset the board the whole time, u will see the blanking going on and off.

i put the board in the game just now and it boots. however 3 coils are locked on as soon as i close the coin door, probably some tips that i need to replace... i guess thats something important to take from this when u turn on these games, listen and check for any coils that lock on if they do, turn the game off right away otherwise coil will burn up.

here is some other info i got with my logic probe.

blanking should be high (if this is low, im sure the board wont boot, if u have ur probe on there and turn the board on for a second its low and then goes high)
irq should be high and low with pulses
halt should be high
reset should be high
b+ should be high
e should be high and low with pulses

if i figure out the other boards ill post what i find in here... maybe it helps someone, im not a pro by any means but have no choice but to figure these things out.