I have a Stern Meteor that has been working fine until recently. A few weeks ago, I removed the soldered on battery from the MPU and connected a remote battery pack. A few games later, I noticed the sounds were distorted. Shortly after that, the game just wouldn't boot, even though I still got 7 flashes on the MPU.

Usually, when I experience a problem with an early solid state machine, I turn to RGP first. Fortunately for me, Andrew (barakandl) had written about the exact same problem over 3 years ago on RGP. And, to Andrew's credit, he was kind enough to post how he fixed the problem. I followed his lead and replaced both of the 5101 ICs and it fixed my problem. My Meteor is running great again.

I wanted to give Andrew a public thanks for posting his problems on RGP and for taking the time to post his fix. It certainly made the difference in this case!