So my Tales of the Arabian Nights has been sitting unplayed for a few months, and since I've started turning it on again, it's been displaying some weird boot behavior. Here's what I've seen, in the order I've seen it:

1. First time powering up: got factory settings - tested the batteries, and they were dead. Like dead-dead, completely drained. That seemed weird, since I thought they were not very old. Checked for corrosion, swapped the batteries. Everything seemed fine for a few power cycles.

2. Then I noticed I was getting a single "bong" at the end of the attract loop, and also right before the high scores. Might have sounded the same as the power-up bong, but my memory is hazy. There didn't seem to be any simultaneous resetting or anything - attract loop continued as normal. There were just these two stray bongs at those two points.

3. A couple power cycles later, I got weird display crap on start. Difficult to describe - it was the normal animation, but some flickery & messed up parts. Also, briefly got that "failing display" thing, where you lose some rows in one quadrant of the DMD.

4. This morning I got: "Testing..." then RESET; then "Testing...", attract mode briefly, then RESET; then "Testing..." and normal attract mode. (All in one power-up.)

5. The last few power cycles have been fine. No glitches, resets, or stray bongs.

This is one of the weirdest & most inconsistent set of symptoms I think I've seen. I'm not even really sure where to start - though my gut says next step is to swap in the AV board from my Medieval Madness and see if that works.

One bit of relevant context: I rebuilt the high power section of the AV board a year or two ago, after the DMD lost power. (The thread: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/totan-dmd-dead-gi-acting-funny) It seemed to do the trick, and I didn't notice any further weirdness until just now. The one exception being the strange way that only the upper-right quadrant of the GI lights up at boot time, until it enters the self test. All my other games give either no GI or all GI prior to the self test.

Minor update: left it on for a few hours. Attract loop was fine. Then, a handful of bongs, and a couple of consecutive resets back to self-test, with some DMD glitches as described in point 3 above.

Thanks for the replies - will check cables & voltages tomorrow & update again. Any additional suggestions welcome in the meantime.

Finally got in there to check things out. Still not seeing corrosion (pics attached). Tested voltages, with the attached results. (The power board is a RottenDog, hence the extra column.)

Reseated all the ribbons, and J101, J114, J201. Discovered that two of the cutout metal corners of the RottenDog power board weren't being held down by their screws, so I put washers on those screws to make them contact the hold-down pads.

Powered up, and everything seemed o.k. - though I didn't wait very long to see if it would reset during the attract cycle.

Powered down, and based on suggestions in several threads here, gently pushed on all of the socketed chips on the CPU board to make sure they were seated.

Powered up, and everything went nuts - flashing lights, audio pops, then dead. Now when I power on, I get nothing - no GI, no DMD, nothing. Initially, I did get a "bong", despite everything being dead, but now, not even a bong.

CPU LED201 and 202 are steady lit. 203 (the middle, blinky one) is dark. Tried powering up with all of the cables removed from the CPU board except power, and same results. Pulled and tested all fuses - all good.

So now I have a different, and presumably much worse, problem. Goddammit.

One thing I'm noticing is that the CPU has some scratches at one corner, like someone tried to pry it out.
DSC_1563 (resized).JPGDSC_1564 (resized).JPGvoltages (resized).png

Thanks for the reply. And yes - all the voltages I posted were measured prior to reseating anything. Also, edited my post to give the correct LED numbers.

Found the ASIC pinout on pinwiki. Looks like pin 35 is the third from the left, bottom edge, on the chip carrier. No continuity between that and either of the legs on the 203 LED. Tried on the back of the board, too, where pin 35 appears to be second from the right, bottom edge. Same results. Does that sound like the right test?

There aren't any traces leading from that pin that are actually visible, unfortunately... It seems that they're on the front of the board, not the back, and they're hidden underneath the carrier, so I can't follow them. The board looks super clean, though. See previous pics, and the one below.

The one suspicious thing is the minor damage at the lower-left ASIC corner. Looks like the case is chipped where someone tried to pop it out with a screwdriver or something. Maybe when I pushed (yes, gently) on it, I managed to worsen previous damage.

Going to order a PLCC puller, so that I can pull the ASIC and try reseating it. If someone could sanity-check my pin numbering & PLCC tool selection, that would be appreciated: https://www.amazon.com/a06111000ux0025-Professional-Extractor-WTS-610-Assisted/dp/B007Q8J2HG/

asic_rear (resized).JPG

Some of that may be bad lighting - but the left leg on R118 is definitely "sunken", and maybe R4. I can certainly re-flow the connections on all the components in that area, though.

Assuming that it's still dead in the water following that, though - next steps? Was thinking about dropping in the ASIC from my Medieval Madness. But I don't want to end up with two fried chips if the problem lies elsewhere. Something bad definitely happened on that last power-up cycle.

DSC_1571 (resized).JPG

Cool - thanks. Tested pin 35 -> U21 pin 9 (second from bottom, right side of chip), continuity good. Then tested U21 pin 8 (bottom-most, right side) to the top of R7, continuity good.