_Empire Strikes Back_ help

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Archived from groups: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting (More info?)

A friend asked me to take a look at his _Empire Strikes Back_ boardset. He
said he'd accidentally "plugged something in backwards," and now it doesn't
work.

I confess that I've never worked on _ESB_ before. I know that it was
offered as an upgrade kit for the original _Star Wars_, but I've seen the
_ESB_ game only a couple of times in my life.

I *have* worked on several _Star Wars_ boardsets and repaired them, and can
run them on the bench. I have full schematics for those.

The problem, as I see it, is that there is a little piggyback board that
contains two x128 EPROMs and some sort of a custom chip; this piggyback
board plugs into a socket that originally contained a _Star Wars_ EPROM (I
forget if it goes onto the CPU board or the AVG board). This piggyback
board is the thing that got plugged in backwards. I'm told that "the EPROMs
got real hot" (I'll bet). The two EPROMs on it are just plain old x128
types, so if I have the data, I've got blank ones I can program. But what
I'm worried about is that custom chip. All I can see is an Atari part
number, and I don't know if that chip is still good or if it got blitzed.

My friend wants to keep this as an _ESB_ game if at all possible, otherwise
I'd turn it back into a _Star Wars_.

I do not have schematics for _ESB_. Can anyone please tell me what the
upgrade kit includes? I assume that it's just this piggyback board and a
handful of other EPROMs. But is it more involved than that?

Thanks to everybody for the help!!!!

Matt J. McCullar
Arlington, TX
"The Force gives power over weak minds."

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting (More info?)

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 04:27:51 GMT, "Matt J. McCullar"
<mccullar@flash.net> wrote:


>I do not have schematics for _ESB_. Can anyone please tell me what the
>upgrade kit includes? I assume that it's just this piggyback board and a
>handful of other EPROMs. But is it more involved than that?

What you need is this old RGVAC message:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.games.video.arcade.collecting/msg/85b505eeb2014b5e

Besides reprogramming the EPROMs you'll no doubt have to replace the
PAL (which replaces the Slapstic chip that you've already seen on the
daughterboard). The data for the PAL is also on the linked page. Not
sure if you'll need to do any rewiring on the daughterboard - have a
look at the schematics and take it from there.

I trust you can program PALs?