Saturday 3 December 2016

Atari Breakout PCB repair. W.I.P Part 3

Part 3

So cleaning the are around the IC that had failed showed no real track damage, the board is burnt and doesn't look pretty but nothing is shorting together or in need of repair.


I fitted a new socket and replaced the 7432. Upon powering the game up the video tearing I was previously seeing has gone there's still some sort of image issue on the left side, and the bouncing ball has appeared. Progress is being made. :)

The ball was just running from the bottom of the display to the top and repeating over and over. No collision detection or rebounding with the bricks or side walls.


Now then, the paddle wasn't looking correct, It would change size when you turn the spinner but didn't really move correctly. In the paddle circuit I found a 7408 that had a bad output on pin 11. This was swapped out with a replacement and as shown below the paddle now works correctly, even though it is too small. The ball will now rebound off the paddle in game mode or in attract mode, it will also rebound off the top wall above the score line so it's not detecting the bricks.


Clearly there are issues with the game coming in & out of attract mode, the scoring isn't working correctly and I'm sure the amount of live isn't being counted correctly and I haven't even looked at the sound circuits yet.

There's still plenty more to fix by the looks of it. I'll keep you all updated.