Fluke 6800 to 6502 pod conversion

So I've decided to convert a 6800 pod in to a 6502 just because I'm cheap and i like the challenge. Some of the 6800 pods had jumpers in them that would allow them to covert easily, mine was not one of these pods. I have the schematic drawn up and it looks like is should be possible with out to much hassle. The only trick is the pod is a 3 layer board with all the vcc and ground connections in the middle of the PCB. Were going to start on the processor PCB. Ive started by removing U12 You can throw this away because even if you covert it back to a 6800 you wont require this anymore. Last night i got all the trace cuts marked out there's about six of them on the processor PCB and only one on the i/o PCB. I'll take some pics and upload them tomorrows tonight's new years so no shop work tonight.

Dk3 From Hell

So a couple months ago a fellow arcade guy dropped off a some boards for me to fix. I got most of the repaired fairly painlessly with just bad ram/rom issues. Then there's the DK3 this is the one that he wanted fixed the most so he could use it as a backup or his machine. I put the board on my rig and it was dead so i swapped in a working video board and what do ya know i got a perfect picture. So i have a problem on the video board I started at the clock circuit and what do ya know dead as a doornail. I changed out the 10136 ecl counter and well now it kinda counts but still no clock. Now i change the 10105 triple nor/or gate and wow it counts just like it should but still no pic. So i move to the 10125 its a ecl to ttl translator and its dead as dead can get pins 14, 5, and 4 are dead, So i change it and voila it works i have a picture but no characters. So i start poking around the ecl ram area and notice that the 10125's there are also dead so i swap them out and now i start to get random character glitches, so i swap the ram 10422 and now i have more sparkles lines and glitches were characters should be. Whats left i ask my self, well its the 10124 ttl to ecl translators so i change them all out too. Now it all works like a charm I even took all the parts one my one and swapped them in to my tester board it has everything in the ecl socketed to i can verify if ti was actually bad and it was every one of them. My guess is that the machine that is board was in had a faulty -5v power supply and it blew up all the ecl circuit. Either way it was the most broken board I've ever worked on, and I'm glad the its done.

Arcade Test Monitor

So this isn't a repair post but I am stoked about this. Finding a small test monitor is not that east I had been using a Commodore 1084d for the last couple years. One day it died a horrible death, so i slugged a G07 on my bench and it took up way to much real estate so on the hunt for a smaller one. I was checking out kijiji ads for monitor when i see my local church is selling there av equipment. I picked up a sony pvm-1343md, a wicked studio monitor full of inputs including a 9 pin rgb jack and its only a 13". So my advice is if you happen to come across a good monitor at a wicked price, Get it because you'll never know when you'll need one.

Data 29b

If your not familiar with this beast it's most likely one of the best programmers out there when in comes to old bi-polar proms and eproms. Ive been searching for one for a year now. I finally found one in mint condition with the unipak 2b. When i put it on the bench and flicked the switch i realized i had a problem. The unit did not pass the self test, Instead it showed garbage on the screen. Now I've come to realize 2 things about garbage characters its either bad ram or a address line stuck. I took it apart which is easy just take out the adapter module and remove the two screws on the panel underneath the then you'll see some 2114 ram. I popped these out and stuck them in my Modem-up programmer/tester and ran a test on the ram. Lucky me one was bad so i swapped it out for a known good one and the rest is history.