bigwightdog

This is amazing, its almost my exact same story...so I'll post here and if one of us fixes our problem first maybe the other can learn what went wrong. I too purchased an 800XL off of eBay, and each time it boots without a cartridge it beeps like its ready to load a tape. I also got a Frogger Cart with it and while it plays well, each time I boot (with the cart) the game starts instantly. I read in the Frogger manual that you should be able to press Option to change # of players and Select for Fast or Slow...neither of these worked. So I was finally able to get the Boot Error and get a Ready prompt. None of the keys are working except for Reset and oddly enough the Return key. I opened up the machine and disconnected the keyboard (after figuring out that it wasn't actually soldered to the motherboard)...cleaned the oxidization off a couple of the traces on the ribbon leading to the keyboard, but this didn't do the trick. Next step is to actually take the keyboard apart. I'm wondering if I'll be able to unhook the function keys (option, select, start, etc.) from the rest of the keyboard because I think this would tell me a lot of its seeing one of them as stuck (and thus causing problems for the rest of the keyboard input).