kenzre

I met John when he was at Action Graphics. He gave me TONS of stuff. Atari 800 with disk drives, TI99A w/disk drives, and several unreleased prototypes for the Bally long before Astro. Then I went to his house in Cary and he showed me the awsome 6 ft wide line printer, and a version if windows long before it came out. He had 5 programs running in real time! He also gave me the rights to build the Blue Ram extentions, along with the BASIC cartridges. I was pretty close with Clyde also, but never did meet him personally. We were phone buddies. I'd like to chat sometime, if you wouldn't mind. Ken Lill

I don't need photo of Bally board, just your video mod board, please. Thanks, Ken Lill

The only thing I can think of that msay cause the audio interfering with the video is if the ground connection to the modulator box is not making good connection. The other thing is the modulator itself. If you have an old (sometimes rusty) moulator, they do weird things including color weirdness. The newer modulators have correct and brighter colors. Could you send me a copy of your hand wired board. Also, could you send me a picture of the bottom. There may be something there that is caosing the weird colors.

Sorry to be the bearer of somewhat bad news, but you really only needed the heatsink on the chip under the keypad wiring. By putting the heatsinks on the rest of the 40 pin chips, it makes it impossible to tell what the chips are if they ever get removed. Because they have different power supply pins, putting the wrong one in the socket can be bad. I could blow up that chip, and maybe some others, including the other VERY RARE custom chips. As far as coloring goes, the modulator or an s-video mod needs to be attached to provide it. otherwise it will remain black and white as no color information is included on the video line. You need to put the R-Y and B-Y signals in the output. Any questions just ask. Ken Lill

does anyone have a schematic for the S-video Mod for the Astrocade Bally? I am most interested in the version that has the blue trim pot on it, but I will be glad to get a schematic of any. Thanks, Ken Lill

Have you ever been able to resolve this? I sent you a post on Ballyalley. I hope that you were able to get it going the right way.

Last but not least, U14 might be flakey. It controls the chip select of the On Board ROM.

The problem seem to be in either the on board ROM or the Custom I/O chip. There is a SLIGHT chanch that it could be one of the other2 customs chips. Ken Lill P.S. There is even a slighter chance that any of the following capacitors is bad: C24, C31, C38 or C45. R31 may be bad. Also one of these diodes: CR9. CR14, CR19 or CR24. I have listed the type of parts on this P>S> in the order I think they may go bad and cause this problem.

The 8 DRAM chips are clustered on the PCB. Using the Service manual they are U24-U31 inclusive. Your particular problem appears to be an address issue. Because they are all in the same row, It may be that one address line is causing this problem. Without a logic analyzer or oscilloscope, it would be next to impossible to figure out exactly which is bad, the address line or the data bits in the RAM. They only way to fix this other than with test equipment would be to replace each DRAM one at a time to see if that fixes the problem. However, do NOT mix the '64's with the original DRAMS. they have only one power connection and it is on a different pin. Please refer to the DRAM datasheets. Ken Lill

They still are available @ a cost of $125.00 USD. For priority shipping add $10.00 USD. We prefer PayPal. Send funds to kenzre@yahoo.com through PP. Shipping will be within 5 business days. Thanks kenzre.

my own personal opinion: I would have tried a 90 degree connector on the Bally end so that the plug could have come out of the top, kinda like the UltiMulti switch. mIt doesn't have to be an edge connector, it could be pins. Ken

You might want to get in touch with Michael DeSalvo on ballyalleycom to see what he and someone else did for a 256K cart. It might help you.

I see a LOT of over-kill with heat sinks. If the ADDRESS and I/O chips aer getting hot enough to apply thos heat sinks, there is something wrong with your unit, as well as the HS on the OSCILLATOR. When one of the address or I/O chips fail and you have to remove them to check, How will you know which one is which? Plugging them into the wrong socket can be dangerous because the power supplies are on different pins.. What type of Hantek unit is that? I have never seen it before.

I make a PCB that will allow you to do the same basic thing, but will allow as much as an 8 Megabyte chip. I use a 27c080 or 27c801 EPROM for my UltiMulti. But I have my "Hubba Bubba" cart with a ZIF socket for easy insertion and removal. The switches are accessible from the top also.