DuaneAL

I have 5 silver and two beige consoles. Right now, my favorites are the silver ones, mainly because the FinalGROM works with them.

Adam, I love the mystery machine!

I recently picked up five 4a's on Ebay that had issues. Two were key board issues that were easily fixed. They were missing keys. One was fixed by taking a key from the other keyboard that was missing keys. The second one was fixed by replacing the keyboard from one of the non-functioning keyboards. I also had to replace the internal power supply in that one. One was listed as having a bad cartridge port. Cleaning the port was all that was needed. One of the other ones had a bad internal power supply. Replacement fixed that one. The two bad power supplies had different voltage readings. The first read -5v, 12v, gnd, +3.6v. The second read -5v, 12v, gnd, +11v. I also had a problem with the 32k sidecar working on 3 of the consoles but not on one. That ended up being operator error on my part. There is a switch on the sidecar that switches between the ti for power and an external power supply. I had it set to external but had no power supply going to it. Apparently there is enough voltage leakage to somehow power the sidecar regardless of switch position sometimes even through the speech synth. I am still working on fixing the last one from that lot but I ended up better than I had hoped to when I bought them. Hope this helps!

Thanks, Helocast I had seen those- They are a great resource! I guess my real question was about signals and timing. I am a mechanical engineer,so the only thing I know about this electrical stuff is to try to keep the smoke in the little wires. Right now I'm up to five of my seven 4A's working. I have one QI and four silver non-QI's functional. I have two non-QI's, one biege and one silver, that beep with a continuous tone and present no video signal. They have different sounds. One has a deep sound at start that changes if you turn the computer on and off quickly. the other has a high pitched sound that stays constant when you turn on and off. I have swapped out the groms, video chips, and the sound chips between the two. I have not tried to swap chips from one of the good boards yet.

Interesting! Chipwise, how different is the QI from the original board? So far, I've noticed differences between the two types that affects the FinalGROM and the unpowered 32k(sometimes), so I suppose that the cartridge port and the expansion port are both treated differently by the Q? Did I see that the 99/8 also couldn't use the FG? Timing Issues?

I forgot to say that with this fix, I'm up to four good TI'sand have have high hopes of fixing 2 of the remaining 3 bad ones. I bought two back in January and one was bad and the other was a QI so my FinalGROM wouldn't work. SO, I took a chance and bought 5 non-working units from everyones favorite e-bay seller in Colorado Springs. They turned out to be better than I expected, got here quickly and safely (well packed) and probably only cost a little more than they should have ($75 including shipping). Unfortunately, no power bricks- any ideas where I can score 3 or 4 of those?

Thanks for the response Ksarul! I figured out that my 32k was switched to external and was posting that when you responded. Would the switch make the 32k board act like shorted pins in the ext position with no power?

Never mind- I found the switch for "ti/ext". That fixed it. Never would have looked if you hadn't asked about the power. I wonder why it works on the other three?

No. I am also not going through the Speech Synth. The card works well on the other two as well. I haven't tried the SS to see if it provokes the same response. hold on, i'll go try it now. No problem with the SS plugged in. With the 32k plugged into the SS, boot was fine as well. Then I tried just the side car and got the noise and black screen again. I'll look to see if I have a PS that will work with it.

I recently bought a lot of 5 99 4A's on Ebay that all had issues.So far, i've gotten 3 running. Two are perfect as far as i can see- they see the FinalGROM and the 32k sidecar(shorty from Arcadeshopper) with no problem and I can run all the FG programs that don't require F18A. The Third unit boots up fine with no FG or 32k sidecart and with the FG but no 32k sidecar, but if I include the side car, it boots to a loud noise and a black screen. Any ideas on what I should look at?

So I downloaded the Fest West 2018 edition and brought it up to show my kids. They all thought it was cool. I figured it wouldn't hold their interest very long since it isn't complete yet. Shows what I know- my eight year old had his tonsils out last week, so he's been out of school. Three days in a row I've come home to find Tilda on the computer and find out from the beautiful lady who lives here that he has been playing for hours. He especially liked the raft that acts like a door. Thanks for developing this and I hope all goes well with your future work!

Thanks!

Thanks, Airshack, for the link! I'll have to wait to watch it in the morning. I'll binge watch all the other videos starting tomorrow evening. Thanks to everyone who has kept this hobby going all these years. I just got back in earlier this year after a 32 year absence. I hope I can contribute something useful in the future.

Looks like it was a great event! I noticed the picture of Legend of Tilda- will it be available (or is it available)? My family loves Zelda. I never imagined that those kind of games would be possible on a 99. Did PeteE do the graphics in Magellan? My 8 year old and 5 year old sons have been having a blast with Magellan Nothing to compare with Tilda or Flying Shark, but its cool to show them the kind of things that can be done. EDIT: Just noticed the Tilda sign said in development- sorry!

I hope he's not too sketchy- I just bought 5 broken 99's from him for $15.00. (shipping is where he got me- $60.00) I'm hoping to fix my non-QI sytem so I can use my FinalGROM. The description said "keyboard issues". I just "won" yesterday, so I haven't received them yet. If it doesn't pan out I guess I can chalk this up to the proverbial "stupid tax".

Sorry, Owen, I meant to say you made my day!

Sorry if I came across as something other than enthusiastic about the possibility of getting the F18 A. I definitely meant no offense and was trying to express my excitement. Thanks for all of your hard work!

I left a comment saying I wanted one then another saying I wanted two. I'm hoping Matthew's comment above means he's actively building some! That would be very exciting!

I got one of the new 32k shorty cards. Looks real good and I'm happy so far. On mine, I had to remove the door form the speech synthesizer for the card to stay in. The card just kept popping back out. Once the door was gone, no problem. Now if only you can keep TIPI's in stock, we'd be golden.

Total NOOB question here- would it be possible to configure the PI or its memory or flash storage to act like SAMS or other RAMdisk?

I have a QI mainboard. I just took it apart and the layout is totally different from my other (non-functional) one and matches the images of QI units on Mainbyte.

Any advice on what to try? Reseating the connector? Special attention to a particular pin? Deep cleaning? All of the Above? All my other cartridges work fine. Edit: Sorry Greg! I missed your post about Mainbyte

Hey, is that PeteE's game submission? I am looking forward to trying it on my system real soon!

I wish I could get to the point to try to load a file. I don't have the 32k, but i was able to read the txt file on the sd card so i can tell which ones need it in the future. Thanks for the tip! Yes the light blinks. Not constantly, only when I press the FG reset. When I press the TI reset, the unit resets as I guess it should, but no joy on seeing other options on the start menu. Felt?