Lord Nightmare

It sounds like you're going to have to test the various components on the 15v rail to isolate whatever has failed. I'd check any electrolytic or tantalum caps involved as well. I don't know of anyone who has fixed a power fault on a BP Micro unit yet. The guy who runs the proghq wiki would be interested in anything you can figure out. (as well as board pictures) Also, does the bp1148 use those six driver cards like the bp1200 does? If those cards get 15v directly (and I'm not sure they do), its possible one of them could have a short on it. If you pull all six cards, does the 15v line problem persist? LN

The bp1200 mainboard looks like http://proghq.org/wiki/File:Ln_bpm_bp-1200_pcb0.jpg Can you snap a picture of the bp-1148 mainboard if it looks different from that? I'm quite curious what they changed. LN

I ran into this issue myself with a bp1200 programmer I was sent for repairs. If the firmware on rom chips inside the bp1200 is older than version 1.07, it will not communicate properly with any program except very old versions of BPDOS, as OP discovered. Version 1.24 is the latest version and can be grabbed from http://www3.bpmmicro.com/web/helpandsupport.nsf/69f301ee4e15195486256fcf0062c2eb/8194a48179484c9f862573220065d38e!OpenDocument You will need a programmer to burn two blank 27c256 chips (and move the W1 and W2 rom size select jumpers inside the bp1200) during the upgrade. The bp1184 and bp1200 both can be upgraded the same way, the insides and firmware are identical. LN P.S. If you upgrade a bp1200 to 1.24 and the firmware previously installed in it is not one of: 1.24, 1.18, 1.13, 1.11, 1.05, 1.04, 1.03 or 1.02 please let me know, I'm searching for as many BP1200 firmware revisions as I can find. I have copies if the versions listed here, although redumps to make sure what I have are good dumps are not a bad idea either.

The TMS5200/CD2501(both are same die inside, using TMS5200.COD tables) and TMS5220(using QV5220.COD tables) do not have the speech rate setting opcodes. The TMS5220C(using QV5220.COD tables) and the CD2501ECD(using TMS5200.COD tables) from the 99/8 prototypes do have the speech rate setting opcodes. Otherwise the chips behave pretty much the same. Since the original 5200 coding table seems to have been lost (except perhaps as tables in the TI Portable Speech System ROMs), I created a new one based on the PROMOUT-dump and decap of the tms5200/cd2501 chip and its internal tables and called it TMS5200.COD. I also have a somewhat corrected version of the QV5220.COD table which fixes a few errors in the pitch table vs the real chip and may result in slightly higher sound quality, which I've also attached. Note the 'fixed' TMS5220.COD is based on QV5220 so it still has some inaccuracies in the coefficient tables, and I've copied the RMS Energy table to TMS5200.COD as well since I couldn't work out the factor or factors which the original ROM Energy table is multiplied by to produce the values in said RMS Energy table. (If anyone wants to have a go at quadratic regression, etc, the ROM table is 0,1,2,3,4,6,8,11,16,23,33,47,63,85,114,0 and the other table is inconsistent between QBOX and the TMS5220 Datasheet, it is either: QBOX: 52,87,123,174,246,348,491,694,981,1385,1957,2764,3904,5514,7789,7789 or TMS5220 Datasheet: 0,52,87,123,174,246,348,491,694,981,1385,1957,2764,3904,5514,7789; Also keep in mind the first and the last entry (0 and 15) of the table are both silent with a special meaning, so it probably would be best to only run regression on the middle 14 entries) LN QBOX_CODS.zip

fauxscot: If possible, is there any chance I can get hold of that bad CDP1861 display chip? I'm interested in getting a die shot of the chip, and I'd much rather have a non-working one acid-etched open than destroying one that works properly. LN

Sorry for necroposting this, but I think its important. Here are all of the words from the Berzerk arcade machine, in the order they appear in the TSI S14001A speech rom: 00 - Help 01 - Kill 02 - Attack 03 - Charge 04 - Got 05 - Shoot 06 - Get 07 - Is 08 - Alert 09 - Detected 0A - The 0B - In 0C - It 0D - There 0E - Where 0F - Humanoid 10 - Coins 11 - Pocket 12 - Intruder 13 - No 14 - Escape 15 - Destroy 16 - Must 17 - Not 18 - Chicken 19 - Fight 1A - Like 1B - A 1C - Robot Lord Nightmare