Issues with ballblazer

[Silver Back]

Hi all. I recently purchased ballblazer sealed. I just got around to opening it up and testing it out and I can’t get it to load beyond the Atari logo. I get some form of corruption and a buzzing from the tv speakers. 
 

So far I tried cleaning the pins on the console and cart. The cart was sealed until this evening but there was some strange white looking powder on the cart. I mean it was the eighties maybe somebody on the line was into recreational powders idk. 
 

I also cleaned the pins on the console but most of my games start first try anyway. So I googled ballblazer not loading etc and found a video where a guy had issues with ballblazer and pole position 2, but the cart would generally load to the demo and just show some garbage in the gameplay. 
 

my pole position 2 works perfectly especially when compared to his video. Plus I can’t even make it as far as him.  What could it be?  Should I follow his video even though my issue isn’t exactly the same?  I understand he said not all versions of pole position do this but I’m still not sure.  I guess I’m just wondering if this is a known issue, if anybody else has also experienced this and if there’s anything else I should be trying before I start disassembling. 
 

oh and I do have an a/v mod on the console, I can’t remember who did it’s been a while. 

 

for reference here’s his video and some pictures of all I can get to show on my unit. 

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

There are also different revisions of Ballblazer carts as well although when I did that video, both of the carts I had on hand were doing it and I only bothered to show one of them. The fix I've shown in the video is actually noted and added in later done schematics back in 2003. But after having a lot 7800s pass over my bench the past couple of years, I've seen that cap actually added from the factory in maybe about 1 in 4 consoles. It seems to be more common on earlier models of the 7800 vs the later ones and was added on the bottom side of the pcb same as I did in that video. So, you could open it up and check to see, but you do have to remove the RF shielding to get to section of the board to see. You can even add that cap in to test if yours doesn't seem to have the fix in place already. The worst that will happen is that it either won't change anything, or the 7800 might not boot at all and you just have to remove it.

 

But there are different BB carts with the main difference in them being that one has an extra cap inside the cart vs the others not having it at all. Not sure which is the later versions between the two.

 

 

[Silver Back]

9 minutes ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

There are also different revisions of Ballblazer carts as well although when I did that video, both of the carts I had on hand were doing it and I only bothered to show one of them. The fix I've shown in the video is actually noted and added in later done schematics back in 2003. But after having a lot 7800s pass over my bench the past couple of years, I've seen that cap actually added from the factory in maybe about 1 in 4 consoles. It seems to be more common on earlier models of the 7800 vs the later ones and was added on the bottom side of the pcb same as I did in that video. So, you could open it up and check to see, but you do have to remove the RF shielding to get to section of the board to see. You can even add that cap in to test if yours doesn't seem to have the fix in place already. The worst that will happen is that it either won't change anything, or the 7800 might not boot at all and you just have to remove it.

 

But there are different BB carts with the main difference in them being that one has an extra cap inside the cart vs the others not having it at all. Not sure which is the later versions between the two.

 

 

Oh wow your the guy that awesome. I think I’ll disassemble the unit this weekend and see what I can tell. This ballblazer cartridge has a red label on it which I thought was odd but after reading into it I guess it doesn’t mean too much. 
 

if it’s missing I’ll attempt to solder it in.  Obviously I’ll have to get it first.  I’ve installed mod chips in original Xbox consoles and 360s so my soldering is fair but my 7800 is literally my childhood console and I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an electronics genius or anything. 
 

just wondering do you think it’s worth picking up a silver label ballblazer just to see if the results are the same or would you recommend checking the capacitor before doing anything?

 

thanks for responding I didn’t think the guy that did the video would be here but this site seems to have everybody here. It’s a shame I only found out recently lol

Edited November 9, 2021 by Silver Back
Edited out goofy autocorrect from iPhone

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I'm not sure if the red label vs silver is really a way to know the difference as they were all later made Atari corp and I'm convinced Atari just slapped on whatever labels they had laying around that would work good enough for them. But yes, adding the cap to the A15 line off the CPU won't do any damage to the console and could get that game working. But if it doesn't or refuses to boot up at all, then I'm not sure exactly what other options there might be other than the cart itself actually being bad. If that is the case, pick up another good condition loose one. I think I have both a red label and silver label with one of them CIB. I also have two other Ball blazer carts but they are PCB only like you saw in the video with one of them having the extra capacitor on the PCB vs the other not. I think when I first made that video and posted about it here, that we speculated that Atari started to add the cap to the games vs the consoles as it was easier that way and didn't require having to test the 7800 to know if it needed it or not. Again, tentatively called the deglitch cap.

 

[Silver Back]

15 minutes ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I'm not sure if the red label vs silver is really a way to know the difference as they were all later made Atari corp and I'm convinced Atari just slapped on whatever labels they had laying around that would work good enough for them. But yes, adding the cap to the A15 line off the CPU won't do any damage to the console and could get that game working. But if it doesn't or refuses to boot up at all, then I'm not sure exactly what other options there might be other than the cart itself actually being bad. If that is the case, pick up another good condition loose one. I think I have both a red label and silver label with one of them CIB. I also have two other Ball blazer carts but they are PCB only like you saw in the video with one of them having the extra capacitor on the PCB vs the other not. I think when I first made that video and posted about it here, that we speculated that Atari started to add the cap to the games vs the consoles as it was easier that way and didn't require having to test the 7800 to know if it needed it or not. Again, tentatively called the deglitch cap.

 

Thank you so much you’ve been very helpful. I’ll check the board out this weekend for starters and take it from there. 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Wanted to see if you had any luck with this? I actually had a 7800 last week I did some work on that was doing the exact thing you described. Basically I would get the logo loader and then just a black screen most times or similar with some bars and a stuck tone. Both of the BB revision carts I have would do this.

 

The 7800 was an A3 series with a Rockwell CPU and it did NOT have the capacitor attached to address 15 (Pin 25) of the CPU as I have seen on some from the factory and similar to what I did in my video above. Once I added a 320pf cap (donated from a 5200 PCB no less), Ballblazer then fired right up and played fine. It still had some odd graphical flicker going on in the upper half of the screen but aside from that, it was at leas working and playing normally otherwise.

 

Now...if you want to know what it looks like if your 7800 already has this factory fix applied to it or not... I just did another 7800 the other night and noticed it did have the extra cap already attached to the CPU from the factory. This is what it looks like so you know what to look for:

 

 

Notice that green colored resistor looking thing soldered on the bottom lower right of the board? That is actually a 47pf ceramic banded capacitor that was factory bodged to address this issue. Now...the strange thing is..

 

I thought these were mainly applied to 7800s with Rockwell CPUs. But... this one is an A1 series that has an NCR CPU in it and yet...there is the capacitor soldered off pin 25 to ground off the CPU. Here is a closeup view of it to see it better. Really reveals it was done after the main manufacturing because of the lack of cleaning up the old flux and obvious hand soldering that was done.

 

 

Given the fact that I've now seen these factory applied capacitors on both NCR and Rockwell CPU 7800s and have seen them on AT84, A1, and A3 models leads me to believe that this was checked and tested for on a 7800 by 7800 basis during manufacturing and therefore wasn't required on all of them. So it seems possible that in later made revisions, they thought the issues were no longer a problem and stopped applying this particular fix, or stopped testing for it as I don't recall seeing these on too many later made 7800s. But again, I just added a small cap to a later A3 revision last week that took care of the Ballblazer problem.

 

 

[Silver Back]

Sorry for the late response but here’s the follow up. I pulled out my backup 7800 which appears to have the factory fix and ballblazer did the same thing as before on that console. I attempted the fix on my main 7800, and after tying the capacitor into what I assume was the leg of some other component nothing worked. But I floated the end and everything worked as normal. 
 

so after locating a proper ground the fix appeared to be applied but still no luck with ballblazer. I then obtained a second ballblazer cartridge which worked on both systems no problem. 

 

I ended up mailing the ballblazer cart in question to somebody on the forums. He verified that he couldn’t get it to work on his console either but was able to salvage the pokey and make me something very cool with it. 
 

and that’s where I ended at. I have a ballblazer that works on both my consoles now and the other cart helped to become something else. Sorry if that’s unsatisfactory in not finding the issue but that’s where I left it. 
 

thanks for your help regardless. 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

No worries! And it just means you had a bum cart which, can happen as well. But at least now you know what to look for. In my case I knew the cart was working because I had tested it in other systems so the fix was either going to work or not in my case and it has on at least three different 7800s now. I actually keep my BB cart on the bench to purposely test for this.