nickle241 Posted December 25, 2023 Share Posted December 25, 2023 i checked the voltage at the internal side of the connector and they all seem okay, but it usually halts at a blank blue screen, occasionally spitting up random garbage, sometimes static sometimes cycling more mess over and over and sometimes it does this after being powered on for a bit and sometimes keeps resetting the printer repeatedly with no other feedback, on one occasion it was crashing hard enough to stop the printer from initializing the weirdest part of this whole mess is that its so inconsistent and if i hit the game reset switch it swaps over to the game mode with no such issues, controller input difficulties but those are most likely unrelated, its only the adam half of the system with boot problems, it does occasionally come close to booting and puts most of the word processor display up but this tends to be when it is in its most unstable states and it accepts no inputs i have tested with and without keyboard and/or tape drive, which both seem to be functioning properly, with the tape drive even attempting to seek on my modified audio tape, not yet formatted correctly so it wouldn't find anything regardless, no point risking a real tape even if i did have one made up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekman Posted December 25, 2023 Share Posted December 25, 2023 If you’re using a factory printer power supply, I also think your voltages are probably good because the CV side is fine. If it’s a third-party external supply, you could still have a low voltage and needs to be adjusted while reading the voltage from inside the console. Usually VRAM is first to complain with low voltage and since your CV side seems happy, it’s more than like not the issue. Sadly, Coleco used really cheap single-wipe sockets and they are notorious for bad connections down the road. Try reseating all the socketed chips on the Gamma (ADAM) board, especially the 3 or 4 E/PROMs depending on configuration. As you remove each IC, give them a good visual and clean the pins with 99.9% IPA and a nylon brush and wipe clean. If you have a lot of oxidation on the pins, I recommend a fiberglass scratch brush pen or a small brass wire brush to help scrub it off for a better connection with those cheap single-wipe sockets. I also recommend cleaning and reseating the large ribbon connector and PCB fingers that runs from the Gamma (ADAM) to Delta (CV) board while you’re in there. That’s the easy stuff first. Next would be verifying the checksum of the E/PROMs to make sure they aren’t suffering from bit rot or just plain bad or you can swap in known good E/PROMS as a test. It would require a programmer to read them in to verify checksums. Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted December 25, 2023 Author Share Posted December 25, 2023 28 minutes ago, Tekman said: If you’re using a factory printer power supply, I also think your voltages are probably good because the CV side is fine. If it’s a third-party external supply, you could still have a low voltage and needs to be adjusted while reading the voltage from inside the console. Usually VRAM is first to complain with low voltage and since your CV side seems happy, it’s more than like not the issue. Sadly, Coleco used really cheap single-wipe sockets and they are notorious for bad connections down the road. Try reseating all the socketed chips on the Gamma (ADAM) board, especially the 3 or 4 E/PROMs depending on configuration. As you remove each IC, give them a good visual and clean the pins with 99.9% IPA and a nylon brush and wipe clean. If you have a lot of oxidation on the pins, I recommend a fiberglass scratch brush pen or a small brass wire brush to help scrub it off for a better connection with those cheap single-wipe sockets. I also recommend cleaning and reseating the large ribbon connector and PCB fingers that runs from the Gamma (ADAM) to Delta (CV) board while you’re in there. That’s the easy stuff first. Next would be verifying the checksum of the E/PROMs to make sure they aren’t suffering from bit rot or just plain bad or you can swap in known good E/PROMS as a test. It would require a programmer to read them in to verify checksums. Good luck. already tried reseating the sockets and blasted them with contact cleaner, incidentally whats up with the wierd plate looking things underneath the chips in two of the sockets? as for the cable, reseated and cleaned multiple times with no change to behavior from any of this, unless im expected to do something with the attachment between the ribbon and the solder pins, im not touching that unfortunately i have no means to troubleshoot further if we are considering a chip issue as i dont have the right sort of equipment. the flakey behavior made me think capacitors so i recapped the adam board but again no changes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekman Posted December 25, 2023 Share Posted December 25, 2023 They are capacitors sandwiched between the PROMs and sockets. They were obviously an afterthought trying to compensate for something they were seeing and were eventually dropped altogether. If you have a drive emulator or an Atarimax Ultimate SD, there is ADAM system test software you can try. It's fairly limited, but it will test RAM and a few other things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted December 25, 2023 Author Share Posted December 25, 2023 58 minutes ago, Tekman said: They are capacitors sandwiched between the PROMs and sockets. They were obviously an afterthought trying to compensate for something they were seeing and were eventually dropped altogether. If you have a drive emulator or an Atarimax Ultimate SD, there is ADAM system test software you can try. It's fairly limited, but it will test RAM and a few other things. and i was just guessing at them maybe being capacitors due to their plate construction, but i dont have either of those or anything in the ballpark, it might be best if i can find someone who is more familiar with these machines and actually has the test accessories Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted December 26, 2023 Author Share Posted December 26, 2023 would removing the ic capacitors be advisable? if they arent actually necessary then they could be causing issues Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted December 26, 2023 Author Share Posted December 26, 2023 (edited) cleaned up the chips and sockets again and didnt put the flat pack caps back in yet and still blue, symptoms remain unchanged edit: perhaps those two are actually important on this revision and could have failed, the one doesnt look like it was sealed all that well Edited December 26, 2023 by nickle241 further info Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted December 26, 2023 Author Share Posted December 26, 2023 (edited) some screenshots, note that these are relatively rare and it generally only throws up nothing or a few lines of garbage that it may or may not keep cycling endlessly other bits of the wp menu also show up sometimes but i havent taken any pics of those occurrences it seems like the issue should be relatively minor given how close it comes to booting on a sporadic basis Edited December 26, 2023 by nickle241 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekman Posted December 26, 2023 Share Posted December 26, 2023 6 hours ago, nickle241 said: cleaned up the chips and sockets again and didnt put the flat pack caps back in yet and still blue, symptoms remain unchanged edit: perhaps those two are actually important on this revision and could have failed, the one doesnt look like it was sealed all that well The flat caps are not needed and have nothing to do with any specific revisions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekman Posted December 26, 2023 Share Posted December 26, 2023 4 hours ago, nickle241 said: some screenshots, note that these are relatively rare and it generally only throws up nothing or a few lines of garbage that it may or may not keep cycling endlessly other bits of the wp menu also show up sometimes but i havent taken any pics of those occurrences it seems like the issue should be relatively minor given how close it comes to booting on a sporadic basis At this point, there just isn't much you can do. My guess is it's a RAM or ROM issue. The best approach for you since it will not boot at all is to use an EXROM boot card with test ROM installed to narrow this problem down, but that would set you back $75 and still no guarantee of fully diagnosing the issue. You would still need the necessary equipment to desolder/solder and some electronics know-how to deal with the test results. If it's a ROM issue, you would still need the ability to deal with programming EPROMS or find someone who can. You can find the EXPAnDDR board and ADAM Diagnostics EXROM option at Lundy Electronics. https://lundyelectronics.com/product/expanddr-board Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted December 26, 2023 Author Share Posted December 26, 2023 9 hours ago, Tekman said: At this point, there just isn't much you can do. My guess is it's a RAM or ROM issue. The best approach for you since it will not boot at all is to use an EXROM boot card with test ROM installed to narrow this problem down, but that would set you back $75 and still no guarantee of fully diagnosing the issue. You would still need the necessary equipment to desolder/solder and some electronics know-how to deal with the test results. If it's a ROM issue, you would still need the ability to deal with programming EPROMS or find someone who can. You can find the EXPAnDDR board and ADAM Diagnostics EXROM option at Lundy Electronics. https://lundyelectronics.com/product/expanddr-board im interested in the expansion cards anyway so the cost isnt the biggest issue anyway and ive got desoldering equipment on hand. im a bit more inclined to think its ram given similarities to other ram faults ive seen online for other computers, plus the menu does still seem to be in there just getting garbled attempting to read it out im also debating picking up the flash cart for an easier time with software. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekman Posted December 27, 2023 Share Posted December 27, 2023 14 hours ago, nickle241 said: im interested in the expansion cards anyway so the cost isnt the biggest issue anyway and ive got desoldering equipment on hand. im a bit more inclined to think its ram given similarities to other ram faults ive seen online for other computers, plus the menu does still seem to be in there just getting garbled attempting to read it out im also debating picking up the flash cart for an easier time with software. Bad RAM is also my first guess. The EXPAnDDR card with the diagnostics EXROM will certainly get you in the right direction. Here's the link to the documentation to get familiar with while your card is in transit to you. The EXROM and jumper settings will already be installed and preconfigured for you when it arrives. Once you fix your console, you can remove remove the two jumpers and then it will act as a regular parallel port card for an Epson compatible printer and also offer a RAM expander signal for using a RAM expander over 64k. https://github.com/epearsoe/MIB238/blob/main/EXROMS/MIB238_Diagnostic_EXROM_Instructions.txt Every ADAM owner needs a drive emulator like the ADE or FujiNet. They both emulate up to four disk drives in a single device. They can also run DDP (tape) images and cartridge images up to 32k. My daily driver ADAM has an ADE Mini and ATARIMAX Ultimate SD cartridge to handle every situation. The ADAM Archive has all the software you will ever need for these devices. Lundy Electronics has the ADE Mini, Internal ADE Pro, and Internal FujiNet units in stock. https://lundyelectronics.com/product-category/retrocomputers Other links https://www.atarimax.com/colecosd/documentation http://adamarchive.org/index.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted December 27, 2023 Author Share Posted December 27, 2023 is there a program to format blank tapes? if possible i would like to use the original tape drive, i ordered the sd cartridge, at worst i can still use it with my base model colecovision, so it would be nice if i could run a rom on there that formats tapes or possibly lets you write images to tapes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NIAD Posted December 28, 2023 Share Posted December 28, 2023 7 hours ago, nickle241 said: is there a program to format blank tapes? if possible i would like to use the original tape drive, i ordered the sd cartridge, at worst i can still use it with my base model colecovision, so it would be nice if i could run a rom on there that formats tapes or possibly lets you write images to tapes Coleco did not include a provision to format audio cassettes into ADAM Digital Data Packs, but over the years numerous people have developed ways to do so. The most reliable way is with the MegaCopy Redux that Lundy Electronics sells: MEGACOPY REDUX - Lundy Electronics There are also ways to make ADAM DDPs using stereo and PC equipment that is detailed in a couple "How To" instructionals here: (AdamArchive.Org) - The home for everything ADAM Which SD device did you buy... the AtariMax Ultimate SD Multi-Cart, ADE SD Drive or FujiNet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted December 28, 2023 Author Share Posted December 28, 2023 atarimax ultimate, and as far making tapes, i did pick up an old duplicator so i should only need to do the manual version once if it comes down to it. i tend to go for the internal methods with these old computers over the accessory options so ive been more focused on the tape and cartridge support, and with the boot issues i havent even been able to do anything with that much yet, almost certainly gonna have to replace those two controller chips but that can wait till i have a proper diagnostic option Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NIAD Posted December 28, 2023 Share Posted December 28, 2023 The AtariMax Ultimate SD MultiCart is a great product and will allow you to use the numerous Coleco In-House cartridge test utilities that are available in rom image format. The majority of these utilities will not work when loaded into RAM (ie from a disk image using the ADE or FujiNet SD drives) or even from actual data packs/disks so the AtariMax was a good choice along with the Lundy Expander interface Card with Boot PROM test utility by Eric Pearson. This was a good choice seeing as you said the ColecoVision side of the ADAM is working. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted January 2 Author Share Posted January 2 On 12/27/2023 at 3:38 AM, Tekman said: Bad RAM is also my first guess. The EXPAnDDR card with the diagnostics EXROM will certainly get you in the right direction. Here's the link to the documentation to get familiar with while your card is in transit to you. The EXROM and jumper settings will already be installed and preconfigured for you when it arrives. Once you fix your console, you can remove remove the two jumpers and then it will act as a regular parallel port card for an Epson compatible printer and also offer a RAM expander signal for using a RAM expander over 64k. https://github.com/epearsoe/MIB238/blob/main/EXROMS/MIB238_Diagnostic_EXROM_Instructions.txt looks like a ram issue yup, it actually didnt want to boot the card right away and i had to reset into the coleco side first before it would initialize Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted January 2 Author Share Posted January 2 incidentally ive also never gotten audio out of it, this didnt seem odd but this card is apparently supposed to have beep codes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted January 3 Author Share Posted January 3 found it, u12 in the upper ram is cooked, i swapped it with u13 and the fault code moved, ive ordered some replacements and hopefully i dont have another chip at fault Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekman Posted January 3 Share Posted January 3 12 hours ago, nickle241 said: incidentally ive also never gotten audio out of it, this didnt seem odd but this card is apparently supposed to have beep codes The ADAM audio circuit beeps and not the card itself. Make sure your audio volume is up enough to hear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekman Posted January 3 Share Posted January 3 8 hours ago, nickle241 said: found it, u12 in the upper ram is cooked, i swapped it with u13 and the fault code moved, ive ordered some replacements and hopefully i dont have another chip at fault Great progress! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekman Posted January 3 Share Posted January 3 12 hours ago, nickle241 said: looks like a ram issue yup, it actually didnt want to boot the card right away and i had to reset into the coleco side first before it would initialize This is normal and I also see this with some brand of monitors. Newer monitors verify a signal is active/detected before it shows A/V video and some seem to handle this detection faster than others. The problem is it can't handle how the VRAM test patterns are happening so quickly when the ADAM powers up using the diagnostic EXROM and never gets a chance to properly detect the video test patterns being displayed and just doesn't show anything. If you wait long enough, when it gets to a text output, it will snyc and show. The correct fix in this case is to reset into the CV side first to get known detectable video for the monitor and then reset into the ADAM, just like you did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted January 3 Author Share Posted January 3 5 hours ago, Tekman said: The ADAM audio circuit beeps and not the card itself. Make sure your audio volume is up enough to hear. i dont actually have a good av signal from it, ive been using the monitor port because rf is swamped wiht screaming interference. i tried making my own av cable but its just as bad and connecting up the audio line from the av harness still got me nothing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tekman Posted January 3 Share Posted January 3 2 hours ago, nickle241 said: i dont actually have a good av signal from it, ive been using the monitor port because rf is swamped wiht screaming interference. i tried making my own av cable but its just as bad and connecting up the audio line from the av harness still got me nothing Hopefully when you get your RAM issue resolved, you will be able to troubleshoot the issue more easily. I'll attach the DIN pinout for reference in hopes it helps you. I have several of these cables off eBay and they work great. Maybe order one of these for something known good to troubleshoot with. AV cable - https://www.ebay.com/itm/292364883695 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickle241 Posted January 7 Author Share Posted January 7 fixed, one bad ram chip. rf ad av video are still mangled but i can use monitor video and av audio to get a functionally perfect result Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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