Leaderboard

There are ways around this, I used to use A X10 eye loupe, but I now use a stereoscope which is so much easier to see the tracks and leaves both hands free for the track repairs I bought this but have now changed the stand for something better, but at £100 it was a bargain! https://www.fruitemu.co.uk/ib/index.php?/topic/20934-lets-talk-tools/&tab=comments#comment-321688 I have also well documented why I don't take on repairs for others, If Mick wants to document his repairs on here he is well welcome to do so, I just document now the repairs I do for myself. How anyone else does repairs is up to them, mine is just my way of doing boards and the reasons why I do it this way. Please don't have a go at me BECAUSE I don't take on repairs for others. I have my reasons please respect that.

yes you can use solder mask and make sure the wires are held down to the board when it dries, it actually gives a very firm bond to the board! insulated wire is fine too held down with solder resist, that was the way I used to do it insulated wires and solder resist! Here is one done a few years ago like that

Here it is done,all locks fitted,cleaned and reel 3 fault sorted.Just stripped the solenoid mech,cleaned it all and re assembled and just gave it a slight bit more spring tension.vid coming soon.Pays out correctly and bank feature works

Hi Guys Here is a little 80's treat for you. Thanks to Pete.w For the roms. Tommy C for finding the Logo Font family for me (desertislandfruits.com). Your very own Riche100, for kindly adding the enclosed Kicka flyer, which was the £2 predecessor of this. Dad for final testing (dadsfme.com) And to Wizard for making everything possible with the magical MFME:)) Have fun guys! Andy B Bouncer - JPM.zip

Well from time to time I get asked to fix boards, but as you all know it is time consuming and with a full time job it can take ages too! and of course people get 'upset' if you keep there board for ages! so someone suggested why not buy one off the bay and repair up and sell it to them!, thought naa M1 non working is gong for silly money at the moment, then I see this one £56 non working delivered, the underside was perfect with no rot and thought that one don't look so bad! so bought it, it arrived today bit green round the chips! first thing remove the battery, yep good old track damage under! and very green IC legs! 74 hc04 was next to come out, even with the leg looking so bad it came out really nicely with my pace desolderer at only 380 deg C, was impressed it did it so well, and the usual on M1B the chip legs are all clinched which makes them even worse to get out! was quite surprised as it looked so bad I thought it was bound to be faulty... but no!!!! chip will still go in the bin though! so spent a couple of hours tonight just desoldering the chips with the pace unit! board now looks like this!!! that's as far as I got tonight!

Been in the scene long enough now so had a go at doing a layout. My first classic layout Maygay's Treasure Hunt (MMM) Thanks goto Paulgee - (Mpu Mecca) for resources/pictures and roms without these this would of not been possible. Vectra666 - for the blank bmp and explaining how to make the reels up Reg - for sticking with me on them 3 chests!!! Amusements/Frig - for playtesting Wizard - for finding the nudge up button & bringing us the emulator to play these game on Treasure Hunt Maygay MMM £1.50-2p.7z ENJOY!!

God that's insane, I bet new machines still have them batteries.

wish i had a brenco thanks for sharing

Remember to mask up the reel view area before spraying it 😂

yes mate i sorted it in the end

As I was saying this one is far worse! the main problem with this one is not the tracks are pitted and eaten away on the track runs, but where the solder resist stopped, exposing that tiny bit of copper track between the via ( or throughole) and the track under the solder resist! this is under high magnification Now the track STILL measured fine! but you can see how much thinner it is with being eaten away! I wonder how long this would last if it was left because continuity was fine!! needless to say a link has now been fitted to make it reliable in the future There are lots like that on this board to sort out!! this is going to take some time! most likely why it got put to one side all those months ago!!! more like it as you can see below These are what makes Maygay M1 a challenge! Miss just one and board won't work!!

Having a tidy up in the workshop I came across this M1b board I had started a good 6 months ago and then forgot about! so thought while waiting to find the sockets for the first one I would continue with this already started board! This one is in a much worse state! I have already taken off more components and have cleaned up the tracks, funny enough in all that time the copper tracks had not tarnished and was still nice and bright! This is how the board looks tonight after spending last night on track repairs and this afternoon so far, its no where near completion yet! closer view

This is how the board looks now, I seem to have misplaced my 20 pin sockets at the moment so have been unable to complete the board! but then again there is no rush as it's my board!

Yes thanks to Ron ‘n’ rich the Mecca twins and there flyer protection racket.

Possibly not easily visible on this picture but all the top pads and holes have now been cleaned of the solder resist and the holes cleared of debris!

Not too much done today, tracks checked today again for pitting etc under the microscope, and meter checked for continuity, all was good, could not find anything I might have missed. So board heated to remove any unwanted moisture for a couple of hours and red solder resist applied to both sides of he board.

The normal ram will go back in this one for now, I don't need to use this board so I store them working with normal ram, then if I need one I then put the batteryless ram on, I like to store them working as original as possible. Just done the underside, bit of discoloration to the tracks so cleaned the area off and just the one track had suffered with parts of the track pitted, so for piece of mine the track is remade, the rest were spot on and perfect! little bit more cleaning still to do I can now see from the picture taken but that's it for tonight!

I do enjoy it Mike, I just work through the various tracks until I find it's done and can move onto the next bit! If I didn't have to earn a living like we ll do, then I would happily sit at home working through boards! But that's not a option sadly! Next area now done, the battery area!!! looks like this now... and overall the whole area looks like this!

So after a bit of a clean up the copper shined through!!! all looks good! nothing wrong with that! everything gives continunitity on all the tracks running through the battery area! so good enough to leave as it is? well actually when you look a bit closer at the tracks in the battery area I found this...... Can you spot the third track up from the bottom only making connection around the rotted bit by a hair! so if left guesses are on how ling this board would have lasted before failing! now under the ram! looks clean also! but again a closer look reveals this via... looks fine! until you look closer! yep that's track rotted away UNDER the ram right where the track meets the via! this is the importance of removing everything in the affected area! you cannot be to careful with M1, examine everything! so from a board that's not looking too bad there is definitely some work to do, also will repair more tracks than just those too as there are a few with the edges of the tracks pitted!

Right so back to this board, chips and bits now taken off in the rot looking area! I have decided to mask round the area as usually the dust from using the fiber pencil goes everywhere!, between chip pins etc, so thought i would mask it off using kapton tape this time. really looks little rot on this one

So just the chips and bits in the affected rot area removed tonight, not a great lot of progress but its a start! top pads cleaned up as well so the crusty solder is gone! there really is not a lot of rot on this one!

yes I managed to find some equivalent ones which are still in production today! there not cheap like the reprocessed GAL chips from Chinese sellers on ebay but I know they will last. For testing a board I have my own version of a program card, this just has the rom on it so eliminates any problems with the ESP pal or DIG pal on them that I have had fail on me while trying to get a board booting in the past on the standard program card, so its bare minimum for it to boot to start with for me! I am sure I posted pics of the program card I made, but here it is Of course a ordinary program card will do with the edge connector changed so you can get to the chips under it so not really necessary, but this was made for my FTU (functional test unit) project so comes in useful for this

well I used to get M1a/b for £15 max but they steadily risen since then, but I don't know why people buy non working ones at £50 as it seems M1 is always being slagged off as terrible tech and no one wants M1 machines because if it, but actually once they are repaired properly they really are super reliable! Maygay did a great job with there circuitry and as I have said very reliable! It's certainly not viable to remake them new these days, even the size of the blank pcb would cost a good bit to get made!

Right, so the PAL chip was removed on 21st March (when this thread was started) pins cleaned and put on a working board running test software, it has worked day and night since then being on all the time! tonight (8th April, 18 days later) the board this chip was on test in was frozen! back to non booting when switched off and on again!! Turns out this custom PALchip had bit the dust! It just goes to show when chips do work they can pack up shortly after! always had troubles with these chips on M1 boards, they just seem very prone to failure after this time! (even had new ones of this PAL type fail!) having to test it for 18 days non stop for it to fail is quite a bit of time!! if this had gone out in a working board it would have soon been back to being non booting again! good old M1, when you think you have seen it all and a chip seems good it fails again!! lol

so back to the board this thread was started on, not much done tonight as it has not been that warm in the workshop and could not be arsed! so the known bad track to the ram fixed, BUT also in total 4 links put in as yes there was more tracks rotted away! I am really finding the stereoscope very useful at spotting and repairing the tracks now I have one!!

very common for chips to fail, battery rot vapours kills a lot of the chips too, if you have a very clean board with no rot then you can find loads of chips that don't work like this one!! everything with a white paint dot on it was faulty and was changed, then the circled in green chip worked at first then failed soon afterwards about a hour later once the board worked and then there was some weird lamp problem on that board too where lamps would not turn off properly but stay on a bit!! only way to cure it was to cut away between the tracks as it appeared the voltages on the transistors was leaking and keeping the gate of the transistors turned on!! very odd as others are very forceful in saying boards cannot become slightly conductive! but this did cure the problem once it was determined which transistors was causing it and that they were not actually faulty by changing them and the chips that drove them!!!!

and that still was not the end of it! there was still more tracks that needed doing!

this one is a easy one compared to some I have done in the past!! this one was one of the worst done in the way I used to put wires on the board! (I do it differently now which i think is better) a good few years ago now! but it did turn out good and working in the end!

Amazing job once again