Captain America and the Avengers Repair Log #2

Next step was to remove all the chips for a deep cleaning.

It was even nastier underneath:


After using a nice paint brush to remove most of the dead insect parts and spider egg sacks, I prayed the entire board (both sides) abundantly with Simple Green.

Rinced it slowly in the sink after letting the Simple Green rest for a minute or two, then removed more stuck dead insect parts and did the same process once more for good measure.

I let it drain and dry a little bit, and then used my ESD protected Air Duster to push the excess water out of the sockets and help the drying process (now more than a minute or two at a time).



I let the board rest for a day and a night in the nice hot Californian weather, using the Air Duster a few more times once in a while.

Next step was to do a full visual inspection of the board.

• Nothing major detected, no lifter legs on the legs of the chips, but a few scratches on the traces.
• Used the multimeter to check continuity and all seemed fine.

Before doing more tests, I proceeded to cleaning the EPROMs and Pals.

• One of the EPROMs had a bent leg that I managed to carefully salvage while cleaning it.
• For the rest, I used a nail filer to carefully clean all the dirt off from the legs.
• I then re-seated all of the chips in their sockets to do a quick test:

Color are back, screen is stable for the Attract mode!

I let it run for a while and all good!



Starting the game gives me still that debug code  


But pressing start on player two made it disappear!!



Played the game for about 25 minutes with no issue!

• Image good, controls good, sound perfect.

Success! It was an easy one!

Captain America and the Avengers Repair Log #1

I thought it was time for me to try repairing boards. I probably don’t have much of a knowledge about it outside of reading a bunch of logs, nor do I have half of the equipment, but we all have to start somewhere! The plan is to build both up as I go.

Writing this here will help me to stay accountable and hopefully receive some tips and advice 

So got this Captain America and the Avengers from Data East for a low enough price, disclosed as booting but with issues, mostly sound.

It came in full of dust, and dead flies/cobwebs/egg sacks. Yikes. I brushed most of it off and will definitely Simple Green and wash it as soon as possible. This is after brushing it >_<

I noticed already some dirt and corrosion that I will have to look into once cleaned up

Booted it to do an initial check, and almost no image with a big loud buzz.

Pushing gently a bit on the EPROMs randomly managed to get me an image and eliminate the buzz! But the colors are wonky (missing).

Sometimes, the image gets garbled and pressing a bit on the board fixes it

Adding a credit to leave the attract mode, the sound plays good, music and SFX!

It seems like the debug is enabled though, and I will have to lookup the dip switch settings.

At least the game is alive and responsive. The fact that I can have sound, image and controls seems to be a good thing.

Next step will be to remove all the chips, give it a good cleaning overall, clean the sockets and legs and do a visual inspection to see all that can potentially be broken (traces, legs, etc).

To be continued!