This sound fixable? Data East Fire Trap PCB

[Ed Oscuro]

I took a pic and even video but am a bit tired at the moment, so it'll wait for a day or so.

First off, it's a dual layer PCB. Looks legit, has the usual Data East sticker; all ROMs but one are covered with official Data East stickers marked Fire Trap.

It came in rather worse condition than I was expecting - some traces were bright coppery as something dug into it (probably long ago, I hope), some damage to the spacers between the two boards, and there is a random Intel EPROM (the others I saw are a different manufacturer) with the window sticker removed (I covered it back up but it may have been wiped long ago), and most importantly the game doesn't quite boot. There's just a bunch of alphanumeric characters flashing about the screen, mainly the letter C and zeroes, some positive color and others negative text on a colored block. This fills the whole field. Each item moves about.

The actual arcade board should boot rapidly (if MAME is correct) but this looks nothing like the garbage which shows up very briefly in the MAME emulation.

I wonder if it's all the fault of the probably wiped Intel EPROM, or if there's likely some other damage, or a mis-set DIP switch (none jumped out at me, but I didn't go hunting for one - it's probably in plain sight if there is one).

This is aggravating because one of the PCB exporters had a Fire Trap up for really not much more than I paid for this one.

[IronGiant]

If I was repairing it I would first check for physical damage, check continuity on any suspect tracks, etc.

Also verify the contents of the main program EPROMs - do you have a programmer?

[Ed Oscuro]

No programmer unfortunately. Even checking out the traces could be iffy, but I should be able to eyeball it somewhat.

Checking for damage on this one is a bit problematic because it's a dual layer boad, and I don't want to completely break the few board spaces with their tabs intact.

[IronGiant]

In that case, sounds like your only option is a repair person.

[Ed Oscuro]

I could always poke a wire onto parts of traces. Hey, what's the worst that could happen, a bit of a short from undervoltage? (or a short across different traces I suppose ).

[IronGiant]

Not a good idea to be honest.