Fixing a Stargate machine

Shaun mailed in on my Stargate board page about trying to fix his broken Stargate so I thought it would be a good exercise to try and document it here to see how we both get on 🙂

Shaun

Am trying to find someone who can fix/service my stargate

Alex

Can definitely help or know someone who can 🙂

What’s the current status of your Stargate (what works, what doesn’t etc.)?

Shaun

It used to work fine but wasn’t played for about 2 years still worked then just sort of started to go wrong
When switched on seemed to work just fine but all levels were set at max… Infinite ships/inviso/smart bombs and the difficulty was impossible

Now it doesn’t work it turns on but the screen just looks like a patchwork quilt

Alex

At first initial guess it sounds like a RAM problem.

When the machine boots it does a double sweep, left to right, of the screen with a rug pattern as it loads the game from the ROM into RAM

If it crashes at this point, as yours seems to be, the ROM board (the one with 12 chips on it mid left) should show an error code on it’s readout saying three numbers indicating the error, e.g. 1-3-1 (each number will show in turn, then pause and repeat)

Have a look in the back next time it boots and see if it does – then it should be possible to work out what the error is.

The super difficulty settings etc. is because the CPU batteries are now probably dead after two years of not playing.

Replace those, and then reset the settings using the ‘Advance’ buttons inside the coin door.

Let me know how you get on 🙂