Data East Hoops 95 pcb non-repair

This is the Data East MLC package – which is a two layer pcb inside a protective plastic box.  Unfortunately this one seems 100% dead – no video or sound output at all.  Components are actually surface mounted to all 4 surfaces on the two layers – the main CPU (an encrypted ARM) actually sits on an inside surface so it’s hard to diagnose directly.

Using a logic probe with the game powered on shows that the data and address lines on the program EPROMS are pulsing – so the CPU is definitely trying to do something.  All the graphics hardware (ROMs, custom chip) probes as completely dead – that doesn’t prove for sure that it is dead – it may be the CPU is actually failing for some reason and not instructing the graphics customs to start up.  My immediate theory would be one of the main RAM chips for the CPU has failed – these are 4 Winbond chips on the main board.  The ARM is a 32 bit chip and these 8 bit chips run in parallel so a failure in any one of them would cause the CPU program to immediately fail.

Hoops isn’t that great a game, so I’ve no plans to probe further – this can wait until I find another MLC game and swap the top & bottom boards and see what happens.