MattyL

Yes the software can be emulated, but the Pi alone is unable to drive the serial link to drive the other boards. There'd probably need to be another inbetween board developed to do that and I don't think anyone is that interested to make one.

Thanks mate I'm probably ok now though good old Martin S says he'll send me a few. Once I've got a few spare Pals it should make it a little easier.

You faith was misplaced Mick lol! The board booted and ran fine for about 30mins so my repairs all held up... genuinely thought I'd cracked it as it played totally fine. Unfortunately it reset (no errors) and then started getting more frequent, about every 5mins. Tonight I changed x2 1000pf Electrolytic caps a diode and found two transistor pins touching so parted those. Now it's just reseting from the get go no boot at all. The electrolytic caps I borrowed off another board so they could be worse. I choose these thinking that they might not be discharging enough and smoothing the supply (to the FPGA and also above the battery) Will try some new ones but then it's hold out until I get a nice looking Pal chip. Im pretty sure I've done all the hard work so may just put this one to one side for now. I'll hopefully get a few more Scorp 4's in.

It's the conectors at the bottom of the board so recheck them and get a torch in there... an easy mistake on scorp4's is to bend one pin out of the side

Hi Player. Is there anyway BFM will release any of the old hardware programs for important stuff like PAL, FPGA chips? Just thinking it could help people who want to keep the beloved Scorpion tech alive for years to come

Thanks Mick hope you haven't cursed it now lol. Yeah it's a shame Andrew I can't justify a Dataman programmer cost now anyway. I've only got a mini-pro for doing Eproms. If you do have the codes still I'd love to buy Pals off you. (Scorp4, m1) I'd rather use fresh programs on my repairs were possible anyway... Still at least I know what area I'm looking at next if it doesn't boot. 😎

Ahh man that's just great. The sticker looked ominous, I thought a PAL chip wouldn't be soldered to the board though. I was wrong. I don't know how to tag people but Player might be able to get the program if it's still available? If anyone could? Honestly lol I can't quite get my repairs as neat as yours Andrew so I was trying really hard with the Mask 😂 This board I only scraped through near the battery most of it I just wanted to see where the tracks met the through holes as there were lots of tiny breaks there. It was also quite thick so tried not to touch it all. Also clean and dry my boards loads when working. Does look quite neat though lol??

I've carried on working on this board good old Tony King has kindly given to me. Right now I'm waiting for the 74htc32 logic gates to turn up. I don't know much about U/IC9 which I've some times heard referred to as a boot chip. Does anyone know anything about it? Does it have a program and how robust is it? (Thanks) Here's a few pics. I'll hopefully try it by the weekend

Nice job, looks like a bad'un

Haha cheers Mick mate, I'm always using a scorp4 you repaired for me when I was starting on here. Makes it a more fun hobby if everyone helps eachother out. 😎

Thanks Andrew I'm looking at that diagram and think I'm starting to understand it. I can see the vcc going up past 5v which it cant do on a board either so must only do that on a programmer. What's the timescale from left to right? Are these type of diagrams available for all IC normal function? I suppose you learn this and then you have to then factor in all the IC's working together to know the sequence of mpu starting up.........which is mind blowing. I hope to learn though 😎 knowing what a few pins do is better than nothing

Cheers for the shout again mate. I cut that stump off and sealed the lot in after that, I was thinking strength rather than looks on this one 😎

Cool! I understand that Andrew thanks... so that 5v not being present for normal reading will stop the program being read/ loaded? That's why this board wouldn't work. This board is an Epoch btw When I first read your explanation I thought the programming pin was for developing and programming the Eproms on the board (like wizard mentioned) but then I doubt the Actel chip would supply 13v? So this pin from the Actel chip is just for reading going to the Eproms? Hope I've got that lol. Maybe this is a good one to use for testing the Actel chip in the future then. Thanks hugely Andrew (and Ben lol!)

Haha thanks for the shout Ben. 😂🤞

I've repaired this but just trying to understand how it works... If anyone can give me a lesson 😎