A few more MPU4's just completed.
This one booted but only 4 of the LED's came on, a quick blip of an alarm, a row of lamps, all the triacs bar the last one and would then freeze! Also no alpha which is par for the course. At one point whilst moving the board the alpha burst into life and the other 4 LED's lit up. I could get this to happen by flexing the board slightly. Trying to trace it by turning the board over stopped it happening, so I was back to square one.
Hmm, was it a bad chip, usually something like that you'd suspect a broken track or a corroded one. No evidence was found of that so I thought I'd start with IC8 as that controls the triacs. On switch on the triacs were all on so I couldn't tell if it was doing the triac test or not? Before removing IC8 the 4049 chip below it looked really badly corroded so I thought I'd get that removed first in case there were any corroded tracks underneath. The solder had gone to that grey crumbly stuff and no matter how much flux and resoldering it wouldn't come out. The only way is to cut all the legs off and remove each one separately. All was good underneath so a new one was fitted. Luckily the 68B21 (IC8) came out a bit easier and with a new one fitted I was greeted with the triac test working, all the LEDs and the alpha.
Everything now appeared to be OK except the last triac. This was due to a short circuit zener diode.
The next one needed a new RAM chip before it would boot, the alpha wasn't running either. Not due to corrosion this time but a short circuit zener on the reset pin. On boot up it was alarming but until I had the alpha going I had no idea why. Anyway with it now functioning I was greeted with IRQ SLOW ALARM!
Blimey what causes that? I had a light bulb moment and remembered something from another tech that said this is controlled from the 6840 and with a new one fitted it passed all the tests.
Last one for now....
This one tried to boot but there was no alpha, no sound, no LED display or triac test. To save on all the grisly details IC1 (6840 again) and IC8 (68B21 again) had both failed.