Relatively new owner, and learning my way around the hardware.. Picked up a Z80 pod as part of a larger bundle purchase that was flaky. Eventually got it working, and in the process replaced a few 74C245's on the secondary PCB with 74LS245's. Consistently passing self test now. Initially, when it was somewhat flaky (and before I appear to have blown the '245's by troubleshooting with the pod removed from it's shell - gotta be very careful the two boards don't come apart while moving it around :P Initial issue was the two boards were poorly seated), I had a couple of good game boards where it allowed me to consistently run UUT with no issues. Since then, I'm noticing certain boards will run perfectly with the pod (ie Galaxian), and others (Jr. PacMan, Sega Frogger, Ms. Pac modified to run Crush Roller) just constantly watch-dog. My guess is that I have poor signal strength between the pod and the PCB's, but wanted to see if anybody found this as a common issue, and whether there are any components in the pod that may be worth looking at/replacing to address this? The Ms. Pac board has the small satellite board, and I noticed if I bypass it and go directly to the main PCB socket, the board is a bit more active, which makes me feel I'm on the right track. Jr. Pac doesn't use that however, and refuses to budge. I've verified all the '245's and '374's check out good as per the IC test functions on my EPROM programmer, and again - passes self-test consistently. When on the Galaxian PCB, I could read ROM without issue, pass all RAM tests without issue - seems to work perfectly. Can't do anything on the others as it's complaining about active lines constantly, which are toggling because the boards seem to be watch-dogging as noted. If I disable active line monitoring, bus tests pass. I also built a new cable (slightly longer than the original) with no change in behavior. This one uses the standard, flat ribbon cable. Also dropped in a Z80B - no change; these boards are all running at 3.072Mhz anyway, which shouldn't be an issue... Thoughts/suggestions? On a side note - what's the most current version on the ROM? Mine shows part# 536581, version 1.0. I found the Z80QT pod ROM and a few others online, but not this one. Plan to dump it regardless, but would like to upgrade if there's a newer version floating about. Have otherwise done the USB mod - works great - and got one of the two tape drives I have working. Bundle came with 9 new tapes, so was nice to be able to use them if I want to. Going to try and manufacture replacement rings for the other tape drive, and will post any success I have doing so, since replacements are non-existent! Thanks, Brent _______________________________________________ Techtoolslist mailing list Techtoolslist@flippers.com https://pairlist7.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/techtoolslist FTP site is: ftp://ttl.arcadetech.org/TTL/Test_Equipment Archive site: http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/techtoolslist/