Arabian Magic repair log

Antoher board from the same batch of Sega System18 motherboards.

Ths is the time of a Taito F3 game (PCB version), Arabian Magic to be precise.Hardware is quite powerful as you can see from specifications:

• CPU: Motorola MC68EC020;
• Sound CPU: Motorola MC68000;
• Sound chip: Ensoniq ES5505 and ES5510 (DSP);
• Video resolution: 320×224;
• Board composition: Board and F3 cartridge;
• Hardware features: four scrolling layers, two sprite banks, Alpha blending

Board was in good condition :

It worked fine except for two stuck intupts (P1 and P2 2nd button) as you can see from I/O TEST mode:

In this kind of hardware all I/O (and watchdog, too) are handled by a custom ASIC marked TCO640FIO (120 PIN QFP package) @IC71:

All the inputs from JAMMA connector are connected first to pull-up resistor arrays so I checked them and they were good.Lastly I lifted involved PINs from ASIC but inputs were always stuck.So, at this point, replacing the ASIC, taking it from a donor board, was my last resort.So, time to remove and replace it:

and…success!All the inputs were restored and game fully enjoyable!