Jan 112019
 

I recently aquired a few Robocop PCBs, and this particular one seemed to be working fine at first glance. Eventually however, I realised that certain sounds seemed to be missing from the attract mode.

In particular I noticed Robocops speech as he rolls off the Prime Directives was not there. A closer look playing the game revealed further sounds missing, like the groans from the enemies as you kill them and others.

I then realised that is was just the ADPCM samples that were missing.

So I looked at the CPU board where most of the final digital and analogue circuits are. First I checked the DACs and found no samples present, so went further back to the large YM2203 sound chip. I probed pin 19 of the IC and would have expected to hear the samples here, however I heard nothing except static.

Pin 19 circled in red
Pin 19 circled in red

I was able to determine that the ADPCM samples are stored in the EN02 ROM, so I popped this into an eprom reader and checked the content.

The eprom was corrupted, so I burned a new one and the samples were restored.

Another Robocop saved.

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