New Life Games Tech Forums

never had a v-7000 do this, when powered up the green leds on the front of the cpu light up (red led off) -but no picture -not even a blue screen.
its not the machine, ( i tried a good board in machine)  it works fine, and i swapped all movable chips/software into the board and nothing -even if i try a ram clear.

any ideas what usually dies (other than software) on a game maker board?

This is just a shot in the dark (pun :96-) but first double check the battery, and then try erasing (or swapping out) the 8 pin EEPROM in U3. It's located in the upper left corner of the board and holds the jurisdiction information and probably most of the initial setup info.

If it's data are corrupted that could cause this behavior and might prevent clearing the machine. Once it's erased you would be able to perform a full clear to setup the machine again if nothing else were wrong.

Given the fact that you've already swapped chips, this is probably not the problem, but it couldn't hurt to try it.


I'm assuming that you've already checked for bent/damaged pins connecting to the backplane and for any obviously toasted components on the board. Hopefully someone with more Gamemaker experience will have seen this behavior and be able to point you to the common cause(s). Otherwise, you might have to break the board down into sections and troubleshoot it at the component level, or just replace it.


There used to be a guy in Vegas that did board level repairs, but I don't know if he worked on the GM or if he's even still around. His name is Jim and his phone was 702-400-4147. That number is over four years old, so I can't promise anything.

Hope this helps some.

Stat :31-

thanks for the reply,
 replaced the lithium battery, and swapped eeprom u-3 from a working board, (as well as every chip that would pop off the board) -even put every chip (one at a time in a working board) and they worked -however still plenty of chips soldered in place.

 checked all traces and pins, everything looks good -just dead black screen - green leds on front of cpu light up.

 -normally when you get a bad main etc, you at least get a blue screen or some kind of message of failure. 
i know the machine/monitor/pwr supply is working -a good board will work in the machine.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Hope you get it fixed.

I think Barry Fox had the same symptoms on his machine.
Drop him a line and see if he got his fixed.