Bumping an old thread b/c I think maybe I have a similar problem?... looking for more expert advice.
Richard (vecmulti guy) pointed me here to see if perhaps the trouble I'm having is similar, or perhaps someone will recognize the trouble.
I purchased a vecmulti cart as well, but it's not working on only some games. I suspect my vectrex has either some kind of fault with memory or the cpu's ability to address higher memory addresses? Just a wild guess based only on the symptoms. I have no idea how the actual vectrex hardware works beyond knowing just the basics that it likely mimics most electronic devices from the last 30 years (so, I know what caps, resistors, IC's are, but no specific knowledge of the vectrex).
Richard had been very helpful with me as well. He sent a second cart for me to try, but it works about the same as the first one. I am going to send one back here in the next day. I'm definitely keeping one.
All of the OEM carts I have play just fine. The alignment of graphics elements on screen is as correct as it ever was new (no weird skew, etc...). Many of the games on the vecmulti play just fine as well (the OEM stuff and some of the homebrew stuff). It's only when I start trying to play some of the homebrew stuff that's larger than a typical OEM cart that I run into issues.
For instance, many of the larger games will get to their splash screen and then when you try to start playing (hit '1' to play, etc...) the screen goes black. Other times, the screen will display garbled images (sometimes with garbled sound)... after which I shut the unit off.
Sometimes, the games will actually start, but graphics will sometimes be garbled (like, your 'ship' or 'man' will be mis-drawn).. and then gameplay won't be correct (every time you move, you blow up, that sort of thing).
I can occasionally get some of these larger games to play. ProtectorYASI works about every 10th try when I put it on the microSD card all by itself and rebuild the menu. That, to me, indicates perhaps a loose 'something' somewhere?.. or a semi-working circuit/chip/cap/resistor?
I bought my vectrex new back in the day, and it has sat in a closet for the last 15 to 18 years. It wasn't abused at all, I took very good care of it. I only discovered this whole 'homebrew' scene very recently quite by accident. It's been great finding out about it, and outside of this weird behavior with the larger homebrew games, I've enjoyed the vecmulti for letting me play OEM games I never was able to purchase.
I pulled the back cover off to dust the insides. Wasn't too bad, but there was some dust. What I did notice was that one of the pins on the cartridge header leads that meet the logic-board appeared to have a larger than normal solder-blob on it. I want to say it was pin 26 or 22. I think I saw a schematic that showed this was output D6. Just an abberation from sloppy manufacturing?.. or a clue?
As well, I see what appears to me to be some solder traces on the power-board that are 'wrinkled'. I imagine this is from heat damage?.. is this typical?
edit: I did load up the 'test rom' to see if I could use it to figure this out. It gets to the splash screen, plays the little music, then the screen goes black like the machine has locked up... even pressing reset won't bring it back, has to be powered off (this actually happens on some of the big homebrew games too... have to hard-boot to recover).
Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated!,
-James
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