I was wondering if anyone has come across any CBT, ebooks etc on learning electronics? Or can recommned any library books?

I would like to learn how to problem solve faults with circuit boards, but don't know where to start

Many thanks

I think you might be better off on the internet and searching for electonic faultfinding and inspection at component level.

Basic electronics books tend not to cover this. Although I think Digital Fundementals by Floyd touched on testing logic devices. The long way round is to get to a level where you can tell what the circuit should be doing and then finding out what it is doing. This can be difficult without schematics and some background knowledge of what you are testing. If you don't know what the circuit is doing then you can go down to inspecting and testing individual components which has its own problems.

Was there any sort of electronics devices in particular that you were interested in? If you have something faulty to hand I can probably help you along with it based upon what I'd do if you have access to test equipment.

I think the place to start is find out how good your component recognition skills are. Can you tell the difference between an 0805 inductor and a capacitor by looking at it? You can tell by measuring it usually but failed ceramic capacitors generally go short which would make them seem like an inductor with an ohm meter.

I might have some PDFs but I think they are on my external drive at work.

Shauns first link looks interesting, I don't think I've read anything specifically on faultfinding before.

http://www.digitalworldz.co.uk/278788-purity.html

Thanks. My component recognition skills are limited.

I collect old arcade machines. I would like to repair arcade pcbs rather than sending them to someone else for repair

So I will have access to most schematics, and some testing tools....logic probe, multimeter etc, but i intend to increase my arsenal :-)

I'm not necessarily going to jump straight into fault finding on arcade pcb's but want to have some general understanding first

Oh .

Do they have lots of 74 series logic on them (in DIP) and windowed EEPROMS? What processors did they use?

Any pictures?

Yes, some of them do. It really depends on the pcb and who the manufacturer is:

Here are some examples of some Asteroids pcbs that I've got

Code:

Only registered members can view code.

Originally Posted by Purity

I collect old arcade machines

I'm available to test those machines whenever you want

Originally Posted by Purity

Yes, some of them do. It really depends on the pcb and who the manufacturer is:

Here are some examples of some Asteroids pcbs that I've got

Code:

Only registered members can view code.

I wouldn't worry too much about component recognition on boards of that vintage .

Huge PCBs!

What are the CPU markings?

I thought a couple of the chips to the bottom left (600 thou packages) might have been SRAM but some seem to have labels which is more usual for ROM devices. Unless the labels have something else other than a revision number etc. Might be that different revisions and games had SRAM and ROM in different positions as it all looks like a bus.

The bit to the bottom right I'm guessing is for the video and sound and I guess that the two chips (ceramic and gold in one picture) are Digital to Analogue Converters (DACs).

Apart from the logic I bet some of the components are difficult to obtain now.

Originally Posted by Spectre

I wouldn't worry too much about component recognition on boards of that vintage .

Huge PCBs!

What are the CPU markings?

I thought a couple of the chips to the bottom left (600 thou packages) might have been SRAM but some seem to have labels which is more usual for ROM devices. Unless the labels have something else other than a revision number etc. Might be that different revisions and games had SRAM and ROM in different positions as it all looks like a bus.

The bit to the bottom right I'm guessing is for the video and sound and I guess that the two chips (ceramic and gold in one picture) are Digital to Analogue Converters (DACs).

Apart from the logic I bet some of the components are difficult to obtain now.

They are indeed DACS at the bottom right

The PCB is mainly comprised of RAMS, ROMS, PROMS

There's a Microprocessor on the PCB which you can see as the largest of the IC's. Markings are 90-6013

Most of the chips or substitutes are still available from various suppliers. And if necessary people use MAME dumps to burn their own chips

That marking might mean that the particular CPU was proprietary or unique to the manufacturer?

Maybe a 6502 derivative?