Ok, this is just a rant more than anything. I've been using VNC for years, and I just don't understand why over anything less than a 100baseT link it's so unusable. And even over 100baseT it's marginal. I connect via any client to a remote X11 VNC server, and bring up a terminal and start typing, and it LAGS by minutes! Why is it so hard to send the 10x10 pixel block of the last character I typed? What the heck is it sending back and forth during that entire time before it does...

Finally moved and in our new place and getting back to work. Got in a Depthcharge that was supposed to be working and only have power supply issues. Hooked up the game board on the bench and guess what? It doesn't work, it's got a short from +5 to GND. Nice! Started looking all over to see if something got bent or there's a lump of something where there shouldn't be. Looking at the back I see someone had to make a huge modification to the original design. The ground trace...

I ordered the test procedures from Marco. I got a cheaply assembled photocopy manual. The schematics in it are incomplete and have been copied so many times that they are close to impossible to read. First thing I did was check out the power board. Opening it up I found a board that looks very similar to a Midway 8080 style power board. I found the input voltages were fine, but the 5V and 18V out were very low. After checking voltages around the board I found that nothing was getting across the...

Found it! It was the RAM chip at 10M. The chip itself was fine, but the trace to pin 16 was intermittent. I got the board with a socket already at that location, and I'm guessing that when the chip was pulled out the board got damaged. I also found that flexing the board would get it to work briefly.