Multimeters and board safety

dogtoy

dogtoy

Haomaru's Blade Shiner
Joined
Nov 24, 2003
Posts
689
Fixing my Shock Troopers 2 MVS cart that got mashed last year in car wreck. Part of the CHA board is cracked. Anyway my question is, is it safe to go poking around on the mask roms and traces with a multimeter to check continuity??

I ask because all the MVS manuals say you must use a logic probe, but I do not have a logic probe. I gotta figure out where these traces go and some are under chips, etc. This should be fine as long as i do it when the board is not plugged in right?

Cheers,
-DT
 
mainman

mainman

CPS2 Person.,
20 Year Member
Joined
Mar 26, 2001
Posts
3,880
dogtoy said:
Fixing my Shock Troopers 2 MVS cart that got mashed last year in car wreck. Part of the CHA board is cracked. Anyway my question is, is it safe to go poking around on the mask roms and traces with a multimeter to check continuity??

I ask because all the MVS manuals say you must use a logic probe, but I do not have a logic probe. I gotta figure out where these traces go and some are under chips, etc. This should be fine as long as i do it when the board is not plugged in right?

Cheers,
-DT
Click to expand...

I been probing around mask rom with fluke meters for years and have never had a problem with the rom going bad. I do not see how the mask rom could go bad since it take such usually high voltage more so then your standard eproms to program them.
 
ttooddddyy

ttooddddyy

PNG FTW,
Joined
Nov 29, 2001
Posts
8,335
Ive not had a problem doing this either.

On the resistance range of the mutimeter the probes have a low voltage with high impeadance, dont see how that would cause a problem with the roms on the boards. Even on continuety test the voltage is only about 2.5 volts.

I would be more concerned about static.
 
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