Response from Jonathan: Roger,

Yeah, sounds like the CMOS chip at position u49 on the board is bad and needs to be replaced. I believe this chip is located near the battery as it uses it for power to hold the settings for the game. You will need to get the part number off the chip and then contact a seller (such as our friend Raymond at arcadecomponents.com) to get a replacement. The good news is that this chip is usually socketed so you should be able to remove it and insert the new chip pretty easily.

Now, it’s possible that the socket for the chip went bad or that there are gouged or damaged traces that are causing the board not to work. In this case, you could try some of the suggestions in our post on Inspecting An Arcade Board but it will probably require some work beyond the scope of that particular article. At this point, it’s probably best to contact one of the board repair guys located on our resources page under the Board (PCB) Repair & Component Sales heading to see if they can repair the board for you. Raymond, who we mentioned earlier, also does some board repair as well so it might be a good idea to talk about that as an option if the chip doesn’t work.

As for your wife, you can tell her that we don’t think this was a waste of money at all. It’s just that things like this happen with arcade games over time. You must remember that these games are 20-30 years old and, as such, are going to have some upkeep and maintenance related to their age. Problems will occur from time to time just like any piece of equipment that is around the same age but that doesn’t mean that they’re not worth the trouble.

Hope that helps. Thank you for your question and good luck with your repair.