NFG Games + GameSX

The following information is kind contribution by our forum members Lydux and Caius and this fix was applied to X68000 ExpertHD and SUPER.

The symptoms: X68000 powers on fine, but does not shut down when the soft-power button is pressed. The screen fades, Power LED does not change from Green to Red and the system fan keeps spinning. The same happens with a regular ATX PSU.

If this is your case then the problem is almost surely located on the IO board.

Here is the power on/off logic behind the /PSON signal (named CH2 in the schematics). Click on them to enlarge.

A condition using 4 signals is used to get the X68K turn on/off correctly :

• Via the front power switch (/PSON)
• Via the RTC (Real Time Clock) alarm signal (/RTC_ALARM)
• From the expansion bus (signal /EXPWON)
• A signal from the system controller (the soft sequence signal /MPWOFF).

In normal operation, all these 4 signals must go logic High (+5v) to get a system shutdown. The problem might be due to a signal that is always stuck Low.

If you look to the buffered IO part in the schematics, 3 of these signals are connected to the MFP GPIP port. They can be queried via software and are connected like this :

• /RTC_ALARM =⇒ GPIP0
• /EXPWON =⇒ GPIP1
• /PSON =⇒ GPIP2

A program for testing these signals can be found here:

X68k Power Test

Execute it more than one time. You should get :

• RTC_ALARM = 1 or 0, depending on the current RTC configuration.
• EXPWON = 1
• PSON = 0

If RTC_ALARM always stay to 0 :

• Bad RTC chip (RP5C15)

If EXPWON = 0 :

• Check the expansion riser, or remove it.
• Check the “Remote” plug on the back, if I remember right, it's also connected to this line.

If PSON = 1 :

• Damaged resistor R54 (should act as pullup)
• Bad power switch

And if all is ok, it could be :

• Bad IC28 (74LS08) (stuck output).
• Bad Q9 transistor (shorted).
• Bad C64 (generating noise).
• IC29 (74LS244) might have bad output on pin 5.
• The power signal from the main board, which I miss infos actually. A fix to this could be soldering a 10K ohm resistor between IC28 pin 10 and 14.