Bought this Pod in “tested good” (yeah, right!) condition from a surplus company. Pod passes its self test without any problems, so I naturally trusted the results and thought that the Pod was working correctly. Turns out that the pod was not working correctly, but I did not figure this out until tearing apart a Galaxian board based on what the Pod was telling me.

The Pod would always report that the Address lines were tied together, and stuck low. Would fail the Bus Test immediately when placed into a UUT. Once I realized that the Pod was not working correctly, I tried replacing all socketed components in the Pod (CPU, EPROM, 6532A, 74LS00, etc.) before I tried swapping the UUT cable (the one that connects to the CPU socket on a UUT) and then everything worked great!

During my troubleshooting efforts, Art Mallet, AKA Artfromny, provided invaluable assistance and was even nice enough to send me a working Z80 Pod, and parts from a physically damaged one, to help me troubleshoot and repair my broken Pod! I cannot say enough good things about him – but I can say this: thank you very much, Art; you are definitely one of the best out there!

Solution: Replace UUT cable.