AHH thank you! Ok so I am correct about the eprom. THANK YOU for clearing that up. SO replacing the Microcontroller is ok.
I will post more info, pictures and schematics.
When i first started testing the board. I would notice that the clock would run for 1 second then stop. sometimes 2 seconds. I changed the eprom and now the clock runs continuously but the board is otherwise dead. so I changed all of the parts. and no change. swapped the eprom again with other known good one. and even verified the contents in my eprom programmer. I am beginning to suspect that there is a plated through hole that is not plated all the way through or something that i am not seeing. I have pictures of other production samples of this board, so i am 99% certain that all the parts are correct and facing the right directions etc. I have inspected the board under a bright light looking for shorts or other pcb problems. checked all the resistors. and the only thing i haven't done is ohm out each and every path...which is next.
this is the board. as stated earlier, this is a controller board for a CD player. it is based on the Daisy-Laser/Phillips design for the CDPRO2 drive. the schematic is directly from Daisy and is 98% the same as the ARC schematic which is also posted but more confusing to try and sort out. and fyi it can be found on the ARCDB.ws website so I am not posting anything out of line. it is published publicly.
I suspect. and it's a total guess is that something is holding the MCU in standby. but I cannot figure out what. there is an IR sensor on another board that sends the MCU commands from the remote control. that SHOULD wake the mcu up and make it function....I don't know enough about micro controllers to know what i am really looking for. googling i read to look at the ALE line to see if the clock is running. and it is. and i confirmed that by scoping the crystal resonator directly which, i was surprised i could actually do that without the scope capacitance massing things up...but i can.
I have added sockets to the 3 IC's so make changing them easier. I have an eprom programmer. and i have multiple eproms with various versions of the code both from Daisy and ARC. and I have copied all of them to the computer so i can compare the contents of each eprom for verification etc.
the cd drive plugs into this board. I have verified the CD drive works fine. there is also a display board that plugs into this board. I have 4 of those. one of which is brand new. there is a switch board that plugs into the display board. the display board has its own MCU for controlling the VFD display and receives the switch commands and passes them to the controller board...BUT the IR remote control sends data directly to the controller board MCU.
I have verified all the power supply voltages are correct. grounds are all there. power is everywhere it should be. all the basic checks.