Caius

Dec 152015
 

I got this Street Fighter II – The World Warrior PCB from my friend Joachim for a repair :

SFII_PCB

Gameplay was fine (strange thing since CPS1 hardware is higly unreliable) but sound samples were missing or played randomly :

Samples are played by an OKI MSM6295 chip located on A-BOARD which take data from a ROM on the B-BOARD, looking at it I noticed some sign of reworking with a jumper wire too:

MSM6295@14D

Continuity of traces was good so I opted for replacing the chip :

MSM6295@14D_replacing_

This restored the sound samples, end of job.

 Posted by at 10:50 pm

Irem and Konami PAL dumps update

 PAL Updates  Comments Off on Irem and Konami PAL dumps update
Dec 132015
 

In the past days the user ‘PJW’ sent in a couple of PAL dumps from an original IREM Ninjia Baseball Bat Man PCB.These PALs seems to be specific to this game and are located on the ROM board.Original devices were two PAL16L8 whose dumps have been converted by him into GAL16V8 with PALTOGAL utility and successfully tested on PCB.Thanks to him.

Yesterday I dumped the PALs from an original Konami Aliens PCB.The devices, two PAL16L8, were unsecured so I could read them in a programmer and then convert into GAL16V8.Both dumps have been successfully tested.

 Posted by at 10:09 am
Dec 102015
 

I have this Tatsujin PCB in my collection :

Tatsujin_PCB

Some days ago I wanted to play it on my Astro City so, before rotating vertically the monitor, I tested the board on a supergun.Game was running absolutely fine but I noticed some wavy lines on screen as it was some kind of interference/noise:

I remembered I had same issue on some boards in the past and fault was due an electrolityc capacitor with increased ESR (the role of a capacitor is to block the DC filtering the AC ).So, with my ESR meter I went to test in-circuit the electrolytic capacitors and I came across a 470uF 16V one @C1 (the one that filters the +12V for the audio amplifier) with a high ESR :

bad_470uF16V@C1

You can see from ESR chart that a typical value for a 470Uf 16V electrolytic capacitor should be 0.2 Ohm while I measured 33 Ohm.So I desoldered and measured it out-of-circuit having confirm it was really bad (53 Ohm measured):

470uF16V@C1_out_or_circuit

With a good capacitor fitted no more wavy lines and finally I could enjoy this cool shoot ’em up on my Astro City.

 Posted by at 2:24 pm
Dec 082015
 

I bought this faulty original Jungle King PCB from a JAMMA+ forums user last year but I never had time to look at :

Jungle King_PCB

The game itself is a classic, I remember I was used to play it during my childhood in arcade rooms and on home computer.So, I decided to fix it once and for all.Time to build the needed JAMMA adapter (board use a separate connector for power) and I got this scenario on first boot:

issue

All the sprites were intact but background graphics were all messed up.The RAM test reported no problem :

RAM_test

But, since all the RAMs on CPU and VIDEO board were already socketed, I want to test the chips out of circuit anyway and I found a bad 2016 @IC56 on CPU board:

TMM2016@IC56

With a good RAM fitted, the graphics were perfect now but the background music was absent, I could hear only the sound FXs.After some research I found that the CPU board was missing a ROM @IC52:

missing_ROM@IC52

This ROM is, indeed, responsible of the music and only few games on same Taito SJ hardware have it so probably my board was a conversion from another game which didn’t use it (Elevator Action seem to be the common donor board).Anyway, antoher great classic preserved!

 

 Posted by at 11:34 pm

Wardner repair log

 PCB Repair Logs  Comments Off on Wardner repair log
Dec 062015
 

I got this Wardner PCB for a repair from my friend Zoran:

Wardner_PCB

Gameplay was fine except for some minor sprites glitch in form of some sparkling dots:

sprites_issue_

Studying a bit the hardware, I could figure out where the sprites circuitry lied:

sprite_circuitry

The four EPROMs were dumped good, the six 2148 RAM were fine as well.But when I probe the three 74ALS169 with my BK550 logic comparator I got trouble on pin15 of the ones @B21 an C21:

74ASL169@B21_@_faultyC21

74ASL169@B21_@C21_compare

I desoldered them but they tested fine in all my programmer.I replaced them anyway and this cleared the sprites issue.Job done.

 Posted by at 10:56 pm