Got this Irem X-Multiply PCB (actually a conversion from an Hammerin’ Harry M81 board) from my friend Josef for a repair:

It showed a graphical issue where some sprites (like enemy shots) were blocky during gameplay and backgrounds missing during attract mode:

Sprites and tiles data are stored respectively in eight 1Mbit EPROMs on video board for a total of sixteen devices.

Original devices were 1Mbit 28 pin MASK ROM:

https://pdf.datasheetarchive.com/datasheetsmain/Datasheets-X2/DSA62700099.pdf

while who made this conversion used ST M27C1000 :

https://pdf.datasheetarchive.com/indexerfiles/Scans-065/DSA2IH00172244.pdf

Video board has some jumpers which must be closed according to the type of adopted devices :

In this case the jumper configuration was set to  ‘EP’ so not suitable for 27C1000 but required the use of JEDEC devices like 27C1001 or 27C010 (while the ‘MASK’ setting can work straight only with the original 28 pin 1Mbit MASK ROMs and not with 27C1000 which, although the similar pinout, have some extra pins to deal with, so some modifications are needed)

Reprogramming all the data for sprites and tiles into 27C010 1Mbit JEDEC EPROMs fixed graphics completely.

Got two Undercover Cops PCBs (a native and a Alpha Renewal version converted one):

Both had sound issues.

The first one had all music but sound FXs were missing.In this kind of hardware (IREM M92) music is generated by YM2151 sound synthesis chip while audio samples from a “NANAO GA20” ASIC custom chip (QFP 80)

Probing the pins of the latter revealed no activity on its DATA/ADDRESS bus (it addresses and read data from the MASK ROM ‘W42’ on ROM board)

I dumped this device and it matched the MAME ROM set so problem could be elsewhere.Tracing back the connection from GA20  to the MASK ROM  I found that some address lines were not in continuity like the other.I could pinpoint the break in interconnect ‘CN3’ which carryes signals from/to the two device:

A simple reflow was enough to restore the full sound.

The second board was totally silent, no audio at all.All the analog audio circuit was fine.I started to test ICs with my HP10529A logic comparator and when I put the clip on a 74LS74 @IC24 on CPU board, suddenly I got sound.So I inspected the solder side of this IC and found some evident dry joints , in particular pin 16 was not soldered on its pad, (probably I restored connection when I put the clip on it):

Also here a quick reflow was enough to fix the board.

Got this original Namco Rolling Thunder from my friend Alexander for a repair :

Board didn’t boot up but got stuck on this screen which repeated itself in a endless loop sign that the watchdog circuit was active :

My friend Alexander gave me an hint to troubleshoot this fault pointing me to a bad custom ‘130’

As I swapped in a know good one from a board of mine, game successfully booted but showed a strange graphical fault where the main character didn’t disappear when entering in a door:

As usually I started my troubleshooting with a visual inspection and found a deep scratch on the solder side and after checking with a multimeter I could notice that involved trace was severed:

After consulting the schematics I was sure that the broken trace was indeed in the sprites circuitry :

Restored the trace cleared the sprite issue.Job done.