Porchy

Pacland repair log #3

 PCB Repair Logs  2 Responses »
Jan 012020
 

Next up in the box of brokenness is a Pacland.

Visual inspection revealed the amp had blown up

I also saw the usual corrosion on the legs of some of the customs

and the socket didn’t look too great either

As you would expect there were some pins missing from the chip when I removed it

I soldered legs on best I could and opted to fire the board up.

This is a good start and using the error code list compiled by my good friend cmonkey I knew that this was a RAM fault.
Checking RAM 9N I found several address lines were dead

Using the schematics I could see those address lines came from a 74LS32 @ 10J

I confirmed the outputs were bad and replaced the chip.
Now I get this when booting

Game is booting but some scroll issues and some jailbars too.
I could affect the scroll issues by pressing on that custom chip I resoldered at the start. I removed it again and attempted to further clean the legs but I just made it all worse. In the end I opted to solder it into a socket.
It looks crappy but it got the job done

Scroll issues fixed I now turned to those jailbars.
This ended up being an easy fix. I removed the ROM at 6T and checked it in my programmer. Bit 5 was stuck high so I replaced the ROM which fixed the jailbars.

Last thing to deal with was the sound. Obviously I wasn’t going to get far without an amp and I don’t have any spares. Lucky for me, my friend Smarty sent me a replacement gratis which fixed the sound and completed the repair.

Thanks very much to Smarty for the amp.

 Posted by at 10:08 pm

Asterix repair log #2

 PCB Repair Logs  Comments Off on Asterix repair log #2
Dec 202019
 

A fresh box of broken boards from Muddymusic arrived recently and Asterix was the first one I pulled out.
Here is the picture I was sent of what it does on boot up

That’s reporting a couple of bad RAM chips but when I did the visual inspection I saw what looks to me like some reflow work has been done in the past and been done badly too. Excess solder and a couple of lifted traces. There were also some bent pins.

I straightened out the best I could and patch a couple of traces too.
The game now passes it POST but I get this in game

At first glance this looks OK and I initially missed it until I ran the MASKROM check from the test menu and it reported a failure at 7K (no picture of this, sorry). If you look at the “ASTERIX” logo there are a few issues around the outline with blue parts.
Going back over those customs and checking all the pins individually I found one pin that needed reflowing. Doing this fixed all the issues.

 Posted by at 9:23 am

BINman update

 General  Comments Off on BINman update
Nov 082019
 

Updated BINman to support IPS patching (v4.6.0).
Recently needed to patch a file so though i best add it. Its not thoroughly tested but im sure bugs will be discovered in time and i will fix it.

 Posted by at 5:18 pm

Vogatek adapter issues

 General  Comments Off on Vogatek adapter issues
Oct 262019
 

I know there are others out there that have had issues with Vogatek JAMMA adapters but this is the first time ive personally had an issue.
I’ve had this Konami adapter for a few years now but never had to use it.
It had issues with the Red channel when I first used it one a Shao-lin’s Road PCB.
I physically disconnected the Red signal from the PCB but found there was a SYNC signal still present on the pin.
Using a multimeter I found that pin 14 on both sides of the adapter were shorted.
I lifted the Red pin at the adapter and found this

You can see the metal pin from the SYNC signal folded up and making contact with the Red pad once it was soldered.

You can see issues That Virtvic had with his Pacman adapter HERE

If you have recently bought any of these adapters then it may be worth your time doing some checks

 Posted by at 11:49 am
 Older Entries  Newer Entries