I’ve just dumped all the PLDs (four in total) on the Cadash PCB I succesfully repaired.All dumps are working and tested in a GAL16V8 except one which Porchy reversed into a GAL20V8 but its equations can be complied also in a GAL22V10 targeting device.Old PAL archive from unknown source was deleted from database as well.
This one came from the same lot of faulty PCBs (seven in total) as the previously repaired Growl.For the uninitiated, Cadash is an action game with some RPG elements.
Board was in good shape (it has also additional hardware for multi-link game) .
When powered on I got this screen:
There was a clear problem with main code execution so I dumped the four program ROMs and none of them matched the ones in MAME.I ran these dumped ROMs in MAME and I got a similar error (different memory address due not perfect emulation of 68000 core, I guess):
This was enough to lead me to reprogram the four program ROMs from cadash World set into 27C010 devices.And this was the winning move which fixed the board.
Yesterday I got a lot of faulty original PCBs.Among these there was a clean Growl PCB.I always like this game (and played it in MAME) where the player controls a forest ranger who must protect the local wildlife from a group of evil poachers who are driving the animals to extinction.
As said, PCB was in mint state:
but once powered up it showed garbled sprites:
I noticed that, if I press the PCB in the area near the ASIC marked ‘TC0540OBN’ @IC25, all the sprites were restored.
So ,after a quick consultation of MAME source that confirmed this ASIC as a sprites generator ( the letters ‘OB’ in the ASIC name stand for objects a.k.a. sprites), I understood this was the way to follow in my repair.Probing the tightness of the individual pins with a needle I found some lifted ones.A reflow with my hot air station at 390° and a bit of flux was enough to fix the sprites issue completely.
After my today repair job, I dumped the 24 pin PLD marked ‘054683’ from an original Konami X-Men.This dump is tested and working in a GAL22V10 replacement.Board has also another PAL marked ‘054744’ but this has already been dumped since it’s the same as Premiere Soccer and Bucky O’ Hare PCBs ( and probably some other).Starting from now we will rename all the Konami PLDs using only the device label since, as said, they are shared between multiple boards.
Got today in the mail this mint original Konami X-Men PCB bought as faulty:
Once fired up I got this:
So, RAM/ROM test reported a bad IC @37F but this was not the real location of the IC since there was no location 37F on PCB.So, clearly there was some trouble in the tilemap generation, this was confirmed by the word “BAD” which became “BCF”.So, I launched MAME:
and, comparing the emulator and real PCB test results screens, I could identify that the faulty IC reported by test was the Panasonic MN4464 (6264 compatible) SRAM @ 15F
This confirmed my theory about bad generation of tilemaps since this SRAM is used by the near ‘052109’ ASIC (tilemap generator).
So, time to desolder the IC and test it out of circuit corfirmed the RAM as bad:
Fitted a socket and a spare 6264 SRAM and I could add also this cool game to my growing collection!
