Shinobi repair log

This pcb from my collection developed lately a sound problem only with the jump sound which is a sample

 

This particular sample was distorted, the others were all OK

The clock and the 7759 sound chip which is responsible for the samples I was sure they were OK otherwise

all the samples would have the issues

I dumped the sound program rom 11372 and the samples roms 11288 and 11289 expecting that one of them could be corrupted

but surprisingly everything was fine.

If you have noticed, I still the original NEC module with a suicide battery from 1987. The battery is still working after all these years but unfortunately cannot be changed since the module is one piece injected with epoxy.

I started to think that the module could have the decryption key stored in ram somewhat corrupted after all these years and this could affect of course the sounds

Therefore I proceeded to use a z80 with the decrypted program rom taken from a mame set which use the same 5358 rom board (it is currently set 5)

The jump sound was correct with decrypted rom, confirming my theory that the key in the module is corrupted.