Single unit black CPS2 Marvel vs Capcom

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Jan 172011
 

Today I received my latest CPS2 acquisition, but in it black metal case and single board guise.
I haven’t seen too many of these black units for sale so when I did I jumped at the chance to get one.

When I inquired about this board the seller told me the suicide battery was replaced 6 months ago, when I opened up the case I find the original battery in place and the end of life date on it was 2011!
The battery cannot be replaced like the other CPS2 units, if I remove the battery as normal the board will suicide, the battery change has to be carried out with the power on. Not a massive problem but extra care needs to be taken not to short anything with the soldering iron whilst changing the battery.
Another thing to note is that should the board suicide its not a simple matter of erasing and writing new code to the EPROM’s. These boards have a SIMM with 48pin TSOP flash ROM’s fitted. I actually do have an adapter for these so its not a massive loss if I get a suicided one but I do prefer my boards to be original if possible.

I changed the battery and tested the game with no problems.

Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers repair log

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Nov 092010
 

As with the 1944 board, this came from the same seller with the same fault of a solid blue screen.

and like the 1944 board also was that the battery still had 3.6v present, the difference being was that the CPS2 suicide test EPROM didnt work with this indicating that the decryption code was still present in the memory. It is possible for the decryption code to get corrupt and with no other signs of fault I took the plunge and removed the battery, this time thought I discharged the capacitor next to the battery to make certain that the RAM with the decryption code in lost all power. The suicide test EPROM now worked.
After burning 5 new 27C4096 EPROMs for sockets 3 to 7 I fired it up and all is well again.

1944: The Loop Masters repair log

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Nov 092010
 

Bought 2 boards off ebay the other day, one was Super Street Fighter 2 The New Challengers and the other was this 1944 The Loop Masters.
Both were sold as being faulty.
When I fired this up it gave a solid blue screen.

This is a classic sign that the board has suicided so to make sure I opened it up and inserted my CPS2 test eprom (available from CPS2SHOCK site) into ROM slot number 3.
It loaded up confirming that the board had suicided.
The strange thing was that the battery was still giving out 3.6v but as this was one of two board with the same indicated fault I assume the previous owner had done something silly.
Only the EPROM in slot 3 requires replacing to phoenix this game so with that done and the battery removed I fired it up again.


I would have liked to keep it original but there is nothing I can do about that now.

Dragonball Z 2 Super Battle repair log

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Oct 282010
 

Had this board for nearly a year now but the game is so bad I’ve never bothered repairing it until now.
The board itself is pretty clean but the sprites had jailbars through them.

This is quite often a sign of dodgy ROM’s. Several of the MASKROM’s were socketed so I dumped them and checked them against MAME, they all checked out fine. The MASKROM’s are read as 27C160 EPROM’s.
After a little bit of probing, prodding and pulling I believed the fault to be down to the MASKROM at the top right of the board. After inspecting the board under the magnifier I located about a dozen cracked/dry joints. Went over all the solder points on the sockets with the soldering iron, replaced the ROM’s and fired it up. All the graphics were fine and no amount of board flexing could bring the fault back.

Lethal Enforcers repair log #1

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Oct 132010
 

I decided to take a look at the Lethal Enforcers board I recently bought as it had no sound.
There are many accounts of people with this problem on the forums for this board and the X-Men board, they use the same IC.
I found an excellent post over on the KLOV forums here and decided to see what I could do.
I scraped away the resin around the capacitors and with my multimeter checked continuity following the diagram user tkrn had posted in the above thread.


Capacitor C6 had leaked a little and had corroded the track between the positive side and the first pin of the 3 pin IC next to it. I removed the capacitor with a set on small pliers, it came off very easily, and replaced it plus I bridged the corroded track too.


Fired the board up and full sound is back. I haven’t replaced any of the other capacitors yet as its working but when I take this board out and store it I will probably do so just for the sake of longevity.

Many thanks to tkrn over at the KLOV forums for his excellent post, without it I wouldn’t have attempted this fix.

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