Phantom Systems, Inc. Games

[channelmaniac]

Model: Police Trainer 2
Symptom: No boot, 2 beeps.

Game is a PC based game. Hooked a standard VGA monitor and keyboard to the game and saw it had a CMOS error. Battery tested good. Reset the CMOS settings and game booted properly.

CMOS settings are as follows:

Standard:
Drive A: NONE (default is 3.5" 1.44Mb)
Halt On: NO ERRORS (default is All, But Keyboard)

Advanced:
Anti-Virus Protection: DISABLED (default is enabled)
First Boot Device: HDD-0 (Default is CD-ROM)

Integrated Peripherals:
Onboard Parallel Mode: EPP (default is SPP)

Power Management Setup:
Video Off Option: ALWAYS ON (default is Standby -> Video Off)
State After Power Failure: ON (default is Auto)
 

[channelmaniac]

Model: Police Trainer 2
Symptom: No boot, No beeps. Dead.

Game is a PC based game. Hooked a standard VGA monitor and keyboard to the game and Got nothing. Cleared the CMOS settings. Still nothing. Swapped SDRAM DIMM, nothing.

Core voltage to CPU was correct and caps on the motherboard were good. Narrowed it down to a bad CPU. Replaced the CPU and reset the CMOS settings.

[channelmaniac]

Model: Police Trainer 2

Game is a PC based game. Specs on the Red board system are:

MSI K7T Turbo 2 motherboard
AMD Athlon 1400 CPU
128Mb PC-133 SDRAM
GeForce2 MX-200 AGP Video with 32Mb RAM
WD WD200 20Mb IDE hard drive w/80 pin cable
Parallel Port JAMMA adapter with Dallas Semiconductor button memory for copy protection

Game is running on top of a flavor of Linux OS.

Strange thing about this configuration: The motherboard's BIOS does not directly support this CPU so it POSTs as "unknown." It also is configured to run the CPU at 100MHz FSB (front side bus) speeds which translates to it POSTing as running at 1050MHz instead of 1400.

Since I haven't touched a Yellow board system yet I do not have the specs for those.

[channelmaniac]

Model: Police Trainer 2

When troubleshooting this game it is important to have a multisync monitor that is capable of displaying 512 x 384 as well as standard VGA modes. If you do not then you will need to unhook the PC monitor and hook up the arcade monitor to see the game playing. All troubleshooting of BIOS settings and more are done with the PC monitor.

1) If the game boots to a Linux desktop and shows a mouse cursor then check the following:

• Parallel port settings in CMOS
• Copy protection button
• Parallel port JAMMA adapter

The Parallel port must be set to ECP mode. The default mode is SPP. When setting ECP you'll have the option of 1.7 or 1.9. It defaults to 1.9 when you choose ECP. This works fine. I have not tried the 1.7. Reset all the appropriate CMOS settings, check/replace the CMOS battery, and try to boot the game again.

The copy protection button is a Dallas Semiconductor button device. It fits in a holder that looks like it's for a VERY thick lithium button cell battery. The button device has a rim on it. That rim side goes up in the holder. If it's upside down, or bad, the game will not start.

If the parallel port JAMMA adapter is bad the game will not start. Swap it out.

2) If the game is dead, check the following:

• Dead CMOS battery
• Dead Power Supply
• Dead PC

If the CMOS settings are lost the game might not power on by itself. This can be checked by momentarily shorting across the power switch pins on the motherboard just like any standard PC powered by an ATX power supply. If the game boots up reset the CMOS settings to what they should be and test the game. Check and replace the CMOS battery if necessary. If the battery is good then check the game for proper grounding as static discharges could've cleared the settings.

If the game doesn't power up even with momentarily shorting across the power switch pins then replace the power supply and try again. It's a standard ATX style power supply.

If the game powers up but just doesn't boot then troubleshoot it like you would a standard PC with one BIG exception. MSI sells a bracket with 4 LEDs that plug into the motherboard. This set of LEDs will show different patterns while the system is booting. These patterns will point to the bad component: CPU, Motherboard Chipset, Video Card, RAM, etc. and will be an excellent source of help for troubleshooting.

This bracket with LEDs is available through MSI and is documented in the motherboard manual available from the MSI website. I found mine on eBay.

Make sure to check those pesky high frequency electrolytic capacitors around the CPU and the CPU power supply section of the motherboard. If any of those have cracked open on top, leaked electrolyte out the bottom, or just simply have blown out the rubber plug at the base then replace those caps. If they are bad the game could act dead or even randomly lock up. This is where an ESR type capacitor meter comes in VERY handy.