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NLG Users Repair Logs and Other Ramblings. Request your very own topic. Just ask any site staff. => Channelmaniac's Arcadecomponents' Old School Repair Logs => Topic started by: channelmaniac on May 04, 2014, 06:59:31 PM
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Model: 1943:
Symptom: Garbled player/enemy sprites
Problem would come and go with tapping/flexing of the board set. Flipped set over and isolated the problem down (by light tapping) to a custom surface mount chip on the ROM board. A closer inspection revealed 3 pins on the chip that were barely soldered at the factory. The connection broke loose resulting in the corruption. Repaired 3 bad solder connections on surface mount chip to fix the game.
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Model: Super Buster Bros
Symptom: Dead. Solid white screen
This board uses the Kabuki CPU, a modified Z80 with a decode table kept in internal RAM. If the battery dies, the board will suicide.
Revived the board by removing R33 and jumpering the right side pad from R33 to ground to make the Kabuki act like a standard Z80. Replaced the ROMs at 11H, 13H, and 14H with ones programmed with suicide free code. Jumpered pin 30 on each 27C020 and pin 1 on the 27C512 replacement ROMs to pin 27 of the Kabuki CPU to finish the repair.
Suicide free code and instructions are both available off the Dead Battery Society website.
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Model: Super Pang
Symptom: Dead. Solid white screen
Like Super Buster Bros., this board uses the Kabuki CPU, a modified Z80 with a decode table kept in internal RAM. If the battery dies, the board will suicide.
Revived the board by removing R33 and jumpering the right side pad from R33 to ground to make the Kabuki act like a standard Z80. Replaced the ROMs at 11H, 13H, and 14H with ones programmed with suicide free code. Jumpered pin 30 on each 27C020 and pin 1 on the 27C512 replacement ROMs to pin 27 of the Kabuki CPU. Removed the battery to finish the repair.
Suicide free code and instructions are both available off the Dead Battery Society website.
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Model: Super Buster Bros
Symptom: Dead
This game had the same problem of a dead suicide battery. It needed new ROMs programmed and a slight reconfiguration to make the Kabuki CPU act like a normal Z80.
On these games, the first thing to test is the NiCD battery. If it's low then the game will have suicided. There's no way to reprogram the codes into the Kabuki so using the "Phoenix" code and board modifications listed at the Dead Battery Society website is the only way to bring these pre-CPS1 suicided games back to life.
Be sure to remove the battery to keep it from leaking on the board. Many of these old batteries will have started leaking. This is evidenced by a blue or blue-green crystalline growth on the ends of the battery. In bad cases it will creep along the traces and corrode them and any components it comes into contact with.
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Model: Super Buster Bros
Symptom: Dead - Suicided
Removed 1 resistor and jumpered one pin to ground on the Kabuki CPU. Programmed 2 2Mb EPROMs and 1 512K EPROM with Phoenixed code. Jumpered pin 1 of the 512K EPROM to pin 30 on both 2Mb EPROMs and to pin 27 of the Kabuki CPU. Tested board.
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Model: Super Buster Bros.
Symptom: Dead
Someone attempted to phoenix the board incorrectly. It had a Z80B Processor instead of the Kabuki, but they did not remove R33. Removed R33, installed missing EPROMs for 11H, 13H, and 14H with ones programmed with the phoenix code. Jumpered one bad trace, reset the NVRAM, and tested.
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Model: Super Buster Bros.
Symptom: Dead
Someone attempted to phoenix the board incorrectly. It was missing the Kabuki CPU, they did not remove R33, and they installed 27C040 EPROMs with pin 31 removed instead of the 27C020 EPROMs for 13H and 14H. Removed R33, installed the correct 27C020 EPROMs for 11H and 13H. Erased and reprogrammed the 27C512 at 14H with the phoenix code. Reset the NVRAM and tested.
When using 27C040 EPROMs instead of the 27C020 the code must be loaded into the upper half of the EPROM as pin 31 (A18) is tied high by the game board. Leaving it floating leads to game crashing as the state of the pin cannot be guaranteed. To use the lower half of the EPROM pin 31 must be lifted out of the socket and tied to ground with a jumper wire.
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Model: Buster Bros
Symptom: Dead - Suicided
Removed 1 resistor and jumpered pin 28 to ground on the Kabuki CPU. Programmed 1 2Mb EPROMs and 1 512K EPROM with Phoenixed code. Jumpered pin 1 of the 512K EPROM to pin 30 on the 2Mb EPROM and to pin 27 of the Kabuki CPU. Tested board.
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Model: Poker Ladies
Symptom: Dead
Board had suicided. Removed 1 resistor and jumpered pin 28 to ground the Kabuki CPU. Programmed 1 2Mb EPROMs and 1 512K EPROM with Phoenixed code. Jumpered pin 1 of the 512K EPROM to pin 30 on the 2Mb EPROM and to pin 27 of the Kabuki CPU.
Board uses a unique pinout and not "Capcom Classic" or JAMMA. Built an adapter and tested board.
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Model: Buster Bros
Symptom: Dead. White screen.
Board was sent in with the description of "phoenixed, but failed. white screen."
Fixed a shorted connection between pin 1 of the 27512 and pin 30 of the 27020 with the socket for the 27020. These pins are supposed to be lifted from their sockets and tied back to pin 27 of the Kabuki CPU. Board would then play blind but with a white screen. Replaced 2 bad color RAMs and tested.
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Model: Super Buster Bros
Symptom: Locks up
Board was sent in with the description of "phoenixed, but locks up"
Replaced the 27020 at 13H and fixed a shorted connection between pin 1 of the 27512 and pin 30 of the 27020 chips at 13H and 14H with the socket for the 27020 at 14H. These pins are supposed to be lifted from their sockets and tied back to pin 27 of the Kabuki CPU. Board would then play but had graphic corruption. There were pins on 3 sides of the PLCC surface mount chip at 3K that were not soldered at the factory. Resoldered those pins and tested.
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Model: Gunsmoke
Symptom: No audio, video scrambled
Board had been plugged into a JAMMA harness.
Cleaned the edge connector to restore video. Replaced burnt HA13001 audio amp chip and 4 heat damaged capacitors to restore audio. Fixed a bent pin on ROM 12 to fix a minor graphic corruption on the water and barrels. Fixed 2 burned edge connections and tested.
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Model: Bionic Commando
Symptom: Dead. Garbage on screen.
CPU was dead. It would try to boot but come up with a low on the bus error pin. The Program ROMs would not come active on their enable lines. A closer look revealed several pins that had jumper wires attached that were missing. A quick Google search of a high resolution board picture revealed that 16D pin 13 to 16E pin 13, 16E pin 13 to 16E pin 5, and 11E pin 3 to 11E pin 8 were missing. Reinstalled missing jumper wires and tested board.
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Model: Ghosts n Goblins
Symptom: Parts board to restore
All ROMs were missing. Programmed replacement ROMs, set DIP switches, and tested.
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Model: Ghosts n Goblins
Symptom: Locks up
Ran board for several hours and the audio section died. Replaced 1 Fujitsu 74LS374 IC sitting between the Main CPU data bus and the Audio CPU data bus and a corroded EPROM socket in the sound section. Ran board for over 30 hours with no failures.
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Model: Commando
Symptom: Dead
Fabricated a 50 pin 3 position ribbon cable to replace a missing one. Game played but with no sound. Installed a socket and a missing 6116 SRAM IC and tested.
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Model: Section Z
Symptom: Missing sounds
Replaced 2 broken caps in the audio section and tested.
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Model: Buster Bros.
Symptom: Dead
Removed R33, shorted the right side of it to ground to disable Kabuki mode and put the chip into standard Z80 mode, burned 2 replacement EPROMs with suicide free code, and jumpered the upper address lines of the EPROMs to pin 27 of the Kabuki. Tested.
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Model: 1943
Symptom: Dead
CPU had multiple dead data pins and the reset line would sometimes stick low on boot. Also, pin 1 (/OE) of the two 74LS374 chips closed to the socket were dead. These lead back to the 8751 security CPU.
Pulled the gold pinned 8751 from its socket to find corroded pins and 2 pins that stayed behind in the socket. Close examination showed multiple corroded pins and cracked pins ready to fall off. Replaced the 40 pin socket on the board and cleaned up the corroded pins. Placed the 8751 into a machine pin socket, soldered the stub legs to the socket, then plugged the assembly into the new 40 pin socket on the board. Tested successfully.
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Model: 1942
Symptom: Dead
Cleaned contacts on 2 daughterboards and tested. Board ran, but had horrible feedback sounds. Recapped audio section to fix that but the sound effect would not work properly. Reattached a loose factory bodge wire and tested.
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Model: Legendary Wings
Symptom: Corrupt Graphics
Replaced multiple 74LS245 chips and patched 3 broken internal layer traces on the video PCB. Tested.
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Model: 1942
Symptom: No sound
Replaced 2 physically damaged caps in the audio circuit and cleaned the edge connector. Tested.
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Model: Black Tiger
Symptom: Scrambled screen
Game would play blind. Board had bad corrosion damage to the CPU board.
Removed, cleaned under, socketed, and replaced IC 5C (LS367), 4D/5D (LS157), 1H (LS374), and the 2018 at 4C. This corrected the colors, but the screen was still scrambled. Cleaned the dirty video PCB and found the 32K x 8 SRAM's R/W pin was stuck high. Traced it back to a gouged section of PCB. Patched 2 traces to restore proper video, but with corrupt sprites. Replaced ROM 07 and ROM 09 to fix the sprites. Game would randomly reboot. Cleaned the legs on the CPU, protection CPU, and 5 program ROMs. Tested.
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Model: Commando
Symptom: 4 pics on screen
Replaced bad 74LS161 clock divider chips at 7A and 7D on the bottom PCB. Tested. Background would disappear, sprites were in the wrong location, and sprites were corrupt. Replaced a bad 74LS32 at 6D (pins 1 and 2 were shorted together internally) and the 74LS04 at 9E on the top board and tested. Background would still disappear, but instead of from the top to bottom of the screen with 1 pixel wide jagged swaths, it would disappear from left to right in 8 bit tall swipes at random. Replaced bad 6116 SRAM on the top board and tested.
Turned to the bottom board for sprite issues: Replaced bad 74LS283 chips at 2C, 3C, 4D, 5D, and 5E. Replaced bad 74LS163 at 6M and 74LS20 at 2E. Tested to find correct positions, but corrupt sprites. Replaced bad 74LS257 chips at 1K, 2K, 10K, 8L, and 8M. Replaced bad 74LS174 at 6M then 4 bad 2114 RAMs at 3H, 3J, 4H, and 4J. Sprites returned but had a line in them. Replaced bad 74LS194 at 9J and tested.
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Model: Super Buster Bros
Symptom: Dead. Suicided.
Removed leaking NiCd battery and cleaned the area of the PCB. Replaced ROMs at 11H, 13H, and 14H with ones programmed with suicide free code. Removed R13 and modded the PCB to use the code. Tested.
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Model: Sidearms
Symptom: Graphic corruption and no sound
Replaced a bad line buffer SRAM to fix every other sprite line missing. Replaced the other line buffer SRAM to fix a vertical dot missing every 8 pixels. Replaced the Sound RAM, 74LS138, 74LS74, and a bad bipolar PROM in the sound circuit. Replaced a bad cap in the reset circuit. Tested.
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Model: Section Z
Symptom: Missing every other horizontal line in sprites.
Replaced bad CXK5808 SRAM in the Line Buffer circuit. Tested.
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Model: Black Tiger
Symptom: Short. Shuts down power supply
Replaced shorted capacitor on the bottom of the CPU PCB and tested.
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Model: Speed Rumbler
Symptom: Corrupt sprites
Replaced 1 bad high speed 2018 SRAM and tested.