What's new
By:
Filters

CPS3 JAMMA running 3rd strike randomly freezing in my blast city

Indigo

Indigo

Beginner
Joined
Mar 5, 2023
Messages
5
Reaction score
10
Location
Tampa, FL
Hello everyone!

So I recently got into the world of arcade machines and been having a great time. I've been able to play 3rd strike on my Blast City for the most part, however, I have a re-occurring issue that is quite consistent when I let the game do its idle CPU battles and such. After about 20-30ish minutes the game will just freeze during the CPU matches, nothing will fix it other than a restart. It freezes during normal player matches much less frequently. The game is on an original CPS3 JAMMA board and original 3rd strike cart/cd.

Things I have done so far to try and fix it:
- Checked the voltages from the PSU, I am getting 5.026-5.029 when I test the first and third pin on the JAMMA board while the game is running. Same voltage when the game freezes, no fluctuation.
- Cleaned the Connections on the PSU, JAMMA, SIMMs, Cart, and made sure the grounds were good.
- Looked at all of the caps, none of them seem bulging or broken.

Not really sure where to go from here, I don't have another JAMMA board to test if that's the issue.

Anyone have any ideas for a fix? Thanks in advance!
 
This was happening to me turned out to be one of my 64mb simms. Was getting random crashes then One day I wasn't able to load a new game. Ran the simm test and the game crashed multiple times. I had to remove and swap simms to get the test to complete and identify the faulty simm
 
I've done the test prior and they all came back fine, so I don't think its that. I also don't have the issue with crashes it just freezes and continue to play the music.
 
Could be the PPU (DL-2729). Had this same behavior happen on a failing mobo I had. Board would work fine for 20 or so minutes & once fully heated up would cause the music/video to just hang in place. Scared the sh*t out of me when it first happened using of my battery carts!

I’d check the traces around the chip to make sure they’re all making good contact/not touching one another. I’d also check for corroded traces coming directly off of the PPU.
 
I agree with @GoldenGlover - the large SMD chips that CPS3 uses don't have much solder and if the solder joints are loose then the chip legs might make contact with their pads when the board first turns on, but loose contact as the chip heats up and expands. Plus, the board flexes when installing the security cartridge which also causes the SMD chip connections to loosen up.

Reflow the solder on the large SMD custom chips.
 
Last edited:
Thank you guys for the replies, I’ve looked pretty closely at all the connections and they look fine so far. I’m gonna go ahead and reflow and see if that fixes the issue.
 
Went and reflowed the entire board, no change, still freezes after idling for 30-40 minutes. Probably need to give it a cap kit to see if that fixes anything, any other suggestions to try and fix this issue?
 
Combination of everything you did (reflow + rewrite) probably did the trick. Nicely done!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top