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House of the Dead III Repair Thread

telecommand

telecommand

Student
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Aug 21, 2019
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Auckland, NZ
Extremely excited to say I have acquired a House of the Dead 3 machine!

There is an issue with it though in that it does not boot... the seller has described the issue as "No boot error just the red and green status LEDs flash twice then no video or sound"... everything else about the cabinet is in excellent condition, so I'm hoping I can get it working again somehow.

I'm picking it up on Saturday. Just wondering if I can gather some advice on what I should be looking to do when I receive it. From some preliminary googling it appears to be an issue with the board - likely it has overheated or a capacity issue? GPU issue?

It has had a GD-ROM to flash conversion done on it - apart from that everything else is original.

I probably should have waited until I got the thing before I posted but it's my holy grail and I'm too excited to not discuss it immediately :rolleyes:

This is it:

1446979032.jpg


Will post again once I have it in my possession and I've taken a look inside. Thanks in advance for any tips/advice you can give me for diagnosing!
 
The cabinet is in my possession!

IMG_20201212_202033.jpg


This is what happens when I turn it on:


Now to take the Chihiro system out and open it up!
 
Opened the Chihiro unit up and didn't see any blown/swollen caps. Looks like the GPU may be poked as the seller said it would work for about 30mins before switching off. Then it just stopped working one day. I'm guessing it was overheating and eventually fried it. Might see if I can get a new main/bottom board to swap out with...
 
Check the case fan and the small fan on the gpu heatsink.
If one or both have been replaced or are not rotating you likely have an overheated gpu issue.
If you remove the top case (netdimm) you should be able to see both fans.
You can try to powerup the system without that top case.
Also check the avip cable between the main board and base board. They occasionally give bad contacts.
Another common cause of failure are the dipswitches on the filter board. Check those that are on for continuity.
Often, they start to fail.
 
Thanks for the tips! I can confirm the case fan is still spinning, but I didn't think about the fan on the heatsink - I'll take a look at that later today.

Craig from giz10p got back to me and can send me a replacement bottom board which I think is the culprit, as I remember noticing some weird colouration around the GPU when I opened it up and took a look.

Pretty sure it cooked at some point - the previous owner said it would work for about 30mins before switching off then one day it just stopped booting. I'm taking that as it was overheating after some time and one day it just cooked.
 
That is a beautiful machine! Hopefully you get the Chihiro to work - I’ve not seen that sort of LED behaviour in the previous ones I’ve had which were broken. Almost looks like the entire board has its power cut for some reason, so maybe a short somewhere?
 
Yeah! Pretty confident the motherboard is busted. I'm ordering a replacement in the new year so fingers crossed that's all I need to do :unsure:

In the meantime I'm giving this thing a thorough clean inside and out - the monitor is caked in dust!
 
Be carefull with the guns. The plastic shells are very brittle and the copper busses that accept the screws like to come lose. It's very important to use the correct length of screw. When a screw is 2 long it pushes the copper bus out of the plastic.
 
Well, 3 months later and IT WORKS!


Sorry for the terrible quality video - just a quick shot to show it in action :rolleyes:

It was the core board in the end, as I had thought. Got the replacement sent from giz10p in the UK, swapped it and it's alive! The replacement board was refurbished with new caps and a new fan mounted. Looks as-new. Only "issue" was that the fan was slightly larger than the stock fan and I had to replace one of the surface mounted capacitors on the board above it so that it would fit (he supplied the replacement cap so no worries there). I'd never soldered something so small before so needless to say, I was sweating!

Next step is to look at adjusting the CRT, as it has some minor geometry issues - I've found the controls for it in the back (the worst place possible for it) so I'll have a look at it tonight when the lady is home to give me a hand :D
 
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