Light at the end of the tunnel with my Maximum Tune setup...help w/ sanity checks please

[AgentHero]

Cabinet #1 works fine. Setup number two is using the bottom half of the Chihiro pcb from a known working HotD 3 and the top is from cabinet #2 of Maximum Tune. I plugged this unit into my HotD 3 cabinet and it booted fine to the point where it was searching for a steering wheel--so that's enough to verify it's a working setup. When I plug this setup into cabinet #2 the lights on the box are all there as you'd expect, but the I/O board's LED's 1-10 are all solid. On cabinet #1, on LED's 1, 2, 3, 9, and 10 are lit...I think that's the LED's, but I'm going from memory. I know 1-10 are not all solid on the working cabinet.

There is no picture or sound on cabinet #2. Compared to the working cabinet, all other lights seem to match. Every few seconds, the monitor will have a line show up, but it's more of just an indication of signal being fed to it and it having power rather than it trying to display anything. Also at startup, I hear a bit of what is best described as a rhythmic bass-y thud/hum kind of noise...like it's trying to play a sound, but it's not recognizable as being something game specific, even though it's got a distinct rhythm to it. It happens within 15 seconds of power up. I'm not sure what to start with as far as what could be the issue. I've checked and re-checked the AVIP and related video plugs. Is there any part swapping that would make sense between the cabinets to find a faulty board? I don't think the I/O would cause things to not display on the monitor.

 

[AgentHero]

Progress! I had verified the proper 3.3 and 5 volts Saturday when I had a non-working setup. I checked it again today and after readjusting them, I now have a picture and sound on cabinet #2! It seems like cabinet #2's I/O board is faulty since it still powers up with all LED's lit red and it stays that way. I swapped in cabinet #1's I/O board and that gets the same proper response as when it is used in cabinet #1...only a few of them are lit, but again, I forget which LED's since I'm not currently looking at the board.

However, when it boots up to the steering check screen it gives a steering error E20, which I think is a force feedback fault? So I'm off to swap in the steering board to see if that changes anything. I've seen that I can go into the menus and disable force feedback to bypass that error, but since I'm this deep in the diagnosis I might as well keep going. If I leave it as is, I'll forget what I've learned if I try to come back to it a few months from now.

 

[winteriscoming]

Great progress! I'm glad to hear the 2nd cab's monitor is working.

It's probably worth swapping the steering force feedback boards just to see if the error goes away, but I *think* this error could be caused by a faulty I/O.

While I don't have one of these Namco I/Os, I do have one of the force feedback boards and I've played around with it a little bit. My eventual goal is to translate the protocol so that the FFB unit in OR2 can work with Maximum Tune and Mario Kart.

The error message descriptions from the manual are crap... E20 is an error you'll get if nothing is plugged up from the FFB board to the Chihiro or it's not sending a serial signal.

There's a relatively complex series of events happening with the FFB and I/O board.
1. The potentiometer from the steering wheel gets wired right into the FFB board.
2. The analog signal from the steering wheel gets forwarded to a header that connects to the I/O board. This way both boards get an analog reading from the steering wheel and both have an idea about how the wheel is turning.
3. There's a wire from the I/O that sinks a line on the FFB board to initialize it. If this isn't present (i.e. a fault in the I/O) the communication doesn't start and probably would result in E20. This wire goes from A7 on 60 pin connector on the I/O board to the FFB board's 8-pin header at pin 8, I believe per the wiring diagram - and it's colored Blue. This line is referred to as POWER.
4. Then the FFB board communicates with the Chihiro over serial (RS-232) from the 6 pin connector on the FFB to the 8-pin connector on the Chihiro (note that the card reader communication wires also plug into this connector at the Chihiro.)

So if I were troubleshooting this, I'd start swapping stuff into the good cab and seeing if things still work. So if the FFB and I/O from the good cab both work in the good cab, what happens when just the FFB is swapped into the good from the bad? Does it still work? What about just swapping I/Os?

Edit: There are also a few DIP switches on the FFB board and a jumper. It's worth checking that they're matched to the known working board. A couple of these are settings for the serial signal and if set improperly will break down the communication.

 

[AgentHero]

The dip switches are the same, but what's odd is that on the working cabinet LED's 3 and 4 are not lit (they are located off to the far corner next to a socket without a chip in it. Those LED's are lit on cabinet #2...so I assume that's an error of some sort. The LED's are under the "N" in "Namco". LED 4 is green and LED 3 is red. Again, neither are lit in working cabinet #1.

Also, seemingly unrelated, there's a standard Peter Chou power supply in both of these machines, in addition to the main bigger box power power supply. This smaller Peter Chou power supply has wires in the usual AC/FG/GND terminals, but also in a 24V/6.25 amp terminal (yellow wire). This has a red power light that is on in cabinet #1, but it isn't on in cabinet #2. What does that power? Obviously, the AC/FG/GND wires are running to the main cabinet power switch, the GND is running to a GND, and the yellow wire looks to go into one of the Chihiro pcb's power ports, but what does that power exactly? That red light IS just a power indicator and not a "turn the voltage down" warning as far as I can tell. I'll have pictures in a minute.

The pictures aren't showing up for me unless I load them in a new tab...not sure what the issue is.

 

[winteriscoming]

Also, seemingly unrelated, there's a standard Peter Chou power supply in both of these machines, in addition to the main bigger box power power supply. This smaller Peter Chou power supply has wires in the usual AC/FG/GND terminals, but also in a 24V/6.25 amp terminal (yellow wire). This has a red power light that is on in cabinet #1, but it isn't on in cabinet #2. What does that power? Obviously, the AC/FG/GND wires are running to the main cabinet power switch, the GND is running to a GND, and the yellow wire looks to go into one of the Chihiro pcb's power ports, but what does that power exactly? That red light IS just a power indicator and not a "turn the voltage down" warning as far as I can tell. I'll have pictures in a minute.

That 24v PSU is solely for powering the card readers.

but what's odd is that on the working cabinet LED's 3 and 4 are not lit (they are located off to the far corner next to a socket without a chip in it. Those LED's are lit on cabinet #2...so I assume that's an error of some sort. The LED's are under the "N" in "Namco". LED 4 is green and LED 3 is red. Again, neither are lit in working cabinet #1.

Those are some sort of status LEDs. That POWER wire I mentioned earlier has to be sunk to ground at specific times or communication doesn't happen. I believe if you were to reset your working cab and observe the LEDs on the FFB there would be initial activity and then they would turn off. This can still point to a faulty I/O since the I/O is responsible for driving POWER.

 

[AgentHero]

Looks like the good cabinet's steering pcb got cabinet #2 past the error 20. So those LED's on the faulty board indicate some sort of issue. No idea what, because the boards look fine, but obviously that doesn't matter much. Now I'm at a card writer error #55 which I imagine means I need to connect the coin door to game #2 and disable the card writer if I want to get into the game. I guess I know what's what now with these two machines...at least enough to have them up and running.

Next step is to get back to the original faulty Chihiro pcb and mess with that.

 

[AgentHero]

Got the steering pcb and I/O board in today from Bruce on ebay. Everything looks good, but now I get to the "Insert coin" main screen and add a credit but pressing the pedal doesn't start the game. Simple enough, but all buttons and pedals test fine and respond in the diagnostics menu. Both pedals range up to about 900 when pressed and go back to the starting number (500?) when no longer pressed. So is it just a bad pot even though it still registers in diagnostics? The wires going to the pot look to be connected well enough. I flexed them a bit to make sure there wasn't a pinch, but didn't get any changes from it.

 

[winteriscoming]

Was this after initializing inputs in the test menu?

Are you actually getting into attract mode? I've had it freeze up on me before going into attract mode if it didn't like where 5v was adjusted. It might be worth ensuring 5v is up to spec when everything's powered on.

 

[AgentHero]

I went into the menu to be sure the pedals were responding, exited out of the setup menu and still had the problem. I'll check the 5v and see where that is. Maybe the steering board is power hungry and dropped the voltage like what happened with the Chihiro pcb earlier.

 

[winteriscoming]

One other thing to check. In the input test menu, when you have the pedals pushed in and or wheel turned all the way left or right, it should say "OK" in green next to the respective value. Is it saying OK for gas?

 

[AgentHero]

Got out to the garage today since it wasn't too cold. Both games are linked and work for head-to-head racing! Only a few minor issues left to address:

• On what has been the more troublesome of the two cabinets, the shifter doesn't recognize 6th gear--when I shift to 6th it thinks the shifter is at rest (dead center according to the shift indicator display). The shifter also sometimes falls out of 5th or 6th placement and springs back to the resting position. I'm guessing bad switches?
• Marquee light is out. Bulb is good, but there is no starter, so it must be a bad ballast because that is the only other bit of hardware in that lamp. I don't see wiring for a starter, at least none that is comparable to the working marquee's wiring setup--which looks like someone wired in a starter at some later point. Confusing, but I'll probably just buy another ballast and see if that fixes it.
• Again on the more troublesome cabinet, the force feedback isn't as strong as it is on the other cabinet. I can feel "energy" being transmitted into the steering wheel and it isn't as limp as if I turn the steering off in the menu, but it doesn't provide as much resistance as the other cabinet. At first, I had no force feedback, but I found the green > green/yellow ground wires that are connected to each other behind the steering wheel weren't fully connected. When I got the game, they were completely disconnected. I bought a replacement steering board, which is what is currently plugged in, but I probably need to dig deeper into this to be sure what my real issue is
• The red on one of the monitors isn't showing up. Adjusting the red pots didn't change anything. Probably needs a rejuve/cap kit.
• Forgot one--I'm hearing high-pitched feedback from the speakers in the seat of one of the games. It's a loud simple "Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep". Quite lovely right in my ear.

Mainly just minor stuff confined to one cabinet, which is what I expected when I got these. I'm guessing the "not coining up" issue was a crimped wire or something. Either way, that issue didn't pop up again today.