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Namco Mach Storm / Star Wars Battle Pod

vholfx

vholfx

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There is a local arcade offering a Match Storm (same unit as SW Battle Pod) Deluxe unit for sale, but it is dead, it turns on but there is no video signal, I believe the GTX Card died, I doubt it is the hard drive because it was changed to an SSD at some point in its lifetime. There unit beeps several times at boot, so at least the PC is not dead, but it's faulty.

Does anyone has any info about troubleshooting this units? I believe this is a Namco System ES3. It is being offered for about $1,000 USD, the cabinet itself is in mint condition and the projector does work during boot, but there is no video signal coming from the PC. I am unable to troubleshoot further as the unit is being offered as is.

If the GTX is dead, can it be replaced with a commercial card? does it have a custom bios? I might take the gamble and try to fix it but I'd like to know what I am getting into before pulling the trigger.

Any info is welcome.

Thanks.
 
Yeah, I will go grab it or I'll definitely regret it at that price point. Namco website has projector bulbs for sale, I might grab one just in case, but the PC parts are not listed.

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If the pcb is beeping several times it could be an issue with the RAM, which can be swapped out without any issues
 
vholfx said:
Imagine it would be as simple as a ram... a man can dream. I'll seal the deal tomorrow and have it shipped over the weekend, I'll start digging into it as soon as I get it.
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If you can, when you get the machine, record a video of what it’s doing. That could give us a clue to what the problem could be
 
Today I visited again and noticed the security dongle is missing. I demanded the technician to put it back before I take it home, he said it would have to wait until next week because it is in storage and not on site. I don't know why they would remove just the dongle and claim they were troubleshooting, the whole PC was there with everything plugged in.

Anyway, I will bringing it home next Wednesday, hopefully the dongle will show up before then.


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Well, I took the thing home :thumbsup:

Things I noticed upon initial troubleshooting:

1. Projector is showing a "No Signal" (in Japanese) message.
2. I disconnected the video cable from the Game PC and connected that to a laptop, still "No Signal"
3. Projector shows "HDMI" Input when starting up (then No Signal), I am wondering if the wrong input is selected (I would assume it can auto detect input, but maybe not). The video cable that goes into the game board is VGA, so either the wrong input is set or it goes into the HDMI port of the projector with a converter somewhere. Either way, it is strange and worth investigating.
4. Does not seem to be playing blind, there is no sound, I tried adding credits with the service buttons, there is no sound whatsoever.
5. USB Dongle was connected but by reading the manual it seems to be in the wrong USB port, I doubt that has anything to do with the lack of video problem (manual says it should display a dongle error message
6. Game PC makes several beeps at boot.
7. Video signal connection (DVI) do not match 100% what I see in the manual, there is a VGA cable with a VGA to DVI converter that I assume was connected to an additional Projector input for some reason, I have to take a closer look, follow the wires and check which projector inputs are being used
8. I have not started troubleshooting the PC, I would like to get a video signal first if possible, I assume an external signal can be connected (eg: from a Laptop), but I cannot be sure.

There's a lot of things to try, I will dive in this weekend (hopefully) and see if I can figure out more.

One more note, this machine is coming out of an active Arcade place, with many machines classic and new, they don't seem to have the best technicians, but I'm pretty sure they did try to troubleshoot this machine before deciding to sell it, so I don't expect this to be as simple as an unplugged wire somewhere, but here we go.

Any advice or comments in general are quite welcome.

Here's more pictures and a video

View: https://youtube.com/shorts/pnBJDpAKyMA

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Nice phreaking cab man!!

Seeing a « no signal « is good! At least its displaying something!

Dont overestimate how little a « qualified arcade technician » knows! 🤓
 
@vholfx, those beeps are good, so the system seems to boot just fine, possibly either the graphics card or HDD may be shot but you can try something to verify if that’s the case. You can connect the system to a different monitor or TV to see if you get a picture. Also, the USB dongle can be placed into any USB but being placed in the first USB port is recommended.
 
I have good news and bad news,

Good news is, I have image in the projector! AND the PC does boot just as @Franco23444 said it should.

Bad news is, I was greeted with a Bitlocker error, which from what I understand, means corrupted data or just dead HDD.

I also noticed the dongle has been tinkered with, the case was split open and it is kind of loose. For what purpose?, I do not know, maybe it was damaged and someone tried to repair it, or they where trying to dump it, or clone it. In any case, it always smelled fishy that someone had taken the dongle in the first place and I had to check and demand it to be returned, or I would have walked home with no dongle.

Now that I know the HDD is dead, what do you guys suggest? I'll start by reading the entire thread for the ES3 (thank you @Franco23444!).

In any case, I'm happy with progress so far!

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So, from what I understand it could actually be a number of hardware related issues, including the dongle itself. Great... I need to research more.
 
vholfx said:
So, from what I understand it could actually be a number of hardware related issues, including the dongle itself. Great... I need to research more.
Click to expand...
Dongles don’t cause Bitlocker problems as it’s just a “license” key the game itself looks for, not the HDD OS. The HDD could have gone bad or swapped out from a different machine expecting it to work but that’s not how Bitlocker and TPM work. The TPM chip could have also gone bad or the graphics card can also be the culprit. Point is, it’s basically down to those things I just mentioned but not the security dongle.
 
Oh, good to know! at least that is one less thing to worry about. What is the TPM chip?

EDIT: I now know what TPM is now. Well, let's say the HDD is bad, what would be my options there?
 
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vholfx said:
Oh, good to know! at least that is one less thing to worry about. What is the TPM chip?
Click to expand...
The HDD software uses Microsoft’s Bitlocker protection and in order to boot into the OS seamlessly without having to type in a password or use a usb key with the password all the time, the motherboard uses a little onboard device called Trusted Platform Module or TPM for short. It basically stores a VMK (Volume Master Key) that the HDD will use to “decrypt” and boot into the OS. If anything changes like a cloned HDD , or a graphics card, or the TPM chip dying, the VMK will not match and you’ll get a Bitlocker error screen. This is as simple as I could explain it tbh.
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Just wanted to come back with an update!

Thanks to the invaluable help from @Franco23444 I got the system up and booting all the way to the game, BUT at that point the game complains about the Dongle, so, after further inspection, turns out someone did a terrible hack job while trying to fix soldering issues on the dongle, and it is broken.

So, I will try to fix the solder mess and see if the dongle can be saved.

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EDIT: I forgot to mention the crazy part, Franco pointed out I should change the SATA slot the HDD was connected to over to the SATA1 slot in the mother board, and that fixed the bitlocker issue, I would have never guessed that one...
 
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vholfx said:
Just wanted to come back with an update!

Thanks to the invaluable help from @Franco23444 I got the system up and booting all the way to the game, BUT at that point the game complains about the Dongle, so, after further inspection, turns out someone did a terrible hack job while trying to fix soldering issues on the dongle, and it is broken.

So, I will try to fix the solder mess and see if the dongle can be saved.

20230410_171526.jpg

EDIT: I forgot to mention the crazy part, Franco pointed out I should change the SATA slot the HDD was connected to over to the SATA1 slot in the mother board, and that fixed the bitlocker issue, I would have never guessed that one...
Click to expand...
Hey. Just purchased have 1 as well. Does your dongle have any identification numbers on it. As well can you see what is on it when you put it on a PC. My machine does not have a dongle... so I am looking to purchase on from manufacturer.
 
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