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Sega X Board: Thunderblade repair

Casselfornia

Casselfornia

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I recently got a Thunderblade DX. The board was never taken out of the case and it looks like new. Unfortunately it doesnt work in the machine and also not with the cables I wired into my Supergun. All voltages are present on the cabinet. I just get a black screen. Anybody ever repaired one and could assist?

My Supergun is powered by 2Amps on the 5V rail. Maybe that is not enough?
 
Thanks mate. Only a few DX cabs left and I am done. Yeah, judging from the thread he sorted the power issue pretty fast. Problem with mine is: I already bumped the voltage up so that the board receives 5.02V on 3 of the 5V cables and 5.13V on one. I don't know why that is but one has a higher voltage.

I stumbled across the smarty pi solution myself but it's available again in April sadly.

Meanwhile jugding the prices of Pi4 and the other components I'd rather try to fix my original. 😅

Maybe I'll try recapping the PSU or using a PC brick as a start
 
Hi,

I made a test harness for my X board to plug into a Supergun just to make it easier to work on.
Have you tried these test EPROMS they can be very helpful?

Cheers Justin
 
Hey, you a fast replier. Yeah I did that too, wired from the filter board to my supergun. I even burned the eproms. (That was a hassle with an tl866)

How many amps does your supergun PSU have? Mine got only 2 so I think it's not booting because it's not enough.

EDIT: I gotta correct myself - I think I found what the problem with my supergun is. According to the diagram of the cab the PSU pushes 5V 7A. So my Supergun PSU with 5V 2A seems insufficient.
Also I found out that when I measure voltage while the pcb is hooked to my supergun it's just 4.25V at the pins and at the two 68k CPU's. Seems like a power issue to me.
 
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Hi,

Not sure how many Amps my Supergun puts out. it has an old PC ATX power supply so should be more than enough.
4.5v does seem to be on the low side. what voltage are you getting at the PCB edge?

Cheers Justin
 
PCB edge is the same. Yeah, your ATX PSU definitly has more Amps than mine. I'll try to find one and report back. Thanks mate
 
Ok - opened my pc an connected the psu to the supergun. Picture and memory test ran with the afterburner test roms. What are the results telling me?
 

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Casselfornia said:
What are the results telling me?
Click to expand...
Likely 4 bad rams or logic controlling the rams causing them to fail tests. Plus the one at the bottom, i cannot tell what it says there.
Edit: That appears to be 2 customs reporting bad, maybe they are bad, or maybe solder or logic issues.
 
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I ran it again with the sub CPU eproms removed. The author said to remove them as they could interfere with the results... Stupid me. Now we are onto this:

Looks like 4 dead rams (thanks asure) or dead sub CPU right?
 

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For all of these tests, i'd say to check those rams visually, broken traces etc.
Maybe get some replacements, and piggyback them, see if anything changes, but that will mostly work for GFX ram.
If these are program/work area rams then you might have issues, like the black screen you describe.

If you are not good at soldering i don't suggest to replace or resolder anything soon. Find the chips on the board, post some pics of the surrounding area etc.

Also, i am assuming you do not have the big Hitachi protected block cpu right?
 
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Yeah, I don't have that suicide block. Had to bring out the hot air to desolder. Why is everything always so stubborn when desoldering with these old boards? 😅

I got 2 6116 rams laying in my parts bin and tested the one I just desoldered:

Looks like it's really bad. Yup, just ran the test with the one from my parts bin and it's okay. I am gonna desolder the rest of the 4 and then socket them and post back. Thanks!
 

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Not sure if it's 6116, google suggests these:

8464 – 8192×8 CMOS Static RAM

8464-pinout.png


Cross reference:

  • 6264 (slim)
  • D4364
  • TMM2063
  • TMM2064
  • TMM2088
  • CXK5864
  • CY7C185
  • M55165P
  • TC5565
Edit: 6116 = 2048x8 so that won't work.
 
Thank you. I kinda rushed a bit here.... Just realised that all 4 RAM are still good. I got one socket in and will socket the other 3 still tho. I gotta check the traces then although they looked all fine.

Okay, I checked out the thread Gamesmonkey recommended. I found that post where there was trouble with the same ICs I have. IC36 is a buffer that is connected to the rams. Just desoldered it and checked it in my programmer: IC logik test 4 = error

The other ones reports fine. That one is a goner!

I also realised that sometimes two customs report an error during testing. I gotta reflow them as they work fine when I put my finger on them.

Another edit: Just realised that the pulled LSF244N had a short between two legs... Reports fine now -.-
 
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Any other suggestions or hints? I think I'll need to get the logic probe out next week.
 
Bumping this. I went with the smartypi solution as I hadn't had the tools too do excessive ic removal.

It works fine now BUT:

The sound is heavily distorted via the speakers. As soon as any bass kicks in its distortion city. Sound through the headphone jack is fine.

I recapped the sound amp, nothing changed.
I replaced the 3110 amps, nothing changed.
I replaced the MB3733 amps, nothing changed.
I effectively have a new amp now and it just doesn't work the way it should.

I also replaced the speakers with brand new ones. Same issue. Help!
 
Can you try the sound amp with another source? Cd player, laptop.. etc.
 
Yeah, I can hook up my System 32 PCB to the amp. Gonna try that after the holidays
 
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