Hello everyone!
This is a bit of a ride (no pun intended) so bare with me.
I recently bought a Wild Riders cabinet off of Facebook Marketplace for very cheap. The owner said that it worked when he tested it but stopped working after transport and was just looking to get space back. But it powered on and displayed "DOS-like text" (I'm assuming the test menu) when he turned it on so I decided to take a gamble on it being the cartridge needed to be reseated or something similarly simple. When I got there, the DOS screen was gone but it booted up the Naomi 2 logo and then hung on a black screen.
So I've got a couple of issues but the main one is the fact that the game never boots.
I ran the tests built in to the Naomi platform. All the RAM was good. The cartridge was recognized. If I removed the cartridge, it would boot and then yell at me about there not being a cartridge. However, running the ROM test resulted in a few bad ICs. Namely IC 5 and IC 6. Looking at the cartridge board, these appear to be on the same chip. Interestingly IC 5 always reports the same checksum: 05E0 0910. However, IC 6 always returns something different, even if I run the ROM test and then run it again immediately after with no changes, it reports back something different every time. So I'm not sure if that means the whole chip is bad or what. Visually inspecting the cartridge, the chip in question looked fine, if a little dusty (it's directly underneath the air holes on the top of the cart). Even then, I dusted it off and plugged it back in and got the same results.
I have some basic repairing knowledge, like I can reflow a joint or even replace a chip but I can't repair a trace. So I'm not opposed buying a new flash chip and flashing it. However, the chips on the cartridge are silkscreened with the SEGA logo and a custom number on each chip, so I'm not sure which chips I would need or if it's even possible to buy a generic replacement chip. The only other cartridge available on eBay is way more than I spent on the whole cabinet so I'd rather leave buying a whole new cartridge as a last resort.
My second major problem is that the monitor seems to not have any blue signal. The gain on the monitor is normal and I've turned up the blue and it didn't change anything. Additionally, running the CRT test, the "white" is just green. Red takes a moment to warm up but if I turn on the cabinet, get to where it hangs, and then turn it off and on again, the red signal is there but "white" is still all green. Blue never comes in, no matter how long it stays on. I reseated the VGA cable on both ends of the equation with no change. Notably, it has a beige Belkin branded VGA cable but it appears dirty enough to be the one it came with as well as it is missing the pin that seems to be necessary to be missing based on other threads. It either has something to do with the monitor itself not displaying blue or the Naomi 2 motherboard not outputting blue (or I guess it could be the cable itself, idk). The main point is that the problem persists if the cartridge is taken out so it's not specific to the IC problem. Obviously, I'm much more interested in getting it up and running before messing with the picture but I don't know how much I want to sink into it if the monitor is cooked (which I hope not because it's a pretty nice and clear monitor, just missing a third of it's color)
I've done a bunch of basic troubleshooting to no avail so if anyone has any ideas on what to try next, I'd love to hear it!
This is a bit of a ride (no pun intended) so bare with me.
I recently bought a Wild Riders cabinet off of Facebook Marketplace for very cheap. The owner said that it worked when he tested it but stopped working after transport and was just looking to get space back. But it powered on and displayed "DOS-like text" (I'm assuming the test menu) when he turned it on so I decided to take a gamble on it being the cartridge needed to be reseated or something similarly simple. When I got there, the DOS screen was gone but it booted up the Naomi 2 logo and then hung on a black screen.
So I've got a couple of issues but the main one is the fact that the game never boots.
I ran the tests built in to the Naomi platform. All the RAM was good. The cartridge was recognized. If I removed the cartridge, it would boot and then yell at me about there not being a cartridge. However, running the ROM test resulted in a few bad ICs. Namely IC 5 and IC 6. Looking at the cartridge board, these appear to be on the same chip. Interestingly IC 5 always reports the same checksum: 05E0 0910. However, IC 6 always returns something different, even if I run the ROM test and then run it again immediately after with no changes, it reports back something different every time. So I'm not sure if that means the whole chip is bad or what. Visually inspecting the cartridge, the chip in question looked fine, if a little dusty (it's directly underneath the air holes on the top of the cart). Even then, I dusted it off and plugged it back in and got the same results.
I have some basic repairing knowledge, like I can reflow a joint or even replace a chip but I can't repair a trace. So I'm not opposed buying a new flash chip and flashing it. However, the chips on the cartridge are silkscreened with the SEGA logo and a custom number on each chip, so I'm not sure which chips I would need or if it's even possible to buy a generic replacement chip. The only other cartridge available on eBay is way more than I spent on the whole cabinet so I'd rather leave buying a whole new cartridge as a last resort.
My second major problem is that the monitor seems to not have any blue signal. The gain on the monitor is normal and I've turned up the blue and it didn't change anything. Additionally, running the CRT test, the "white" is just green. Red takes a moment to warm up but if I turn on the cabinet, get to where it hangs, and then turn it off and on again, the red signal is there but "white" is still all green. Blue never comes in, no matter how long it stays on. I reseated the VGA cable on both ends of the equation with no change. Notably, it has a beige Belkin branded VGA cable but it appears dirty enough to be the one it came with as well as it is missing the pin that seems to be necessary to be missing based on other threads. It either has something to do with the monitor itself not displaying blue or the Naomi 2 motherboard not outputting blue (or I guess it could be the cable itself, idk). The main point is that the problem persists if the cartridge is taken out so it's not specific to the IC problem. Obviously, I'm much more interested in getting it up and running before messing with the picture but I don't know how much I want to sink into it if the monitor is cooked (which I hope not because it's a pretty nice and clear monitor, just missing a third of it's color)
I've done a bunch of basic troubleshooting to no avail so if anyone has any ideas on what to try next, I'd love to hear it!
