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Help with Namco Steering Force Feedback Board (WMMT1/2 and Mario Kart 1/2)

twistedsymphony said:
I believe these games used the Namco FCA board for I/O : wiki.arcadeotaku.com/images/b/b9/FCA_PCB.jpg

Not sure if that makes a difference...

As for the Sega JVS I/O the coin meter pins Accecpt 5V as input and I suppose technically the analog pins but thats all I think and neither are relevant to this situation. I'm unsure if the FCA board is any different in this regard.
Click to expand...
Right. It's a different I/O where analogue and digital are all on the same connector. So far I've figured out mappings for all the controls on Sega I/O though. In fact, pedals and steering are all at the same pins as all other JVS drivers on the Sega I/O.
 
No luck after replacing the caps. I still get the same behavior... I'm not sure there's anything else I can try on my side.
 
winteriscoming said:
With an RS-232 adapter on my computer, I tried sniffing the communication between the Chihiro and the board, and I see one command sent from the Chihiro and nothing sent back from the board.
Click to expand...
Ehm... May i know how do you sniff both rx and tx channel at the same time?
 
You can sniff both at the same time with 2 adapters, but for this I was only sniffing one at a time.
 
that's make sense, i thought you were using one adapter only.

btw, i am repairing 2 same driver board like that. one of them have a cap shorted. not tested on the cab yet. the other, i just recap the small caps near fets. i wanted to test them with pc and with serial adapter, that's why i asked.
 
Which game are you running your boards with?

Do you have the ability to dump the rom from the board? I'll look into dumping mine.

Can you describe the behavior of the LEDS on the board? When powered, my board has a solid red LED and a blinking green one at all times.

Also, if you sniff the serial data, it would be great if you could share logs. I wasn't able to figure out the exact port settings, though. The card reader for WMMT used 9600 baud rate, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stop bit.

Using 2 cheap RS-232 USB adapters to sniff both directions, you can use the free Python script called jpnevulator.py to sniff both simultaneously.
 
isn't the baudrate setting the same as jvs? 115k?
the driver originally from maximum tune 3dx.
 
Dion said:
isn't the baudrate setting the same as jvs? 115k?
the driver originally from maximum tune 3dx.
Click to expand...
I doubt it's on the same bus as JVS. It's a different serial standard, afaik, but baudrate could be the same. For sure the card reader uses 9600 baudrate rs-232, and is independent of JVS i/o.
 
That chip labeled WMM1 on my board, and seems to be labled differently according to the game it's for, is a 29f400t. This is in a 44 pin SOP package, and I don't see that same chip available in a 40 pin DIP package that could be used in the unpopulated socket.

I'm also not sure I can read this chip in my GQ-4X without desoldering and using an adapter that I don't have.
 
While not out of the realm of possibilities I don't think it's likely that the ROM would be bad. Even if it's set for the wrong game I would think it would at least communicate what game rom variant it has back to the PCB before the connection died.

Given the missing caps I think your most likely problem is going to be physical damage on the board somewhere. a lifted pad, broken trace, another missing component, something along those lines.


Also, have you tried playing around with the dip settings? it looks like yours are all off while the while from WMM2 had dip #4 on.
 
winteriscoming said:
That chip labeled WMM1 on my board, and seems to be labled differently according to the game it's for, is a 29f400t. This is in a 44 pin SOP package, and I don't see that same chip available in a 40 pin DIP package that could be used in the unpopulated socket.

I'm also not sure I can read this chip in my GQ-4X without desoldering and using an adapter that I don't have.
Click to expand...
WMM or WMN?
If it's WMN and you end up looking to get rid of the board I may be interested- and/or I can see about doing the reprogramming.
 
twistedsymphony said:
While not out of the realm of possibilities I don't think it's likely that the ROM would be bad. Even if it's set for the wrong game I would think it would at least communicate what game rom variant it has back to the PCB before the connection died.

Given the missing caps I think your most likely problem is going to be physical damage on the board somewhere. a lifted pad, broken trace, another missing component, something along those lines.


Also, have you tried playing around with the dip settings? it looks like yours are all off while the while from WMM2 had dip #4 on.
Click to expand...
It's hard to tell in the picture, but dip 4 is on in mine. I tried messing around with them.

The thing is if it behaves like the card readers, I can't just send garbage to it an expect a response. There's likely a specific status polling command. Since I haven't locked down specs of the signal, I haven't been able to compare what WMMT 1 sends vs 2 to tell if they're the same. If they're the same, then that lends credebility to the theory that the board isn't receiving or sending data.

If they're different, maybe the board isn't correct for either game version I'm booting, and expects a specific initialization command.

Without feedback from someone who owns some version of this board, and hopefully some protocol sniffing, I'm all guesses at this point. :P
 
defor said:
winteriscoming said:
That chip labeled WMM1 on my board, and seems to be labled differently according to the game it's for, is a 29f400t. This is in a 44 pin SOP package, and I don't see that same chip available in a 40 pin DIP package that could be used in the unpopulated socket.

I'm also not sure I can read this chip in my GQ-4X without desoldering and using an adapter that I don't have.
Click to expand...
WMM or WMN?If it's WMN and you end up looking to get rid of the board I may be interested- and/or I can see about doing the reprogramming.
Click to expand...
I peeled it off to see what the chip was, but the label said WMM1. There's a pic of my board in an earlier post.

Regarding reprogramming, do you have access to the various Namco FFB ROMs? If I had what I knew was the file for any of the versions of WMMT I have, I'd probably go through the trouble of getting the adapter and desoldering the chip to reprogram on my end.
 
I've tried several setting to see if I could get anything out of the initial command I read from the Chihiro, but really am not figuring anything out.

At 9600 8N1 I get the following:
FF FF E8 01 00 00 00 00 00 00

No other baudrates I've tried give anything better looking, but it still mostly looks like garbage.
 
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these are dumps of WMM1 STR 0A and 0B roms.
from binary content, it looks like it have somekind of debug mode, by the fact we can read some text strings. i haven't looked any further, but i don't know if we can extract any information from the rom regarding communication protocol.
 

Attachments

  • str0ab.zip
    12.8 KB · Views: 225
so i tried to sniff if anything spits out when power up, from 2 boards, i got respon from one board only. it turned out that DIPSW3 decides if power up spits out copyright string or not.

this is what i got :
Code: 
====================================
     V315 STR PCB  FOR JAPAN, NAI
     STEARRING PROGRAM (DIP1:OFF)
     PCB CHECK PROGRAM (DIP1:ON )
         ( MB90242A )
       2004.10.21   Ver.1.10
                  Copyright NAMCO
                       S.ITTIE
====================================
later i found dipsw4 is for baudrate speed setup (on = 9600, off = 19200).
 
Last edited:
Dion said:
so i tried to sniff if anything spits out when power up, from 2 boards, i got respon from one board only. it turned out that DIPSW3 decides if power up spits out copyright string or not.

this is what i got :
Code: 
====================================
     V315 STR PCB  FOR JAPAN, NAI
     STEARRING PROGRAM (DIP1:OFF)
     PCB CHECK PROGRAM (DIP1:ON )
         ( MB90242A )
       2004.10.21   Ver.1.10
                  Copyright NAMCO
                       S.ITTIE
====================================
later i found dipsw4 is for baudrate speed setup (on = 9600, off = 19200).
Click to expand...
So that's happening while on the bench, with just 5v/12v or wired up all the way?
 
Hmm... so I got the same thing as yours, @Dion. What's the rom label for the one that spit this out for you? I'm wondering if that MB90242A means anything. Edit, I see where both of the roms you posted say MB90242A.

..====================================..
V315 STR PCB FOR JAPAN, NAI ..
STEARRING PROGRAM (DIP1:OFF) ..
PCB CHECK PROGRAM (DIP1:ON ) ..
( MB90242A ) ..
2004.10.21 Ver.1.10 ..
Copyright NAMCO ..
S.ITTIE
..====================================..
 
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winteriscoming said:
Hmm... so I got the same thing as yours, @Dion. What's the rom label for the one that spit this out for you? I'm wondering if that MB90242A means anything.
Click to expand...
MB90242A is the microprocessor used.
i don't quite remember if it is A or B version. I'll try to sniff "live" in the cab tomorrow.
 
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