Lucky Moron PCB Repair
Episode 4: Killing Blade PGM Cart
(or: Fluffy's carts are superior)
This game got swapped into a lot deal at the last minute when the seller couldn't find his promised Dynax mahjong title. Despite it's lack of worth I did receive a video of it working beforehand, and upon recieving it I was pleased to see a functional boot up and character select. Sadly, mere moments after that, I noticed several sprites that appeared mostly black. (I forgot to take an actual video but this is basically what it looked like)
First thought is bad gfx rom, so of course, it's MAME to the rescue again. Let's jump into the driver and see what's up.
Looks like the sprite shapes are in one rom, and the coloring is in another?
Neat, we can figure this out by going one-by-one and replacing "color" roms (with either empty data, or just another rom's data!) and launch mame to see if I can match the errors my pcb. Only five to try. I use an empty rom data, so each attempt makes the game's color drop out in various ways, but we're looking to effect the specific character poses that lack color on my pcb. On attempt #4 we have a match. (That's the animated gif above, built with U11 being empty data).
So I know either U11 ROM is bad, or there's something in its data chain that is bad. If this was a normal through-hole DIP ROM I'd just take it off and replace it, but PGM uses 5v 32MB SOP44 that have no direct replacement (all replacements l 3.3v). Still, there's nothing (such as a logic chip) on this PCB that strikes me as ONLY effecting the one chip-worth of data, so I'm guessing the ROM is either bad or has cold joints.
A quick reflow later, same shit. Well, let's take this ROM off and check it. Off comes U11, and I pop it into my programmer, and I'm at a loss. I don't know the kind of chip to read this, and if I use a profile that I do have (3.3v) the chip of course isn't getting enough power to read. Eh, this game is cheap... and screw it, the 'bad' chip is already off, so let's just wire up a new voltage line and replace it with 29L3211MC. Pull WE high, and give VCC lovely 3.3v.
And we're fixed! Now it's time to find the Killing Blade Plus version and throw this one in the garbage... (or cross my fingers for a @Darksoft pgm multi!)
Episode 4: Killing Blade PGM Cart
(or: Fluffy's carts are superior)
This game got swapped into a lot deal at the last minute when the seller couldn't find his promised Dynax mahjong title. Despite it's lack of worth I did receive a video of it working beforehand, and upon recieving it I was pleased to see a functional boot up and character select. Sadly, mere moments after that, I noticed several sprites that appeared mostly black. (I forgot to take an actual video but this is basically what it looked like)
First thought is bad gfx rom, so of course, it's MAME to the rescue again. Let's jump into the driver and see what's up.
Looks like the sprite shapes are in one rom, and the coloring is in another?
Neat, we can figure this out by going one-by-one and replacing "color" roms (with either empty data, or just another rom's data!) and launch mame to see if I can match the errors my pcb. Only five to try. I use an empty rom data, so each attempt makes the game's color drop out in various ways, but we're looking to effect the specific character poses that lack color on my pcb. On attempt #4 we have a match. (That's the animated gif above, built with U11 being empty data).
So I know either U11 ROM is bad, or there's something in its data chain that is bad. If this was a normal through-hole DIP ROM I'd just take it off and replace it, but PGM uses 5v 32MB SOP44 that have no direct replacement (all replacements l 3.3v). Still, there's nothing (such as a logic chip) on this PCB that strikes me as ONLY effecting the one chip-worth of data, so I'm guessing the ROM is either bad or has cold joints.
A quick reflow later, same shit. Well, let's take this ROM off and check it. Off comes U11, and I pop it into my programmer, and I'm at a loss. I don't know the kind of chip to read this, and if I use a profile that I do have (3.3v) the chip of course isn't getting enough power to read. Eh, this game is cheap... and screw it, the 'bad' chip is already off, so let's just wire up a new voltage line and replace it with 29L3211MC. Pull WE high, and give VCC lovely 3.3v.
And we're fixed! Now it's time to find the Killing Blade Plus version and throw this one in the garbage... (or cross my fingers for a @Darksoft pgm multi!)
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