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A friend sent me a suicided GA2 to install the decrypted ROMs onto, I've burnt them all (I used the original EPROMs because I know they're the correct type) and I just get a black screen on boot. I've removed the security board since it's unnecessary and I thought that may be causing the problem (though if it doesn't matter/doesn't cause any problems I'll put it back just because it looks more complete that way)

Any ideas @Apocalypse ? I'm not sure where I've gone wrong, straight black screen suggests suicide, not sure what else it's likely to be. Board is super clean, looks barely used. It does have another daughterboard attached but this looks like it might be for 3/4 player?

I also removed the coin cell battery on the board, no change with or without it, though I assume this is the suicide battery and it's long since dead.

I did notice that the original ROMs (looking at the MAME driver) were Japanese region - but before I burned the replacement decrypted ROMs I confirmed that all the other ROMs were the same.
 
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I just erased the EPROMs again and tried the set from Asure since they differ. Still a black screen. I haven't modified any jumpers or anything and all I get is a black screen.

I've only replaced the 4 main CPU ROMs, 8, 9, 17 and 18
 
This is 100% tested and working, and both our sets have the same effect, and should allow the board to boot.

- The security module can be removed.
- The daughterboard is for multiple player inputs, yes.

- These romboards are a good place to steal jumpers from. I've done it a few times myself. Are all the jumpers verified?
- Did you check this romboard on another system32 mainboard yet? (Or try a working romboard on this motherboard?)
 
The jumpers are all present but no idea if they're correct as I don't have a reference for what they should be.

I've got your jumper settings but this is obviously using EPROMs and creating a conversion - this board has all the original mask ROMs on it and uses 27C210A/27C020 for main program ROMs.

There's a ridiculous amount of jumpers so I don't want to just go playing around with them, especially when the board looked like it hadn't been touched before I removed/erased/reprogrammed the main CPU code.

I will say that the jumpers on here are different to the list you posted in the conversion thread

I don't have another set to use to test it against
 
Maybe the game wasn't suicided but there was an other fault causing a black screen. Or maybe it was but there was an other fault too.

What's the history of that board? It's not rare a board develops a fault, is put on the shelf and many years later the battery dies. Then you get your hands on it thinking it's just a matter of suicide battery.
 
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I agree it's definitely a possibility - the jumpers are set correctly. It just makes it difficult when I don't have another ROM board to test it with

The only history I have on it is the tag that's on it that says it was tested in March 2012 and tagged faulty/not booting, but this could just as easily have been due to suicide which is what I would have assumed.

It boots to the same black screen regardless of whether the ROM board is installed, I need to figure out whether it's actually running code I guess.
 
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I probed one of the pins with the scope and powered it on, it's definitely powering up the ROMs and they start working and then stop pretty much straight away, so it's crashing.

Does it make a difference using the 27C210A EPROMs vs 27C1024? They look like the same pinout
 
Does it make a difference using the 27C210A EPROMs vs 27C1024? They look like the same pinout
No. However you shouldn't have reused the OG EPROMs, first you might have erased an undumped version of the game (but maybe you dumped the ROMs first?), then you cant' go back to the OG configuration without having a doubt about almost anything: are the ROMs OK, are they burnt properly, etc.

It happened to me before, I reburnt OG EPROMs (after checking they were known in MAME indeed) to change the region of a game and although they were working fine before once reburnt game just kept crashing... They probably didn't like to be erased or something like this. My programmer even reported them good and burnt properly but I guess timings are a lot more forgiving than on real hardware.
 
I did dump them first and they came up in ROMIdent as the Japanese region ga2j - I also confirmed in the MAME driver that the other ROMs are the same across versions

I do have spare 27C1024 EPROMs so I'll try a new set
 
I did dump them first and they came up in ROMIdent as the Japanese region ga2j - I also confirmed in the MAME driver that the other ROMs are the same across versions

I do have spare 27C1024 EPROMs so I'll try a new set
Glad to hear that ;)
 
Quick question: I have a spare working mobo and spare 'small' ROM board. Is it possible to convert this to golden axe roda, or do I need the 'big' ROM board? Sorry if this has been clarified elsewhere, but I couldn't see it. Cheers!
 
The romset that's online only works with the large rom board. Someone might be able to rework the data to fit on the small board, but it hasn't been done yet.
 
Thanks very much. It would be great if someone was able to do that. Or does anyone have a spare 'big' ROM board they would be willing to part with? Please message me if you do.
 
I finally got around to converting a small board into Spiderman, since it's unsecured, while I wait on this multi. Just a note in case anyone else tries it, or in case it actually matters for the multi @Apocalypse. In MAME they list two of the program roms as "epr-14306.ic7" and "epr-14280.ic6". The rom packs out there have the files listed as such. Well, those are backwards. epr-14280 is actually ic7, and goes on a 27c1024. epr-14306 is actually ic6, and goes on an am27c100. It goofed me up until I found a pcb photo and realized they were backwards:


spiderman.JPG
 
Nice work. I have an extra Rad Mobile here, I might try converting that. What chips did you need for this conversion, @ekorz?
 
@nem

12x 27c801 for gfx
2x 27c1024 for program
2x 27c100 for program (oddball make sure you can write these)
3x 27c040 for I think sound data
1x 27c2001 for probably sound cpu

Should be easy looking at that photo to figure out which goes where. Don't forget to set the jumpers!
 
Wow, I wasn't expecting that many different chips. Many thanks for the list, time to start ordering.
 
Wow, I wasn't expecting that many different chips. Many thanks for the list, time to start ordering.
At least they're all socketed ;)

@nem are you sure that game uses the same rom board as Spider-Man? Check out the photo!
 
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