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ekorz

Multi Boyz 4 Pi
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This is unsolved at present but as I go along I'll update the thread. If you have experience with these boards, let me know what you think!

I picked up a cheap 'untested' Tekken Tag Tournament pcb and was expecting it to be totally DOA. To my surprise, it did boot up, albeit with a blue screen, a couple lines of garbled text, and the standard tekken "good morning" audio clip. It gets sync, shows the blue screen, and resets all in about 3-4 seconds. Blue screen below

2z2Yzo3.jpg


I took a look for missing SMD components, and didn't see anything obvious. More photos are here: https://imgur.com/a/FsLbO.

I tried putting some pressure on some of the chips, ram, customs, etc. to see if I could get anything more than this going. I it does look like a couple pins on custom IC152 on the daughterboard could be disconnected on one side, so that's where I'm going to start.
 
I thought my Tekken 3 board took a dive. It had the exact same symptoms you have. Then I pressed the daughter boards together and she came alive again.
nice. same weird blue screen? I was hoping someone else had that symptom.

I did try to undo/clean/reseat the daughterboard but I'll give it another go. I didn't use much force. always nice when a repair is simple like that! I'll reflow some of those connector pins if they look bad, too.
 
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Yeap, same exact problem. I was pretty stressed about it for some reason. Even now have a 2nd Tekken 3 board. But yeah, that was all it was.
 
my experience of sys11/12 boards is not to buy them as working.
people always seem to beat the crap out of them, out of about 8 i think only 1 actually worked.
the others had combinations of capacitors smashed off the psx board and bend / broken pins on the large customs!

even if they look o.k. you often find bad soldering on the psx board.
 
Got any pictures of the PCBs? I usually find missing caps on System 11/12 boards, although the blue screen might indicate something more complex to unravel.
 
Got any pictures of the PCBs? I usually find missing caps on System 11/12 boards, although the blue screen might indicate something more complex to unravel.
https://imgur.com/a/FsLbO

I did check for caps based on your other posts... but I think they're all there. Not 100% sure I spotted all the smd components since I'm not used to looking at these boards that much, maybe you have a better eye for it?
 
Yep, it looks like all of your components are there. Woohoo, Namco!!

Scanning it over, there seems to be a few broken traces on a chip on the top board (circled in red below). Reflowing the whole edge of that chip could be a good place to start:
qCpggdR_2.jpg
 
yep, those are the ones that looked fishy to me as well. since you have a lot of experience with these, I'm glad you agree! I'll reflow that next week and report back.
 
has anybody seen a sys12 psx board with an smd resistor soldered on the underside??
i have one and wondered if it was a factory fix.
 
Reflowed the suspect ic. Same boot loop :(

I also tried giving the daughterboard a good cleaning and reseating but that didn't seem to help. I haven't checked all 96 pins yet... painful

ieYAY63_d.jpg
 
I'd put my money on those 2xDRAMS on BANK0.

I'm of course assuming that the lower board is working OK and you already tried with another such a board like the one you tried to repair.

that'd be the first thing to do IMHO.
 
I'd put my money on those 2xDRAMS on BANK0.

I'm of course assuming that the lower board is working OK and you already tried with another such a board like the one you tried to repair.

that'd be the first thing to do IMHO.
I can put another sys12 top board on? I have Tekken 3 and soul calibur also. I thought you couldn't swap stuff around on these but I'm new to having to repair this platform. Which parts are swapable? There are two top boards and one bottom board.

Otherwise if it's the RAM can I just remove and replace then?
 
Yes just replace the PCBs one at a time using another system12 PCB. Maybe you get wrong sounds or a different error, but you'll be able to narrow down the source of error.

About ram it's just a replacement. I wouldn't do it thought until you are 100% sure that the problem comes from THAT pcb.
 
Man, what isn't in MAME!? Do yourself a favor and check this documentation out if you haven't seen it.
@Mr T Guru delivers!

So MAME lists the CPU boards for all the games, that's the top board, COH-700, and it turns out mine is fine. Swapped it onto my soul calibur and it boots.

I don't have another M8F4 which is the smaller pcb on the top. Swapping it around to a soul calibur didn't work but I think it's different per game.

So all I learned was that my CPU board is fine. (Well, and that Soul Calibur has RGB brightness settings in the test menu, and that totally fixed the awful colors I was getting on that game -- who knew?)
 
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ok so you have : CPU Board - Motherboard - ROM Board

What you call m8f4 is the rom board and it's different per game. All roms are there except one sound mask Rom which is on the motherboard ( bottom board). That's why I said that changing that Rom should make it work *maybe* with wrong sounds.

Now the final proof: try your motherboard on that soul calibur and see if it works...
 
Ah. So I take my Tekken Tag rom board then, and when I put it with my soul calibur motherboard and CPU board -- I just get a black screen boot loop. My pvm gets sync briefly. Not even the blue screen with text like in my original post. Guess at least something on that board is bad then...

Further, soul calibur working rom board will not boot on this other motherboard. Guess something in there is also bad.
 
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orZ3rsg_d.jpg


Oh hai R2. Taking a vacation are we?

Rom board needs a resistor, anyone know the part?

Edit: nevermind, r2 and r3 are jumpers basically. MAME of course had it documented, but the info is also on the pcb, I just got excited.
 
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could be the case...
But if you try now to exchange the motherboard and it doesn't boot either could mean that both Rom and motherboard are broken or that you still need to narrow did it further.

Check the jumpers on your mini Rom pcb and make sure they match.
about the jumpers on rom Pcb.....yes but if you transfer the whole Rom board you're good.
Check for jumpers on the motherboard...
 
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