Chihiro freeze after 90 seconds

[obcd]

As the chihiro network board is identical to the one on a triforce, I doubt that Microsoft designed it.
Chihiro 1 used a nearly identical dimm module (if not identical) that was also used on the naomi and triforce 1.

So in my opinion, microsoft only delivered the main xbox boards. This leaves the question who adapted the bios for it.
A debug xbox board works in a chihiro with the correct bios loaded. I have a chihiro board with a 512KB tsop flash chip.
I never heared that such xbox mobo's existed as well.

 

[stj]

early xboxes have the 1024k flash, i have a couple.
there where a few after with 512k before they eventually switched to 256k

 

[Solkan]

The capacitors being bulged is a second frequently cause of failure. When they dry out, the cpu gets 2 much ripple on it's voltage rails.

This makes sense. Just ordered replacement caps for these 3 bulging guys.I won't boot up the Chihiro until they arrive at home and try to remove this golden/super cap in the meanwhile.

Yesterday was the time to dust my Desoldering and Soldering Irons.

Some news from my Chihiro : It's still alive and has no more freezing problems after replacing the 3 bulged capacitors near the CPU. I ran it for almost an hour with no sign of freeze.

Made some netboot tests with it in a standard Naomi cab but I can't wait to put it in my ID cabinet.

Time to work on an HDD Mod (maybe with a simple CF to IDE adaptator since I don't have many SSD and don't want to bother for SATA conversion); any informations about the PIC to program ?

Thanks again for your help.

 

[obcd]

A game image is either maximum 512MB or 1Gig. I doubt there is a difference in gameplay for the 1 Gig version. They just run on a dimm with 1 Gig of memory.
So, basically, a 512MB or 1Gig compact flash card and an ide adapter is all you need. There are however big differences in the speed you can expect from a compact flash card.
The faster ones support up to UDMA 7 transfer rate. In order to use udma modes, you need an ide adapter that supports udma. (Most modern ones now do probably)
I have no idea if the dimm board uses udma transfer on that ide interface. You might also consider to install a working battery on the dimm board. With the battery, it's able to hold a game in memory for a couple of days. It starts much faster if the game is already loaded in memory. Besides that, the second sega outrun game won't keep it's high scores without the battery as those are also stored on the dimm memory. It will also lose it's network setup without a battery. Most (if not all) other games use the base board for their settings. (The one with the cr2032 coin cell)

If I remember well, you need a custom (hacked) firmware on your dimm to be able to use any compact flash card or ide harddrive. The original sega one only works with a very specific brand of compact flash cards. (A copy protection issue)