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NAOMI Cart wont load

twistedsymphony said:
MetalliC said:
all symptoms says there is smth wrong with security part, you may try to disable RAM ICs as was suggested, but there is nothing can be done if 317-5064 itself has been died.
Click to expand...
that seems more likely to me than the buffer ICs.. if the buffers were bad wouldn't it also not pass ROM check?
swapping the ROMs onto another IC seems to be the same amount of work as replacing the buffer IC as they're TSSOP with the same super fine pitch pins and traces.
lukemorse1 said:
Then I lifted pins 28 on both of the IDT 71v256s (they are just lifted off the board) and it fired right up. Try that and see if it works

They are located at IC44 and IC45. Im also running an H bios on this board.
Click to expand...
on mine these chips use J-type pins that curl under the ic, seems I'd have to pull the whole pin out to "lift" it. Were your like this as well?
Click to expand...
twistedsymphony said:
MetalliC said:
all symptoms says there is smth wrong with security part, you may try to disable RAM ICs as was suggested, but there is nothing can be done if 317-5064 itself has been died.
Click to expand...
that seems more likely to me than the buffer ICs.. if the buffers were bad wouldn't it also not pass ROM check?
swapping the ROMs onto another IC seems to be the same amount of work as replacing the buffer IC as they're TSSOP with the same super fine pitch pins and traces.
lukemorse1 said:
Then I lifted pins 28 on both of the IDT 71v256s (they are just lifted off the board) and it fired right up. Try that and see if it works

They are located at IC44 and IC45. Im also running an H bios on this board.
Click to expand...
on mine these chips use J-type pins that curl under the ic, seems I'd have to pull the whole pin out to "lift" it. Were your like this as well?
Click to expand...
yes, they are the J type pins and yes, you have to pry them out but you can do it between pin 27 and 28. Using a thin screwdriver between the legs and heating up 28 to get it off the board on both sides or you could use a pair of tweezers
 
lukemorse1 said:
yes, they are the J type pins and yes, you have to pry them out but you can do it between pin 27 and 28. Using a thin screwdriver between the legs and heating up 28 to get it off the board on both sides or you could use a pair of tweezers
Click to expand...
Ok, I'll give this a try sometime this weekend if I can get a spare 10mins. If this works it will make no sense to me but I don't care as long as I have a working cart I guess. :D
 
Blackfish said:
lukemorse1 said:
yes, they are the J type pins and yes, you have to pry them out but you can do it between pin 27 and 28. Using a thin screwdriver between the legs and heating up 28 to get it off the board on both sides or you could use a pair of tweezers
Click to expand...
Ok, I'll give this a try sometime this weekend if I can get a spare 10mins. If this works it will make no sense to me but I don't care as long as I have a working cart I guess. :D
Click to expand...
I swear, for the life of me it didnt make sense either until I tried it and it came right on. Totally made my day when I was able to play the game ^^
 
I had a moment today to try this out. Didn't work for me. I have Error 22 now, although I did notice the voltage regulator at RG1 was super hot so maybe I have some other issue.
 
Blackfish said:
I had a moment today to try this out. Didn't work for me. I have Error 22 now, although I did notice the voltage regulator at RG1 was super hot so maybe I have some other issue.
Click to expand...
Im uploading a video here to show it working with the lifted pins. give me a second here
 
twistedsymphony said:
MetalliC said:
all symptoms says there is smth wrong with security part, you may try to disable RAM ICs as was suggested, but there is nothing can be done if 317-5064 itself has been died.
Click to expand...
that seems more likely to me than the buffer ICs.. if the buffers were bad wouldn't it also not pass ROM check?
swapping the ROMs onto another IC seems to be the same amount of work as replacing the buffer IC as they're TSSOP with the same super fine pitch pins and traces.
lukemorse1 said:
Then I lifted pins 28 on both of the IDT 71v256s (they are just lifted off the board) and it fired right up. Try that and see if it works

They are located at IC44 and IC45. Im also running an H bios on this board.
Click to expand...
on mine these chips use J-type pins that curl under the ic, seems I'd have to pull the whole pin out to "lift" it. Were your like this as well?
Click to expand...
I put a video up here at the mottom of the page showing the legs lifted with the game running if it helps :)
 
@lukemorse1 I've checked it in emulator (disabled decryption from on-cart RAM) and got same result - Gigawing2 is working.
but there is number of components on ROM board, which should be alive to get security / decryption functioning.

ultimate solution will be IC22 replacement, 4Mbyte ROM instead of original 2Mbyte, where will be cracked game binaries in 1st half and decrypted data chunks in 2nd half.
 
MetalliC said:
@lukemorse1 I've checked it in emulator (disabled decryption from on-cart RAM) and got same result - Gigawing2 is working.
but there is number of components on ROM board, which should be alive to get security / decryption functioning.

ultimate solution will be IC22 replacement, 4Mbyte ROM instead of original 2Mbyte, where will be cracked game binaries in 1st half and decrypted data chunks in 2nd half.
Click to expand...
Just out of curiosity do you know what parts of the game are/would be affected by not having the VCC pin connected? Im genuinely interested as I have played it multiple times Ive never noticed a hiccup nor anything out of the ordinary. When I checked it through mame as well I didnt find anything out of the ordinary as far as game play, sound effects, or graphics go but I might have missed something. If you can find any other info on the decryption functioning and its importance to the game that would be very useful to know for sure. None the less, great job looking into the MAME roms and even testing out what I did :thumbup:
 
lukemorse1 said:
Just out of curiosity do you know what parts of the game are/would be affected by not having the VCC pin connected?
Click to expand...
I don't know, did only brief look in debugger but didn't deep analyze game code disassembly.

in few words - this decryption chip may be used in 2 ways - directly read and decrypt data from ROM board (but only from small part of it - first 32MByte), or upload encrypted data into on-cart 64kbyte RAM and decrypt them from there.

as you may imagine, lifting up VCC pins will disable RAMs (same effect as remove them at all), so 2nd way will no longer work.
but Gigawing 2 game read all important data in 1st way (unlike most of games), so it works here.

if you want to have this game cart fully working and authentic - you have to replace these 2x RAM ICs (if they are bad/dead), or trace what else went bad if lets say RAMs is good and problem caused by wrong control signals came to RAMs.
 
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So I tried Luke's Suggestion of disabling the RAM ICs and it did not fix my issue. Ken seemed confident he could fix the cart and his repair price at ~$100+ shipping was cheaper than buying another cart so I sent it off to him.

He called me last night to say it was back up and running. I asked him what the problem ended up being and he said it was one of the 16245 Buffer ICs, but that he replaced all of the 16245 and all of the 16373 buffer ICs.

He also said that he repairs about 2 GigaWing2 carts a month and it's almost always one of the buffer ICs. I haven't got it back yet but I'll post up once I do and have a chance to test it.
 
Sounds like they had a bad batch of buffer ICs when the manufactured GW2. Though can you call them a bad batch if the worked this many years?
 
I got the impression that this isn't the only cart that has these issues. maybe it's a bad cart design that puts undue stress on the buffers and kills them prematurely?
 
twistedsymphony said:
I got the impression that this isn't the only cart that has these issues. maybe it's a bad cart design that puts undue stress on the buffers and kills them prematurely?
Click to expand...
It depends on what is premature by the manufacturers standard I guess. Is twenty years the lifespan? Either way it's annoying that they fail. lol.
 
Those buffers, 'voltage level translators' have a max input voltage around 5.5v, so I could see how they might get cooked on the other end of an adjustable power supply. Were also very new technology around that time, and are still a relatively expensive part now-a-days too
 
twistedsymphony said:
So I tried Luke's Suggestion of disabling the RAM ICs and it did not fix my issue. Ken seemed confident he could fix the cart and his repair price at ~$100+ shipping was cheaper than buying another cart so I sent it off to him.

He called me last night to say it was back up and running. I asked him what the problem ended up being and he said it was one of the 16245 Buffer ICs, but that he replaced all of the 16245 and all of the 16373 buffer ICs.

He also said that he repairs about 2 GigaWing2 carts a month and it's almost always one of the buffer ICs. I haven't got it back yet but I'll post up once I do and have a chance to test it.
Click to expand...
interesting info.

I might have had a unique board with a more than a just a buffer problem (must have been totally dead.

I replaced all the buffer chips on mine but it still did nothing in the end intil I disabled the 2 ram chips.

I guess that we could say this is another possible problem that these carts can suffer from and sorry to hear that it didnt work out.

On the other hand, I bought a Wild Riders cart that would show graphic issues in the intro in text and the intro movie would always lock up halfway through the intro. This was completely repaired by replacing all of the buffers only.
 
lukemorse1 said:
I might have had a unique board with a more than a just a buffer problem (must have been totally dead.
I replaced all the buffer chips on mine but it still did nothing in the end intil I disabled the 2 ram chips.
Click to expand...
as was said - even if security chip itself went bad - it is not dead end. it is possible to develop EPR rom replacement, if anyone want it badly ;)

(will be needed spare 27C322 to replace original 27C160 IC22 ROM)
 
MetalliC said:
lukemorse1 said:
I might have had a unique board with a more than a just a buffer problem (must have been totally dead.
I replaced all the buffer chips on mine but it still did nothing in the end intil I disabled the 2 ram chips.
Click to expand...
as was said - even if security chip itself went bad - it is not dead end. it is possible to develop EPR rom replacement, if anyone want it badly ;)
(will be needed spare 27C322 to replace original 27C160 IC22 ROM)
Click to expand...
luckily the one I have has been running well for years without issues and I have no plans on selling it so Im good but maybe this will be useful for someone else in the future ;)
 
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