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Catzoo

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Hello,

I'm having some troubles with one of my PGM carts, Knight of Valor Super Heroes. I just got it from a seller claiming that it was working.

I'm not new to PGM and it's weirdness (hello darkness my old DDPDOJ friend), and i own 3 revision of the motherboard, but i will only talk about the working one, because the other two have weird behaviour too that deserve their own topic.

On my "Working" motherboard (runs DDP Bee Storm, Demon Front, and conversion games), KOV SH won't boot, at all. The slot goes into test menu, and nothing else.

I tried power cycle it, reseating everything that's slotted, and even try to run case-less, nothing is working.

My cab is running all my other system fine, and i've checked voltage just to be sure, 5.05 with the slot in.

At first, i thought "well, this cart is dead", but i found that old topic from AO, with someone claiming that not one but two of his KOVSH doesn't work properly while other carts can !

https://forum.arcadeotaku.com/viewtopic.php?t=27534

It's not the same version of the game (pics down below), but he pointed out that the sticker on it doesn't have that "glossy" feeling, just like mine. I don't think they're bootleg, but maybe ?

It's really weird, and if knows anything useful, feel free to share !






 
Yeah I'm with ya on the PGM weirdness. I don't know if that's just down to ago of the mobos, oxidisation of parts or something.
My DDPDOJBL has shimmery pixels all over the shop no matter which mobo I run it on. One mobo corrupts the gamesave / highscore names on Demon Front, but not in other games etc..

The paper labels may well be that the glossy ones had fallen off years ago, they were notorious for being covered in sticky tape to keep them in place.

I have legit carts that look waaay more homebrew than what you have there. I'd say that looks nice and clean in fact.
Here's a killing blade that I did some tlc on after the intro sequence started to corrupt / glitch:

korean.jpg
 
Still looking for help on this one.

If someone wants me try stuff with it (considering what's going on on the pgm conversion topic), i'm all in
 
it's been my experience that any minor fault will cause the cart to simply not boot at all. If you remove say, the sound ROM, the main board boots straight to the system menu as if there were no cart, even worse is there are no ROM checks available either.

I've not had any experience with that specific PCB variant but I have had a cart with one of those ROM modules boards, on mine it had 2 more legs than the socket so the first thing I would do is make sure you're plugging it in properly.

better yet program a 27C322 to replace it to see if that helps. You should also be able to swap a graphics PCB from another cart (any other game) and see if it boots (you'll get bad graphics and sound but it should boot), that would at least help you narrow down the fault to the main board or the graphics board.

Honestly I don't have much advice on troubleshooting these, since they're mostly SMD and the main board simply refuses to recognize the cart if anything goes wrong.
 
It's good to know how it behave (going to test menu if something's wrong), but i guess this makes every diagnostics nearly impossible.

I'll check if i can have a 27C322 with game data on it, as i really don't want to harvest ones of the card i own right now (Bee storm and Demon Front are kinda getting expensive, i'd rather not mess with them), so i'll try to find a programmed one or a cheaper game to mess up with it. It's a good idea, thanks.

Do you know if this specific model is compatible with any conversion "easy way" (eprom swap) ? That way i could maybe ask someone to burn em for me, it won't repair the game but if i can have a DOJ bootleg card i'd be good too.
 
Don't steal EPROMs from other games... I NEVER recommend doing that. just buy them on eBay, they're quite cheap.

none of the conversions are "easy" they all require quite a lot of surface mount soldering and rework.
 
I don't mind doing some rework or SMD, it's just that as the card is already faulty somehow, i will never know it i mess something up if it's not working (while swapping eprom could be easier to diagnose)

Sadly i don't own a burner right now so i need to find something to burn on theses to try this diag on my card ? I just can't put an empty rom ?

That's good practice for me, as i own two old convert card too (Ketsui and Galuda), and i'm sure theses aren't properly done from what i understood on the other topic (voltage regulation)
 
if you have a converted DDPDOJ you should be able to swap in that ROM, you will get bad sound and graphics but it should boot. That's the only other ROM that will work in a KOVSH cart though.
 
I don't own one no, but i'll try to find a programmed rom and try to switch to see what will happen
 
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