xodaraP
Legendary
Hi everyone,
I received this today, Guardian Storm by Afega. This game was released in 1998 and unusually was released in both vertical and horizontal versions. To achieve the horizontal version the resolutions were simply swapped meaning the horizontal version has black bars on the sides and the text is squished in places. This board is an Australian region board and horizontal.
Here is a picture of the board, it's very clean apart from some scratching on some of the ROM labels, suggesting it was stored stacked in with other boards and since the ROMs on this are on a daughterboard they got scratched up by pins from another board. Nevertheless there is no track damage or scratches on the bottom of the board.
The board was sold as faulty due to a graphics glitch. When I turned it on it had severe graphics glitching in the foreground and larger elements, but most of the text and the ship sprites seemed to be ok. The region screen was a complete mess. The sound was also very crackly suggesting it needs a recap or that there is a fault in the sound section.
Whenever I see a fault like this, and I see one of these
That's where I head first. And sure enough, there are very obviously lifted pins. I reworked these with a soldering iron and while working on one side I noticed this.
A pin that had been moved off it's pad and even though it was still making contact, it was also bridged to the next pin over.
I carefully fixed this with a small pair of tweezers, continued to reflow all 4 sides of the custom, cleaned up the excess flux and fired it up. 100% fixed! Even the sound is working perfectly, but that may be because it had warmed up, it will still be getting a recap.
I received this today, Guardian Storm by Afega. This game was released in 1998 and unusually was released in both vertical and horizontal versions. To achieve the horizontal version the resolutions were simply swapped meaning the horizontal version has black bars on the sides and the text is squished in places. This board is an Australian region board and horizontal.
Here is a picture of the board, it's very clean apart from some scratching on some of the ROM labels, suggesting it was stored stacked in with other boards and since the ROMs on this are on a daughterboard they got scratched up by pins from another board. Nevertheless there is no track damage or scratches on the bottom of the board.
The board was sold as faulty due to a graphics glitch. When I turned it on it had severe graphics glitching in the foreground and larger elements, but most of the text and the ship sprites seemed to be ok. The region screen was a complete mess. The sound was also very crackly suggesting it needs a recap or that there is a fault in the sound section.
Whenever I see a fault like this, and I see one of these
That's where I head first. And sure enough, there are very obviously lifted pins. I reworked these with a soldering iron and while working on one side I noticed this.
A pin that had been moved off it's pad and even though it was still making contact, it was also bridged to the next pin over.
I carefully fixed this with a small pair of tweezers, continued to reflow all 4 sides of the custom, cleaned up the excess flux and fired it up. 100% fixed! Even the sound is working perfectly, but that may be because it had warmed up, it will still be getting a recap.