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Send help! TAITO F2 poor image quality

oneleaf86

oneleaf86

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Recently I've been picking up some TAITO F2 PCBs from YAJ but have noticed that the RGB output is some of the worst I've seen.

I currently have both the short and long F2 motherboards and a bunch of games. Ended up with two copies of Runark/Growl which both show severe ghosting and is the same regardless of motherboards.

Liquid Kids still has a little ghosting but not as much as Runark. It has another issue in which the blacks are appearing as grey which is the same issue I have with a Tengai PCB.

Just wanted to see if anyone out there has the same setup and can test to see if it's normal behavior.
 

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I'm leaning towards it being something in your setup causing the problems with this and Tengai.

I've never had any issues with my F2 board. I have Don Doko Don and Runark. I also have Liquid Kids, but I've never gotten it working. Either it's incompatible with the long board or the board is dead.

What is your setup?
 
I've had really terrible luck with Taito F2 equipment out of the 5 or so I've picked up I think i have 1 fully working main board. and the PCB stacks are just awkward and poorly laid out, especially anything with one of the long boards.

the video output on these is a bit on the bright side, I haven't experienced any issues with ghosting though.
 
Are you running it to an arcade monitor or CRT TV or through an OSSC/similar to a modern display? (It looks like a modern display in your pictures so I wasn't sure if you'd tried it on a CRT)
 
nem said:
I'm leaning towards it being something in your setup causing the problems with this and Tengai.

I've never had any issues with my F2 board. I have Don Doko Don and Runark. I also have Liquid Kids, but I've never gotten it working. Either it's incompatible with the long board or the board is dead.

What is your setup?
Click to expand...
Tried both Liquid Kids and Tengai on multiple setups including ASTRO, HAS, Sentinel and KICS 91 through an OSSC and a CRT, all exhibit the same washed out grey backgrounds which leads to a fault in the boards themselves.
Liquid kids works across both long and short motherboards so it looks like your board is indeed dead. Fire it up and check to see if any of the PALS get hot, they should heat up very quickly if shorted. If you find that one does get hot, there's a good chance that's why it won't boot.

I have a PULIRULA with a dead PAL but no dump exists to fix it as of yet. As for Liquid Kids, there's dumps available on JAMMARCACDE.
 
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xodaraP said:
Are you running it to an arcade monitor or CRT TV or through an OSSC/similar to a modern display? (It looks like a modern display in your pictures so I wasn't sure if you'd tried it on a CRT)
Click to expand...
The pictures are taken from my OSSC/TV. Haven't had a chance to test Runark on the ASTRO but I will soon. It's strange though, the ghosting is slightly less severe on one Runark PCB than the other which leads me to believe it could be a worn component.
 
twistedsymphony said:
I've had really terrible luck with Taito F2 equipment out of the 5 or so I've picked up I think i have 1 fully working main board. and the PCB stacks are just awkward and poorly laid out, especially anything with one of the long boards.

the video output on these is a bit on the bright side, I haven't experienced any issues with ghosting though.
Click to expand...
The motherboard/sub board combos do seem to be quite flaky. It's a shame as there are a tonne of great games on the platform but with the issues I've had so far, I'm a bit put off buying any more F2 stuff.
 
Could be transistors or resistors (depending how it's designed) on the RGB lines not doing their job
 
Bumping this old thread because I recently acquired both a Liquid Kids and TMNT boards with similar issues-ghosting and a “faded” look because black doesn’t display a true black. It’s definitely a board issue-only these two boards have these issues and it’s the same behavior across both my SuperGuns and my cabs.

Should I start at the R, G, and B edges on the JAMMA header and trace back from there through the components that comprise the video DAC? I assume any resistors, caps, transistors, TTLs, etc I encounter should be tested.
 
Not really sure if related, but maybe helps: Some overseas/western versions of Taito F3 boards experienced a "bleeding" effect in some video setups. That is caused becuase boards are not populated in the same way as japanese ones regarding RGB DAC and video output stage. I solved that problem a while back and documented it in a thread here:
https://www.arcade-projects.com/thr...3-color-bleeding”-problem-from-factory.14452/

You ma could check differences between pcb versions in order to spot any changes that could cause those issues.
 
Anyone ever solve this with the stack or the single layer F2 boards? I can't spot any differences between regional releases on the single F2 boards.
 
My Don Doko Don PCB does the same, the blacks are dark grey, think my Liquid Kids does as well, as well as a couple of other Taito PCBs. I just turn down the brightness, get the blacks perfect. Not seen any 'bleeding' though
 
Thanks. I see slight bleeding to the right of the image. It's relatively minor but the washed out colors bother me.
 
I've discussed this issue in another thread here: https://www.arcade-projects.com/thr...f2-video-brightness-black-level-issues.14435/

The TL;DR is that games that use the TC0260DAR chip seem to have the elevated black level issue. If you watch the YouTube video I posted of the Puzzle Bobble B-system PCB, you can see that it is most likely intentional on Taito's part to do this in the game code. It's not a defect in the motherboard. If I were to guess, they did this because the TC0260DAR's video output level is somewhat low. So to compensate, they artifically raise the black levels so the operator can turn down the monitor's brightness and increase contrast to compensate.

It sucks, but unless someone can look at the code on a game-by-game basis, this problem will probably not be fixable. MAME does not emulate the issue. It has to so with code sent to the TC0260DAR chip.
 
Thank you very much for the link Andy. I somehow missed it when searching before my necrobump.
 
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