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Since assembler is going down I thought it would be a good idea to paste this here.

If your ex-board has died, here's how you can replace the motherboard with the stock version *and* get your games booting again.

Ccatalyst said:
I have always wanted one of these arcade systems, even though they were only 4 games released for it, but i found the small carts a really neat concept. I was very disappointed when i finally got my hands on one, only to find out that most of the ones out in the world are dead due to overheating, you see these system had no fans, and inside a hot arcade cabinet, running 10+ hours a day, sometimes without Air conditioning around the machine, well you get the picture. These instructions will show how to resurect one of these systems.

Yes i know i can emulate this system on a standard pc, but i am a purist of sorts, and would like to keep these systems as original as possible, not just hack up a mame box.

NOTE: The default EX-BOARD dip switches are 1 & 2 ON, all the others are off.

NOTE:Sometimes when you plug it the power - which is a 12V DC power brick, into an ex-board, the game may NOT boot up, this is due to the way in which the pc board works, just unplug the power, wait 10 sec, then plug it back in, it should boot fine,
if it does not it will either be the power pcb or the motherboard, i will be going over steps to replace the motherboard and fix the games so that they will boot on the new pcb

To replace dead pcb

#1 get replacement pcb, you are going to want to purchase a VIA EPIA-LN10000EG - you can get these on ebay pretty cheap
#2 - pull the bios chip out of old damaged pcb - use chip extractor!! - if you do not use a chip extractor you may crack the chip or the slot holding the chip!
#3 - on new VIA motherboard , turn it on by shorting pins 6 & 8 on the F jumper panel, this panel is located between the ide connector and the sata connector, you can see pins 2 and 16 listed on the top of the panel, like shown below

Short these 2 pins for less than a second in order to turn on the pcb
2 | | 16
* * * * * * * *
* * * * * * *

set everything to default on bios, you can correct the date if you like, then shut it down

#4 - now pull out bios chip and replace with the one from the dead original pcb
#5 - plug in a ps/2 keyboard - you cannot do this after you boot, so make sure it is prior to booting


this takes care of fixing the motherboard - however your games will NOT work properly when you try and play them now, so to fix them do the following

#6 - plug in a game cart into the i/o pcb and plug the power into the system - it should boot up automatically
#7 - when windows comes up, it will pop up and window asking you to reboot and will be waiting at a Y prompt waiting for you to hit enter - DO NOT HIT ENTER - hit control alt delete to pop up task manager
#8 - hit control f
#9 - hit N
#10 - type cmd and hit enter
#11 - hit alt tab to go back to task manager
#12 - hit alt f
#13 - hit x and enter to close out task manager - we do this so we can work on dos screen and see what we are doing
#14 - now hit alt tab again to go to the command line
#15 - you should be sitting in the root directory of c: now
#16 - type ewfmgr c: -commit and hit enter
#17 - type exit and hit enter to close the command line window
#18 - you should now be sitting in the Y - to reboot prompt which came up when you first booted the system up, hit enter and unplug the keyboard
#19 - the game should now start up without any further errors - note you must do steps 6-18 on every game you wish to fix.


Now say the bios is also dead on the original pcb, - rare but it may happen. Do the following with your new via EPIA-LN10000EG PCB

#1 - get replacement pcb, you are going to want to purchase a VIA EPIA-LN10000EG
#2 - get a usb flash drive and put winflash 1.94 on it, you can get it from here https://www.wimsbios.com/awardflasher.jsp, also you are going to want to put the examu exboard.bin file on the flash drive
#3 - plug in a game cart into the i/o pcb and plug the power into the system
#4 - on new VIA motherboard , turn it on by shorting pins 6 & 8 on the F jumper panel, this panel is located between the ide connector and the sata connector, you can see pins 2 and 16 listed on the top of the panel, like shown below

Short these 2 pins for less than a second in order to turn on the pcb
2 | | 16
* * * * * * * *
* * * * * * *
#5 - windows will boot - but the game will NOT start because the bios is different
#6 - when windows comes up, it will just boot up to a blank windows screen - hit control alt delete to pop up task manager
#7 - hit control f
#8 - hit N
#9 - type cmd and hit enter
#10 - hit alt tab to go back to task manager
#11 - hit alt f
#12 - hit x and enter to close out task manager - we do this so we can work on dos screen and see what we are doing
#13 - now hit alt tab again to go to the command line
#14 - you should be sitting in the root directory of c: now
#15 - go to the d: drive which is the usb flash drive
#16 - run the winflash program
#17 - hit alt -f
#18 - hit u
#19 - select the examu exboard.bin file hit enter
#20 - hit tab to highlight the update box
#21 - hit enter
#22 - when the update is complete hit enter to reboot the system, keep the game plugged in.
#23 - when the screen goes black, remove the keyboard and the usb flash drive.
#24 - the system should now boot up into the game.
 
Thanks for this. I keep missing the $40 systems, but one day I too shall be able to play the fighting game with little girls in it!
 
Good info, thanks.

Not sure if this is true or not, but I've read that if the BIOS battery dies the motherboard stops booting. Probably by losing saved settings in the BIOS? Anyway, if your unit is working, it's probably worth hot swapping a fresh new battery in. That's what I did, easy enough to do.
 
I jinxed myself by posting this and mine came in super dead...

And with what the replacement motherboard seems to be going for it's not even worth repairing :(.
 
Does anyone know the bios password? I need to turn off halt on all errors. This bios password seems to be hard coded in since resetting the cmos does nothing for the password reset. I have attached the bios for people needing it/anyone that can help with the password
 

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