Recently acquired a broken ES3, let’s try to “rebuild” it!

[Franco23444]

Hello everyone, as the title says, I recently got a Namco System ES3 that originally had Tekken 7. I got it for a deal as it was completely dead. The motherboard and the HDD didn't work but the i5-3550s and the 8GB of DDR3 RAM worked fine on a test rig. The GTX 760, well, I'll talk about that card in a bit. I was initially going to use an ES1 case for my build, but since I found this system, I decided to use it instead.

I will say that this build is not done yet and will need a bit of help as I'm still a complete dumbass when it comes to software, lol!
Well, I took out the original PC motherboard and replaced it with a similar model from the same manufacturer. The original board was a Super Micro C7B75 with an LGA1155 socket. The board I had on hand and was a perfect replacement is a Super Micro X10SLQ motherboard with an LGA1150 socket.

As you can see, the 3rd gen i5-3550s would not fit on the new motherboard. Fortunately, I had an old DELL Optiplex prebuild and it had an i5-4570 which fits on that LGA-1150 socket.
The next thing I did was install the 8GB of RAM and the CPU heatsink and cooler (which I took from another old prebuild). I then fitted everything inside the metal enclosure and screwed everything down. Since the replacement board has a 4 pin cpu power connector, I cut the end off an old PSU and modified the 8pin connector, pretty simple. Hooked up all the power cables, a 250GB HDD with a bare bones version of Windows 10 Pro, and now it was time for the Graphics card. The GTX 760 originally didn’t work which was a huge bummer. It had some artifacting on the screen and threw up an error code in device manger. (Code 43) I had plans to replace it with a GTX 960 but it arrived dead, so I took out the 760, reflowed the GPU with a hot air station/liquid flux, let it cool down, put it back inside the machine and it worked! Not sure for how long but I’m pretty happy at this point. I will say this, installing drivers, especially for audio was a huge pain in the ass for me.

Next, I looked on google for some “solutions”, I tried Jconfig but it wouldn’t work and then tried Teknoparrot and it worked, Currently I’m running Vanilla Tekken 7 but I’m planning on finding the other two games. I’m also able to boot the game on start-up, which is cool! I will be cloning and swapping out the old mechanical HDD for an SSD at a later date.

I’m using an Xbox One controller for controls at the moment but I want to use my JVS I/O board instead, I will need some assistance with that.

The following steps for me are finding the other Tekken 7 arcade games (I'll do it myself), figure out JVS, and possibly make a custom shell to hide Windows fully. I will need help with the last two parts of this project. Anyway, here are some pictures of the current build!

Edit: my rebuilt ES3 PC SPECS:
Intel Core i5-4570 3.20Ghz
8GB of DDR3 RAM
NVIDIA GTX 760 2GB
250GB HDD with Windows 10 Pro (64x)
And the motherboard replacement is a SuperMicro X10SLQ

 

[Franco23444]

Ok, so I've been messing around with JCONFIG and finally got it working with vanilla Tekken 7, it's a bit fiddly than Teknoparrot but loads much quicker.

 

[multiretroproject]

Awesome,

i have problem with my ES3 Tekken 7 too, it displays Bitlocker and i think the HDD or program is corrupted.

I also want to use jconfig with an ES3 system and use its JVS to install in my Noir Cabinet.

 

[Franco23444]

Awesome,

i have problem with my ES3 Tekken 7 too, it displays Bitlocker and i think the HDD or program is corrupted.

I also want to use jconfig with an ES3 system and use its JVS to install in my Noir Cabinet.

I’m still trying to figure out some things out but what you can try is installing windows 10 or 7 on a fresh drive and see if your system will boot on it. It should work but if you want to upgrade/change out parts, you will need to disable TPM through the system BIOS. This step is necessary as the original hardware is locked to the motherboard. That shouldn’t be an issue with the boot drive though.

 

[tiff_lee]

Yeah the ES3 bios is locked so you can only boot from the HDD, create your installation media on the new HDD, boot from that and install windows that way.

 

[Franco23444]

Yeah the ES3 bios is locked so you can only boot from the HDD, create your installation media on the new HDD, boot from that and install windows that way.

The TPM can be disabled in the BIOS and a set of jumpers on the motherboard. The manual is online and I think it has the steps to disable TPM.

https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/motherboard/B75/MNL-C7B75.pdf

This is ONLY necessary if you want to change out or upgrade the RAM or graphics card. Changing or adding more RAM/ different graphics card will cause the system to constantly reset unless the original parts are added back. Hopefully this helps anyone who might want to troubleshoot their system. As always, DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

But like @tiff_lee stated, the boot drive should work fine, you may need to reinstall drivers though.

Edit: ES3 BIOS password is currently unknown so you can’t access the BIOS, but any bootable software will work on the ES3. Do your research as always!

 

[Franco23444]

Here’s a video video of my system booting up, sorry for potato quality, should be in crispy 4K soon, just a little excited to share this!

View: https://youtu.be/xrudlM1PY4o

 

[tiff_lee]

The TPM can be disabled in the BIOS and a set of jumpers on the motherboard. The manual is online and I think it has the steps to disable TPM.

https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/motherboard/B75/MNL-C7B75.pdf

This is ONLY necessary if you want to change out or upgrade the RAM or graphics card. Changing or adding more RAM/ different graphics card will cause the system to constantly reset unless the original parts are added back. Hopefully this helps anyone who might want to troubleshoot their system. As always, DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

But like @tiff_lee stated, the boot drive should work fine, you may need to reinstall drivers though.

On my ES3 you can't enter the bios as it's got a password lock on it which i've not being able to remove despite my best efforts hence only being able to install from the HDD.

TPM itself isn't the issue, it's actually a requirement for windows 11 out of the box (although easily bypassed). The original OEM install of Tekken uses bitlocker in conjunction with the TPM and this is what encrypts everything preventing you from changing parts.

I'm actually at a loss what to do with mine now, I have a full working install but it seems the security dongle is busted and I can also boot the ES3 from a fresh windows install but didn't fancy using teknoparrot as it's basically a vanilla PC at that point.

 

[Franco23444]

hmm that’s pretty interesting as before my original PC motherboard died I was able to go into the bios menu and installed a HDD with windows 7. Anyway I swapped out the board. Pretty interesting though Jconfig is much better to use than Teknoparrot as you don’t have to wait for the TP UI to load (which takes some time). Still need to figure out how to use the JVS ESIF2 PCB and as usual, Windows doesn’t detect it. I will continue to play around with it as I want to use my Namco JVS pcb. I’ll try to get another STOCK ES3 to mess around with.

 

[tiff_lee]

Yeah you're not the first person i've heard from who didn't have a locked bios, unlucky for me I guess.

 

[Franco23444]

Yeah you're not the first person i've heard from who didn't have a locked bios, unlucky for me I guess.

This may seem like a pretty dumb Idea but have you thought about reflashing the bios? Again, I don’t want you to brick your system

 

[tiff_lee]

I couldnt find a stock bios image file for it plus with it being locked there is no way to get it to read the USB drive or anything. I tried a variety of tricks i found online, grounding some pins on the bios chip etc to clear the password but had no luck with any of those. I'm going to keep an eye out for another security dongle and see if that gets it going.

 

[ChrisNas83]

Are you able to play arcade mode on your version of Tekken 7? The one I have is stuck in practice mode lol

 

[Franco23444]

Are you able to play arcade mode on your version of Tekken 7? The one I have is stuck in practice mode lol

Yes, the version I got only has arcade mode, but no practice mode.

Edit, I was using the file for Teknoparrot and Jconfig, the CPU version of vanilla T7 works flawlessly but on an actual system, the game .exe crashes and won’t even boot. I guess it’s pretty much exclusive to those emulators. Not real hardware.

Edit again: well, CPU mode does work on the practice mode version of vanilla T7 but you need to hookup a router with the correct IP address. I tried it and CPU battle does indeed work, with all the characters as well.

 

[ArcSys101]

Does the 4.01 update of tekken 7 fr r2 will run

 

[Franco23444]

Does the 4.01 update of tekken 7 fr r2 will run

As long as you can find a dump of it, it should run fine.

 

[Franco23444]

Got Tekken 7 to boot off a 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive! Pretty cool! Even loads faster than the shitty mechanical HDD I have install lol! (Obviously it loads faster because it’s flash media). I really like the idea of having my own portable game drives. Just plug and play! I will experiment more with this idea!

 

[ArcSys101]

What Sorcery is This Franco hehehehe very good Job

 

[ArcSys101]

Is that process will work on other tekken 7 titles? Fr, Fr R2?

 

[Franco23444]

Is that process will work on other tekken 7 titles? Fr, Fr R2?

They should work as long as you have the files. There is technically no reason to have them on a USB drive but I thought it was a neat idea. The game files aren’t too big either (~15GB in size). I need to try the other files though.