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Irken (MiSTer) JAMMA Expander

I seem to be in a SyncGuard Block infinite loop.

Getting anywhere between 5.00v to... well frankly whatever I set it to. And I keep getting it.

Updated Firmware to latest and still get it.

Also have a JINX Jamma voltage meter so I know my voltage is correct. Tried multiple cabs and same result. Strange this board has been super reliable for months. It just started this yesterday.

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The Expander is not receiving any video from the DE10, for whatever reason. Your HDMI led is on, so at least it's getting something from the the DE10.

I would try a different HDMI cable, just to be sure - and also verify that the DE10/Mister Setup is working ok by changing video settings and connecting it to a normal HDMI monitor.
 
invzim said:
The Expander is not receiving any video from the DE10, for whatever reason. Your HDMI led is on, so at least it's getting something from the the DE10.

I would try a different HDMI cable, just to be sure - and also verify that the DE10/Mister Setup is working ok by changing video settings and connecting it to a normal HDMI monitor.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the help... so it was none of those things.

My 128MB SDRAM is bad.

This was easier to solve hooked up to HDMI, but here's how I got clued in: Some older arcade cores would load. Then I went to console cores. Genesis loaded, SNES did NOT. I got suspicious and then tried Neo Geo, it actually says "not enough memory". And then I remembered which cores require 128MB of ram.

I swapped to the memory from @misteraddons and everything works as it did before.

Moral of the story: Don't buy cheap memory off Amazon.

Sorry @invzim, it has NOTHING to do with your board, that works perfectly (as it has for well over a year). It just happened to be an older (cheaper) memory module connected to that one.
 
DMRSX said:
Thanks for the help... so it was none of those things.

My 128MB SDRAM is bad.

This was easier to solve hooked up to HDMI, but here's how I got clued in: Some older arcade cores would load. Then I went to console cores. Genesis loaded, SNES did NOT. I got suspicious and then tried Neo Geo, it actually says "not enough memory". And then I remembered which cores require 128MB of ram.

I swapped to the memory from @misteraddons and everything works as it did before.

Moral of the story: Don't buy cheap memory off Amazon.

Sorry @invzim, it has NOTHING to do with your board, that works perfectly (as it has for well over a year). It just happened to be an older (cheaper) memory module connected to that one.
Click to expand...
UPDATE: New 128MB RAM module from @misteraddons fixed the issue.
 
Hello ! For some reason 3.3V isn’t lighting up all of a sudden, tried multiple cabs and reinstalled mister/ JAMMA expander latest firmware after formatting by FAT32. Happened suddenly, anyone got this issue?
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nawafsama said:
Hello ! For some reason 3.3V isn’t lighting up all of a sudden, tried multiple cabs and reinstalled mister/ JAMMA expander latest firmware after formatting by FAT32. Happened suddenly, anyone got this issue?
B5D3C742-C8A6-4B0A-81DD-BA256E0766A6.jpeg
Click to expand...
How about VBUS, is that one lighting up?
 
nawafsama said:
Yes it is lighting up. Monitor doesn’t sync and 3.3V doesn’t light up nor does the LCD on the expander
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This points to a hw failure, 3.3V is needed for most functions on the expander. I know plugging the jamma harness upside down can cause this fault.
Send me an email or use the contact form on the website and we'll take it from there.

If VBUS was also blank, it would be better - usually it's because MiSTer is not booted correctly.
 
Bought myself a mistersetup with Revision 1 of the expander. Looking forward to jump into this new landscape of both mister and expander.

The lack of USB (and therefore wifi) makes me scratch my head how to set this thing up since I don't have anything using RJ45 LAN anymore. :dead: Not even my slim laptop has one. Maybe an ugly solution is the external USB hub people in this thread has used. Any hub in particular that's good?

Also a question to @invzim, what is the design philosophy behind the usage of HDMI interface between the devices instead of taking 240p from the GPIO? I assume one of the reasons is to keep the possibility to use dual ram?
 
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aerobert said:
Bought myself a mistersetup with Revision 1 of the expander.

The lack of USB (and therefore wifi) makes me scratch my head how to set this thing up since I don't have anything using RJ45 LAN anymore. :dead: Not even my slim laptop has one. Maybe an ugly solution is the external USB hub people in this thread has used. Any hub in particular that's good?

Also a question to @invzim, what is the design philosophy behind the usage of HDMI interface between the devices instead of taking 240p from the GPIO? I assume one of the reasons is to keep the possibility to use dual ram?
Click to expand...
I don't know if it makes a difference, but the GPIO ports you are limited to 18bit color space, while through hdmi you get the full range of 24bit color space. If I remember what @invzim mentioned in the beginning correctly.
 
Oh cool.

But jamma expander was built for the purpose of arcade games which mostly doesn't use that high bit color depth.

Must be more reasons? Just curious
 
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aerobert said:
Bought myself a mistersetup with Revision 1 of the expander. Looking forward to jump into this new landscape of both mister and expander.

The lack of USB (and therefore wifi) makes me scratch my head how to set this thing up since I don't have anything using RJ45 LAN anymore. :dead: Not even my slim laptop has one. Maybe an ugly solution is the external USB hub people in this thread has used. Any hub in particular that's good?

Also a question to @invzim, what is the design philosophy behind the usage of HDMI interface between the devices instead of taking 240p from the GPIO? I assume one of the reasons is to keep the possibility to use dual ram?
Click to expand...
New rev has USB hub - you could always connect usb wifi to do updates, then reconnect the expander - not optimal though..

There are a myriad of reasons behind the design choices made, ESD protection, user errors, ease of installation, clean design etc etc, but the bottom line for users would be that more colors are better. Not many games use 24 bit color, but even if it only has 512 colors total - you want to the output to be the right colors. With more bits, the accuracy increases.
 
Yeah, the ram slot was the obvious thing for me. Futureproofing is great!

As mentioned I bought a used setup with REV1 so I think I will just go ahead and buy the USB hub board and add a bluetooth and wifi dongle in order to go wireless with both keyboard and wifi.
 
Looking for a short HDMI cable with two 90 degree angled connections to make the REV1 installation a bit more compact.

Can anyone recommend a good product? I don't find many (or any) options...
 
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