The 16gb card worked and I'm off to the races!! turns out it wasn't the sd card, it was my mac formatting. I just happened to read another thread that said don't use a mac to format the card. Thank you to everyone who chimed in to help me out!
I'm heading to my friends arcade tonight after they close to test it on his board to rule that out. im open for suggestions for other solves if anyone had any!
just double checked. yes the screen goes blank. with the files I have it says sega when the flashing starts and sega when it completed. but the error persist
I downloaded the stv manual and the jumpers are set to the default. I got in the test menu but didn't see any settings I thought would effect this. any specific setting i should check?