beginner attempting to revive a cooked Gals panic s3

[ShayminSky]

Hey All,

I'm a newer candy cabinet owner, and I purchased an S3 cart a while ago. I didn't know that that graphics on these cards going bad was a thing so I went to try it out today and of course it was not working properly. The other game I have for the nova system works perfectly fine.

I've read up on this issue here somewhat and I wanted to ask, what needs to be done to fix this game and how do you do it from a complete beginners perspective? If there are any pics or a guide that I can follow that would be fantastic.

Is it even worth it to try and save the cart or am I just better off cutting my losses? (thankfully I'm not that in the red on this one)

here's a video if anyone wants to see.

View: https://youtu.be/6-YEM2Oaqfs


Thanks Everyone!

 

[nem]

It's because the chips expect 3.3V and the cart is feeding them 5V:

https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/gals-panic-s3-cart.24057/#post-360301

You'll have to replace the mask roms with flash chips and add a DC-DC converter.

 

[adgenet]

I actually started working on flash chip pcbs with level translators and a 3.3v regulator for the exact purpose of fixing GPS3 but got distracted with other things after my first prototype version came back and didn't work correctly.
To add to the mess, I seem to recall seeing at least two different variations of GPS3 factory conversions (I think all GPS3 carts were factory conversions) with different cart layouts and bodges to make them work.
There was another person on this forum in a past thread that had posted a low resolution shot of their own variant of a flash chip pcb, but I don't think details were ever discussed nor were gerbers released. Hopefully whoever that was can either sell pcbs or provide gerbers / design files.

Edit: added photo of my failed project.

 

[ShayminSky]

So after doing some reading on some of those threads, I'm clearly in way over my head, but here is what I got so far along with some pics of mine on the inside.

so basically need to replace some of these chips and add some kind of converter like so?

with a new chip, this is the one I googled from one of the threads.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/122024697267

I also potentially have to flash some kind of data to these chips as well (I have no idea how to do this.)

To add to the mess, I seem to recall seeing at least two different variations of GPS3 factory conversions (I think all GPS3 carts were factory conversions) with different cart layouts and bodges to make them work.

yeah that's funny that you mentioned that, on my cartridge you can clearly see another sticker underneath part of it, but I couldn't pull up the label and separate them.