Can anyone could help diagnose wtf is going on with my Viper Phase 1 board.

[Dzhay]

At risk of posting something totally OT, I just wanted to check if anyone could help diagnose wtf is going on with my Viper Phase 1 board. It's never worked since I picked it up from an operator, although it clearly worked for them at some point.

When I power on it slowly draws pink and white checks and draws strong strange coloured bars. I think it's always the same pattern. Terrible image attached.

 

[twistedsymphony]

If this were me the first thing I would do is swap the cart with another mobo. See if the VP1 cart works on a different mobo or see if a different cart works on this mobo. that would help you focus to whether the problem is the cart or the mobo.

If you don't have access to another mobo: I would start by pulling the socketed ROMs on the cart and verifying them as good (dumping them using a programmer then comparing the code against MAME with the ROM Ident tool). if this is a V2.0 board you could then try flipping the program jumper to see if you can force a re-flash.

after that I would probably see if it would boot with SPI-Revive ROMs https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/seibu-spi-region-changer-spi-revive.7703/

In general though the most common fault on these systems is cold-solder joints on the CPU. if I had to guess that's likely what your problem is, that's also the kind of thing where it would work and then no longer work after shipping.