Control PCBs are paired to their dongles on a X3?

[nem]

EDIT: I just spent a whole day troubleshooting two X3s. Don't be an idiot like me. If your system isn't booting, start with removing your memory sticks and plugging in just one.

Original, now outdated post:

Seems I have managed to brick two X3s. I bought a faulty USFIV from YJ sometime back. I had hoped it would be a GPU or PSU issue. However, when I plugged it in, it booted normally and then threw a 0203: I/O INITIALISATION ERROR when loading the game. I thought it might have been a faulty control PCB (the board you plug the dongle into), so I swapped one in from a Lord of Vermilion IV I had. Plugging it in and I get no video signal at all from the system. No Type X3 logo, no nothing.

So I swapped the original control PCB back, but now the motherboard doesn't work with that either. Same problem, no video at all.

Sounds incredibly stupid. So I then tried LoV IV with the control PCB from USFIV. Same goddamn thing, no video. I put the original control PCB back in. Yup, that motherboard is bricked too. For the record, LoV IV was perfectly working before this.

What the hell. Was this common knowledge that you shouldn't swap control boards on these things and have I just missed the memo?

 

[nem]

Yeah, it bricking the system caught me by surprise.

 

[nem]

Just a black screen, after a while it reboots.

 

[Niko]

What if you remove the control pcb and try to boot the X3? Try also removing the battery booting the system and then putting the battery back. ( after turning it back off again of course )

 

[twistedsymphony]

This explains why I see so many X3 games listed that sell the HDD, dongle and control PCB as a set.

but this raises the question what's the point of having a dongle if you have to swap the control PCB too?

 

[nem]

What if you remove the control pcb and try to boot the X3?

It doesn't turn on at all. I think the control PCB bridges some pins so it turns on when power is applied? Does anyone know what pins they are exactly?

I haven't yet tried removing the battery. I guess I'll lose the security keys that are on the motherboard? I know, it's not an issue these days, but still.

but this raises the question what's the point of having a dongle if you have to swap the control PCB too?

Exactly. Why the heck are they separate?

 

[nem]

Nevermind. If you remove FP1, the PWSW pins are clearly labeled. I removed the control PCB and GPU, connected a monitor straight to DVI port on the motherboard. Removed the battery, shorted the JBAT1 pins. Plugged in power, shorted the PWSW pins and

still no video signal.

This is some motherboard.

 

[SNK-NEO-GEO]

Sorry to hear.. that sucks man

 

[dewmansnk]

Are there pins on the motherboard for a PC speaker? Maybe you can get some troubleshooting beeps out of the thing at least. Very weird it got so non responsive with such an innocuous change.

 

[nem]

This doesn't seem right.

Yeah, no kidding. If I only had the one motherboard I would say it's something else, but I have two that are both in similar state. That's some bad luck if swapping the control PCB was inconsequential.

Anyway, I tried booting it without the control PCB, but with the GPU installed. Still nothing.

Are there pins on the motherboard for a PC speaker?

I don't know. You tell me?



EDIT: Nevermind, I'm an idiot. There's a speaker installed on the motherboard.

I removed all the memory sticks. It turns on when bridging the power switch pins, but does nothing else. No beeps, no nothing. I put in one memory stick, and I have the motherboard now booting to the Type X3 logo. It lives.

I don't know, I guess I had just incredibly bad luck? Will report back soon.

 

[nem]

It seems I had just extremely bad luck. I shuffled the memory sticks until I found the stick that made the motherboard not boot. I replaced that with a stick from the other motherboard. I then pieced together all the original parts for USFIV, and hey presto:



I'm back to square one.

I then switched the control PCB from the other motherboard and now I get a boot device error:



Switched it back, back to IO init error.

Let's see if I can get LoV IV booting.

 

[nem]

LoV IV booting now as well. I have three bad memory sticks between the two motherboards. How does that happen, I have no idea. Spooky.

Thanks for reaffirming my belief that ultimately these are PCs and they should behave like it.

Now I'm going to turn off security on the LoV IV motherboard and drop USFIV on it.

 

[nem]

I can live with that

By the way, all three 'bad' memory sticks started playing nice after cleaning the edge connectors.

 

[SNK-NEO-GEO]

Glad to hear that you got things working

 

[nem]

I cleared CMOS by removing the battery and shorting the jumper, set security to OFF, booted a normal drive. Then cleared CMOS again, and booted the original ATA-locked drive.

So Type X3 isn't as stupid as the original Type X, which lost the keys when the battery died (Taito probably got a ton of shit for that).

 

[nem]

Yeah, it doesn't completely wipe the BIOS of changes. I had set showing the boot-up logo to OFF, so I could see it posting. After clearing the CMOS, that change still stuck.

 

[nem]

As a final note to this, I got USFIV running on an unlocked harddrive. Error 0203 does indeed point to a faulty Control PCB / DMAC card.

 

[nam9]

EDIT: I just spent a whole day troubleshooting two X3s. Don't be an idiot like me. If your system isn't booting, start with removing your memory sticks and plugging in just one.

Just a thanks here as I've had the same issue and thought I'd killed the motherboard...
Symptoms: Black screen, No Green (HDD) light, then system reset.

Removed all ram and tested each in socket closest to CPU.
System booted on every stick.

Populated both blue channels - no problem.
3rd stick, no boot in either black channel.
Last stick booted in both black channels.
3rd stick booted in final slot...

Conclusion? Possible dirty slot??? Intermittent ram module?
Either way, system is up, running again

 

[sammargh]

For what it's worth depending on the title Taito decided to set the board to IDE mode or AHCI mode for the SATA drive. My P&D chassis had AHCI set while NxL2 has IDE set. Moving drives between the two produces the no bootable device error because of it. Flipping the SATA mode in the bios will "unlock" it so to speak, except the hard drive passwords differ I think as well. Never did check that one out.