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EXAMU eX-Board owners thread

twistedsymphony

twistedsymphony

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Ok I'm carrying over the discussion from the recent purchases thread...
It seems we have a lot of people who own these boards in a dead configuration so lets pool our resources to crack this nut.

twistedsymphony said:
Saw someone was selling a bunch of eX-Boards on YAJ with really low starting bids, so I threw a few low-ball bids on 3 of them and went to bed...


the next morning I discovered I won 2 of them O_o


73342370_3086974347995643_3771201055069569024_n.jpg



they're in pretty nice shape and came with the power adapters, no game cards though I have one on the way to help me test and get them up and running.
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wigsplitta said:
SNK-NEO-GEO said:
Open
one up and let’s see what’s inside...for science :thumbsup:
Click to expand...
They look a little something like this 8) exboard.jpg
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DecepticonZero said:
@twistedsymphony
Did they come up with a solution to stop these board from cooking themselves? There are some great titles on there.
Click to expand...

Cereth said:
nem said:
@twistedsymphony, if both Ex-Boards are working, you should hot swap new BIOS batteries in them. If the BIOS battery goes flat, the BIOS loses its settings, and no-one knows the password to enter BIOS. Only solution then is to replace the whole motherboard.


Examu Ex-Board motherboard replacement steps
Click to expand...
I’ve been sitting on one for a while too that I need to do this with. Sad how it is
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rewrite said:
twistedsymphony said:
I thought I read that the password was "Fireport"
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@CoolFox this may be useful to you.
Click to expand...
 
OK so it seems the most common problems are
------------------------------------------

Problem 1. the battery on the mobo dies, causing the clock to reset, then the bios fails post because the clock has died and wont continue booting. We don't have the bios password so we can't fix the clock.

Solution to problem #1
thanks to @brizzo
brizzo said:
The password is:

onestar7
Click to expand...

Preventative Maintenance for Problem #1
Hot-swap the mobo battery as suggested by @nem

------------------------------------------
Problem 2. the mobo overheats and cooks itself

Solution to problem #2
Buy a new mobo, this is documented well here:
Examu Ex-Board motherboard replacement steps

the original thread was on assembler here: https://assemblergames.com/threads/examu-exboard-repair.70014/
archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/2019060...games.com/threads/examu-exboard-repair.70014/

These guides reference an "exboard.bin" presumably the bios file, does anyone have this dump?


------------------------------------------


Problem 3. the DC-DC power converter overheats and cooks itself.

Potential Solution to Problem #3
Not sure of a good solution to this, but it seems it would be easy enough to diagnose (plug in a PC PSU in place of the DC-DC converter or simply meter the output to see if it's in the proper range.

maybe someone with a dead DC-DC converter can figure out what the common failure points are.
worst case replace with a Pico PSU or similar.

Preventative Maintenance for Problem #2 and 3
install some fans, there's plenty of room for them, the case already has lots of vents it's just a matter of figureing out a good size and mounting points, heck there is even some extra molex connectors to power them.

------------------------------------------
Problem 4. the Caps on the mobo and or DC-DC converter fail and it needs to be recapped.

Potential Solution to Problem #4
Simplest solution is a recap, maybe someone who has gone through this can come up with a cap list.

@penrhos has a good thread on this here: Help - dead EXboard...
 
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twistedsymphony said:
OK so it seems the most common problems are
------------------------------------------

Problem 1. the battery on the mobo dies, causing the clock to reset, then the bios fails post because the clock has died and wont continue booting. We don't have the bios password so we can't fix the clock.

Potential Solution to Problem #1
So for problem #1 I've read that the quick and dirty solution is to plug in a PS2 keyboard so you can [OK] the clock error and it will boot like normal. This will have to be done every time. but it's a good way to determine if this is the only problem.

I'm wondering if a fix would be to get another bios chip, flash a normal bios to it, boot with that to fix the clock, then pop the original bios back in? Also maybe someone who's good with PC security can brute force or otherwise extract the password from this thing.

This was also discussed on Assembler here: https://assemblergames.com/threads/examu-ex-board-bios-question-custom-and-locked.51002/
archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/2019060...-board-bios-question-custom-and-locked.51002/


Preventative Maintenance for Problem #1
Hot-swap the mobo battery as suggested by @nem

------------------------------------------
Problem 2. the mobo overheats and cooks itself

Solution to problem #2
Buy a new mobo, this is documented well here:
Examu Ex-Board motherboard replacement steps

the original thread was on assembler here: https://assemblergames.com/threads/examu-exboard-repair.70014/
archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/2019060...games.com/threads/examu-exboard-repair.70014/

These guides reference an "exboard.bin" presumably the bios file, does anyone have this dump?


------------------------------------------


Problem 3. the DC-DC power converter overheats and cooks itself.

Potential Solution to Problem #3
Not sure of a good solution to this, but it seems it would be easy enough to diagnose (plug in a PC PSU in place of the DC-DC converter or simply meter the output to see if it's in the proper range.

maybe someone with a dead DC-DC converter can figure out what the common failure points are.
worst case replace with a Pico PSU or similar.

Preventative Maintenance for Problem #2 and 3
install some fans, there's plenty of room for them, the case already has lots of vents it's just a matter of figureing out a good size and mounting points, heck there is even some extra molex connectors to power them.

------------------------------------------
Problem 4. the Caps on the mobo and or DC-DC converter fail and it needs to be recapped.

Potential Solution to Problem #4
Simplest solution is a recap, maybe someone who has gone through this can come up with a cap list.

@penrhos has a good thread on this here: Help - dead EXboard...
Click to expand...
I don't think these are cooking themselves. I think the CPUs are shutting off immediately due to overheating (for some reason the heatsink doesn't make contact with the cpu after a while). It was doing that in mine, so I took out the heatsink and put a heatsink/fan on it and it works fine now. Try putting something really cool on the cpu and see what it does.

Fireport is not the password. I have attached the bios.
 

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CoolFox said:
I don't think these are cooking themselves. I think the CPUs are shutting off immediately due to overheating (for some reason the heatsink doesn't make contact with the cpu after a while). It was doing that in mine, so I took out the heatsink and put a heatsink/fan on it and it works fine now. Try putting something really cool on the cpu and see what it does.
Click to expand...
Excellent. I think I voiced my skepticism on the "cooking" issue in the other thread but it's good to hear some confirmation that it might not really be happening.

and thanks for the bios!

I haven't actually tested my boards yet as I'm waiting to get a cart in first.

hopefully we'll get some real solutions together and start reviving these boards.
 
@CoolFox had asked me in passing for help with the BIOS password, but I assumed it was just a curiosity thing. Tonight he explained without it the system is frustrating/pain in the ass to boot!! Decided this was worth while to try and solve. Have past experience reverse engineering AwardBIOS but it's probably been a decade, lol.

Good news friends, I got lucky. The password is:

onestar7

Enjoy :D
 
I had some time to dig into mine today... I have 2 of these boards, neither would power on and the battery was flat on both of them 0.9V on one 0.1V on the other).

it looks like there's nothing on the PSU or the mobo to electrically force it to boot, which lead me to believe that it's a setting in the BIOS that tells it to power on automatically. so I looked up the manual and found the pins for the "power switch", they're pins 6 and 8 on the header in the corner of the PCB:


exbpowersw.jpg

connecting a push button to these wires the power LED comes on and a green LED on the JAMMA board blinks every few seconds, but I get nothing out of the VGA port. I verified good power on all ATX connector so I know that's working. I tried pulling the mobo out of the case and plugging vga directly into it (so the only thing plugged in where power VGA and my power button) and still nothing. both of my boards are like this. I'm even getting power on the PWM fan headers... so there's SOMETHING happening but still no video out.

I feel as if there's something else I'm missing here, is there something else that needs to be connected for this thing to power on?
 
Maybe bad ram, cpu or even bios?
Does it have a speaker header where you can connect one and listen for the system beeps?
 
it looks like there's an on-board speaker but IIRC there are pins for one on the front panel header as well, I'll give that a try.
 
I dug out an old PC speaker and hooked it up... no beeps

I get nothing out of the audio port either (tried both "front panel" header that goes to the JAMMA board and the 3.5mm connector on the back)
 
Well my first Ex-Board worked after I replaced the battery, cleared the cmos and put a proper heatsink on. Also make sure your bios didn't take a dive.
 
I've got 2 of them. battery was flat in both so it was replaced. Checked the thermal paste and it was crusty and flaking off so I put fresh paste on.

jumping the power switch wires on the front panel connector, I can confirm that the PSU kicks on (getting good 3.3v, 5v, and 12v on the ATX connector).

the fan headers on the mobo have a signs of life, there's a green LED on the JAMMA board that blinks every few seconds. but I get NOTHING on the VGA port, NOTHING on the audio output header, NOTHING on the 3.5mm audio output, and NOTHING on the PC speaker header :-/

results are identical on both.

I would have thought that even with no heat-sync at all I would get at least a beep or a few seconds of a POST attempt.

How do I check the bios? just pull it and see if I can dump it?
 
indeed I'll check the RAM.

I did order a used "working" consumer version mobo as well as one of those PCI analyzer cards to see what's up.
 
So are the carts on these basically ide flash drives? I wonder if a multi drive image could be put together for these?

Looking forward to how you make out with these. Always wanted to get one but never did because of the failure rate.
 
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